Myha’la Herrold is on the rise in a big way. Not only is she making waves on HBO’s Industry, but she’s also an absolute powerhouse in A24’s latest release, Bodies Bodies Bodies directed by Halina Reijn.
The movie covers what happens when a group of friends opts to ride out a hurricane by throwing a party at a secluded family mansion. During that party, they play a game — Bodies Bodies Bodies. It’s basically an imposter game like Among Us. One member of the group is secretly dubbed the killer and the rest of the players have to figure who that is before they can kill off the entire group. The girls can get pretty vicious, so perhaps it’s never just a game for them, but things do get especially intense when one player turns up real dead, not game dead.
With Bodies Bodies Bodies now playing in select theaters and set for a nationwide expansion on August 12th, Herrold joined us for an episode of Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party to explain how she went from theater-focused to on-screen star.
Initially, it was all about the stage for Herrold. She was fully focused on theater throughout her childhood and then when it came time to go to college, it was a no-brainer; she’d study musical theater at Carnegie Mellon. Even when taking her one and only on-screen class in that program, she never imagined she’d ever put those lessons to use. She explained, “In our final year we have one on-screen class and it was essentially like glorified self-taping and they were like, ‘You’re gonna be doing a lot of this,’ and I said, ‘Okay. Whatever.’”
Turns out, Herrold’s professors were right. Not only would she wind up scoring some major screen credits, but she’d also come to realize that her techniques and sensibilities are better suited for the camera. She continued:
“Moved to New York, I started working with my manager who is mostly LA-based and she’s mostly film and television, so I was getting a lot of stuff from her on that side. And just because I think, purely, the amount, the volume of work in TV and film is so much greater than it is on stage, I was getting a lot more attention there. And the diversity of stories that are being told on screen as opposed to on stage. And I was like, ‘Oh, these paychecks are so cute compared to what people are getting on the stage!’ And, ‘Oh, I don’t have to do eight shows a week,’ you know what I mean? And I liked it. And then when I got Industry I think I really understood my style of acting and the way I like to approach character and performance is actually better suited for TV and film just because it’s emotional and intimate and on the stage, you have to be huge and I’m a pretty small person so I had a hard time with that.”
However, even with the confidence that she found the ideal match in acting in film and television, there’d be some bumps in the road. Herrold went into detail on a pretty significant one while discussing audition highs and lows:
“I was doing a tape for this Syfy series sometime, maybe late 2018, early 2019. I think I did two tapes initially. They gave me notes and I redid a tape and then they were like, ‘The director loves you. They want to meet with you,’ and so I met with this director who was like, ‘Look, you’re the one. You’re the one, but we have to bring options to the network. You know how that goes?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah,’ having no idea what he was talking about. So we worked on it again, I taped three more times and they were like, ‘The test is tomorrow. It’s gonna be you. It’s all gonna be fine.’ And, of course, by this time I’m thinking, ‘I’m moving to Atlanta. I’m gonna have this amount of money. Then I’m gonna be able to do this.’ You know, you start to make plans when there’s actually no guarantee of the thing happening, because I thought it was gonna be me. They said it was gonna be me, and then the test happened and I think two hours later they were like, ‘Hey, so, it didn’t go your way,’ and that was crushing.”
But it wasn’t just about the disappointment of having high hopes and then not booking the role. Not only did this experience challenge Herrold’s perseverance, but it also had her reconsidering how she fit in in this industry. She explained:
“When I saw who they did cast, it was kind of like I had a weird mid-year after graduating crisis because at the time I had a shaved head and I was super androgynous and almost exclusively going out for queer roles and leaning into that, and then I saw who they cast and she was like feminine and elegant with all this hair and makeup on, and I was like, ‘Do I have to assimilate to be seen?’ You know what I mean? So I had a bit of a crisis. I started growing my hair out and all my friends were like, ‘Are you okay?’ So that sucked, however, I didn’t get that and so then I auditioned for Industry, like a month later. And so the high is that I auditioned for Industry, I met with the writers, I met with Lena Dunham, I flew to Wales and I got the role like three days later, so that was a pretty good one.”
The good continued because Industry gave Herrold the opportunity to fully embrace her own personal passions as a performer and how she’d like her artistry to change the business:
“Our writers are so intelligent and, as an actor, it gives you all of the playing field to go. There’s no place we can’t go in that script because it’s so well thought out. So that’s a good reason. Also, playing a young black banker as a woman and a foreign body in a place. And being the kind of person that I am, I was really excited about the broadening of the idea of representation because I truly believe that diversity and representation is not about checking boxes; it’s about putting true stories in the media, on the screen and celebrating them. And I understand that I don’t fit into any of the archetypical, stereotype black female characters that are out there in the world and just me being who I am, I thought that was gonna expand the idea of what black women on screen look like.”
Herrold brings yet another one-of-a-kind character to screen in Bodies Bodies Bodies with Jordan. She’s one of the toughest of the bunch, the first to willingly check the fuse box in the dark. There are points in the movie when one might feel relieved that Jordan is there. She appears to be a natural-born leader with sky-high tenacity. However, as things get more and more tense and bloody, Jordan crosses certain lines that call into question whether those are truly her best assets or qualities that make her the most likely killer of the group.
The non-stop guessing game is essential to Bodies Bodies Bodies, and you don’t achieve something like that unless you have a group of uniquely talented individuals fueling the film’s frenetic energy while bringing such big personalities to screen. Given how successful they are in that department and how actor-specific each role winds up feeling, I asked Herrold to pinpoint the two cast members with the most polar opposite approaches to their work on set. Here’s who she went with:
“Working with Rachel [Sennott] brings a lot of unpredictability in the sense that she’s very keen on improv and has so much of it, and was given the latitude. So you could expect to no expect what she was gonna do on the day when the camera was rolling. And then juxtaposed to someone like Lee [Pace] who was like, ‘Here’s what I’m doing. Here’s the plan,’ and then in moments where he had ideas and was playful, we already knew what was gonna happen. It wasn’t a surprise. We got to play, but it wasn’t a surprise whereas Rachel was like, you just let her go and see what happens.”
Looking for more on Herrold’s journey from theater dreams to starring in Bodies Bodies Bodies? Be sure to check out our full 25-minute conversation in the video at the top of this article or listen to the interview in podcast form below: