[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the season finale of Brand New Cherry Flavor, “Bodies.”]
From creators Nick Antosca (Channel Zero) and Lenore Zion, the horror drama Brand New Cherry Flavor follows Lisa Nova (Rosa Salazar), as she comes to Los Angeles with the goal of directing her first feature film. After believing that Lou Burke (Eric Lange) can make that happen for her, she quickly learns that he’s more predator than producer and turns to the mysterious Boro (Catherine Keener) to set a curse in motion that threatens everyone and everything Lisa has ever known.
In what is quite possibly the wildest TV series Netflix has released, actor Jeff Ward plays Roy Hardaway, a movie star that seeks thrills to break through the numbness of the everyday, but quickly finds himself trapped in a dangerous spiral he can’t seem to break out of, that always comes back to Lisa Nova. During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, which you can both watch and read, he dove deep into spoilers and talked about not going half-way with material like this, how much he knew ahead of time about what the series would be, having Salazar alongside him as a co-star, the shocking sex scene in Episode 4, all of those kittens, how much they actually used practical effects, and being inspired by Mulholland Drive.
Collider: This show is insane, in the best way possible. I very much appreciate just how absolutely batshit crazy the show is.
JEFF WARD: That’s the thing about the show. We were all joking when we were making it – Nick [Antosca] and Lenore [Zion] and I – especially shooting some of the crazier scenes. And Matt Sobel, who directed the fourth episode, when we did that crazy sex scene, we were like, “It’s hard to think people won’t want to talk about this, whether or not they like it.” I read that scene in probably October of 2019, so I’ve been thinking about it since then. I am so curious what people think of it.
We briefly talked about Brand New Cherry Flavor when I spoke to you for the last season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and I just had no idea.
WARD: That’s the thing. I don’t think anyone does until you see it. It’s been cool because it does seem like people are appreciating that it’s unique and that it’s a big swing. This is my third thing with Nick Antosca and all of his work is always like that to me. I think there’s a bravery and a brilliance in that. It’s very cool, that other people respond to it because it’s wild, and you really don’t know.
And you definitely can’t half-ass it with a show like this because it just would never have worked.
WARD: Yeah. The cool thing about that, that’s so true, is when you, when you have Catherine Keener and Rosa [Salazar] and Eric [Lange] and Manny [Jacinto] and Hannah Levine, and all of these people, they’re such great actors that they can keep it in some sense of realism, even though it’s obviously the furthest thing from it. It’s a tightrope.
Before we get further into Episode 4, going back to the beginning, how much were you told about this? What did Nick Antosca say, when he mentioned this project?
WARD: We had worked on Channel Zero together and he’s so distinct, so I knew, when this came around, that it would be something really different and something exciting. That’s the cool thing about cracking a Nick Antosca script or book or short story. It always ends in a way that’s going to [surprise you]. When he first pitched me my character arc on Channel Zero, I consider myself a fairly intelligent story mind and I can usually somewhat predict where things are going, but I remember the first time he told me that, my jaw dropped. It was very cool. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, and then when I knew I was doing it and him and I were talking about it, he was like, “Let me send you the first five episodes. Those scripts are ready. You can read them and see what you think.” And I read them and not to jump right back into the fourth episode, but when I read that script, I got nervous. I was like, “I’ve never done anything like this. I’ve never seen anything like this. This is really crazy.” I was very nervous at first. And then, I got over that and it was exciting. How many times do you get to do a scene that you feel like has never really been done before? So, there’s some excitement to it.
When you’re in a relationship with a girl who is suddenly throwing up kittens, shouldn’t that be the first sign not to show up again and get as far away as possible?
WARD: What we stumbled into with Roy, in general, was that there had to be a magnetism about her and a sweetness that it brings out in him, that he doesn’t normally feel for people. That was the only way I could justify, in my mind, exactly what you’re saying. Why does he keep coming back to this kitten vomiting, clearly drugged out, insane girl that has trouble following her around. Rosa and I would talk about this sometimes and, in my mind, it feels like their story is a bit Romeo and Juliet. They would have been a perfect pair and could have been the perfect ones for each other, but this curse changed things. It was an interesting challenge to try to justify that. Hopefully, we made some sense of it.
In his defense, it’s an escalation and it doesn’t happen all at once. But by the fifth kitten she throws up, you think he’d be out of there.
WARD: And he tries. He does his best to get away from her and to tell her, “I can’t see you anymore. I can’t keep doing this.” What’s always interesting and fun to me is the power of that kind of insane having feelings for someone. You look past the kitten throwing up because you’re like, “She’ll be cool. She’ll figure it out.”
With all of the craziness and all of these wild, what the fuck moments, was there anything that you were scared about actually being able to pull off, or was it all just excitement?
WARD: Getting my head pulled off was challenging. It was very funny because everyone was covered in these white hazmat suits because there was so much blood everywhere when we were doing those scenes. It was very funny because there was a giddiness on set about it and everyone was like, “Yeah, we’re pulling his head off!” It was hard not to feel weird about it, at a certain point, because 50 people were sitting around like, “This is it! We’re gonna rip his head clean off, and then they’re gonna eat what’s left of it!” It was like, “Oh, my God, why is everyone so happy about this?” It was very tough to pull off, logistically. It was a lot of different angles. And then, there was a puppet that was involved. That was very technically challenging and that scene, in general, just with Boro and Lisa and Roy, in that standoff with all the zombies around and Code is there. That was just such a gargantuan scene to do, it took two or three days. I remember the first time I heard and saw a storyboard for when Roy gets literally pulled apart by these zombies, I was like, “Whoa, that’s crazy, but I’m into that.” The sex scene scared me more. I was like, “This feels more frightening.” I remember the first time I saw the Jaguar demon and it was horrifying in real life. It did not look any less crazy. So, that was another one that was a fun challenge.
I was curious with that scene with them removing your head, how much of that was done with makeup and prosthetics and things that were there, and how much was CGI?
WARD: It was almost all practical. There were a lot of reverse shots and doing things backwards. I had to stand there dying with blood coming down my neck for a full minute, several times. We had to change me out because it was such an unbelievable amount of blood. It was cool too because I have such an affinity for practical effects and obviously grew up on that, and we got to not have to be reliant on CG for sequences like that. And the kittens, to me, the fact that those are practical makes all the difference in the world because they look amazing. They look so cool. I don’t wanna give it away, but they were being puppeted. I loved all of those practicals, especially for such a ‘90s vibe. I think it fits, tonally.
What was it like for you to watch the finished scene of your head being ripped off?
WARD: The first time I saw it, it was not colored and it wasn’t completely done. I think that there is a little bit of CG clean up in some of the shots and that stuff hadn’t gotten done yet, but when I did see it, I definitely watched it and was like, “I’ve gotta warn my mom and dad about this. If they’re gonna watch this, I think it’s unfair to let this sneak up on them because it does look incredibly real.” To Nick’s credit, it’s difficult to pull that off. As many people do, I had to sit under hours and hours of silicone and breathing through straws to get that, and it was up to my chest to get my whole bust, to then rip it clean off and start eating out of it.
When it came to doing that sex scene, what were the conversations and discussions like? Because that hadn’t been done before, were those conversations about what it would be and how it would be conveyed?
WARD: I talked to Nick and Matt Sobel, who directed that one, about how I wanted it to be the most fucked up version of two people falling in love that I’ve ever seen. The moment that they fall in love is this moment, and they were both into that. Matt had the idea, that I love, that there’s no handheld shots in the show, except for that scene. When it goes to her coming off the bed, it turns into a handheld shot and stays in one take for a lot of it and I think that lends it such an incredible literally breaking out of the rhythm of her life and the show and his life. In my mind, they really fall in love with each other in this crazy moment. We played with, how confused is he? How turned on is he? What is it that he’s going through? Because he does it, so what’s the level of comfort? We tried to find a balance. Rosa is such a powerful performer, when it happened, it just took on its own life. And I remember the last take that we did, which was the one that’s in the show, Nick and Matt ran in and were like, “We got it. That was crazy.”
The first time I saw the side hole, it was crazy. Rosa played a mean joke on me. She went, “Check it out. Touch it.” And I leaned my hand and she went, “Ow!” It really freaked me out. She was obviously messing with me, but it scared the shit out of me because the thing just made me nervous. When we were doing it, there’s a shot where it goes up to my forearm, and I remember when we were doing that, I was doing it and, at that point, it was a mannequin. It wasn’t her anymore. Most of it is her, but then, at just that point, it’s not. I remember looking at it and I was like, “This is horrible. I’m doing it. I see how fake it is, and it’s freaking me out.” And when it’s all cut together and real, it is almost unbearable, but hopefully, if it’s your thing cinematically, it’s in a good way. It’s in that car accident way. Hopefully, the story had earned it, so when it gets to that point, you can’t take your eyes off it. Or you can very much take your eyes off it and you turn the show off, forever. One of those two things.
It definitely could not exist in any other show. He’s also very accepting of this happening. He doesn’t question what’s going on.
WARD: I think that there’s such a beautiful moment of connection between the two of them, before it happens. To me, it’s the most vulnerable and beautiful moment that Lisa has, in terms of her personal life and her pathos, with that monologue that she has about her mother beckoning her through this trap door. And Roy clearly relates to that and has some conflicting feelings and past of his own that it feels like that conjures up. It feels to me like the reason that scene can exist in such an insane way is because – and I give so much credit to Nick and Lenore for this – there is this real moment of connection and there’s real identification between the two characters of, “Oh, I see you and I think you see me back.” It then leads to, “Okay, if that’s your thing, then I guess that’s your thing.”
Was it weirder to watch that scene, or to watch your own head being ripped off?
WARD: Definitely that scene. The head ripped off was like, “Yeah, that’s crazy,” but that sex scene is bananas. I’m very proud to have done it, even though I was very afraid to do it.
Anytime that anybody pulls something off that you’ve never seen before, could never imagine, and probably will never see again, definitely needs a kudos for that.
WARD: I appreciate that. That’s how I feel. It takes some bravery to be able to do that, for Nick and Lenore.
What was it like to work with Rosa Salazar throughout this? There are so many crazy things that happen and the emotions of this are often very heightened, so what was it like to go through that with her? How is she, as a scene partner?
WARD: Rosa is a super talented actor. Her and I both share a deep love for acting and film, and the history of both of those things. She brings so much to every scene. It’s incredibly difficult when you have a role like hers, where you’re in every scene and you have so much to do all the time, and you have such heightened and surreal elements that you have to pull off. It’s a very, very difficult job and she showed up ready to do it, every single day, which in and of itself takes kudos. She’s also a bit of a perfectionist and is driven, constantly, to get the best thing, and I feel the same way. It made for both of us being always really determined to get the most effective and interesting and different thing, in terms of storytelling, into a given scene. She was amazing and I was blown away.
In a show like this, it is very dependent on that performer, whoever it is, to really show up. For instance, one of my favorite moments in the series is at the end of the first episode, when she throws up the cat for the first time. That, to me, is so amazing and beautifully performed and really vulnerable. Another scene that I love of hers, so much, is when she comes to me and she’s tripping on the poison and we have to have sex again, in order for the blood magic to work, it’s funny because when she was doing that scene, she was cracking me up. She was so real, in someone that’s tweaking out on drugs, but has a mission that they need to do. I feel like the craziest moments work because of her performance. It needed that, and she delivered. I think she did an excellent job.
And Catherine Kenner, as the other anchor of this show, is just brilliant in a role that could have gone wrong, in so many ways.
WARD: I would joke, whenever I would see her, that she’s like homeless couture. She’s the craziest trash pile of the highest fashion. Catherine has been an idol of mine for a long, long time. I was so excited that I got to work with her because I was just like, “You’re Catherine Keener. Come on!” And what was cool about her is that she showed up and I just learned so much watching her come to work all the time. She’s so good, but she’s so alive and just exactly in the moment and she’s so funny. There were scenes where I was like, “I’m pretty good at not laughing in scenes,” but sometimes [it was hard with her]. She would scream, “I’m Boro!,” all the time and yeah, of course.
It takes crazy cat lady to a whole new level.
WARD: It sure does. I hadn’t thought about that. That’s very true.
You’ve been doing such a wide variety of projects, from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to Brand New Cherry Flavor to Hacks. You couldn’t get three more different shows, if you tried. Is any of that intentional? Are you enjoying that? Is it weird to be so completely all over the map?
WARD: It’s a little bit intentional. It’s also luck. You do your best to try to find interesting stuff to do, but it doesn’t always work out, whether you get to do the thing you thought was interesting, or whether you do the thing that’s interesting and it didn’t turn out the way that you hoped or thought it would. S.H.I.E.L.D. obviously feels like home. That was such a big part of my life. I actually shot Cherry Flavor first, and then Hacks after that. Deke on S.H.I.E.L.D. had such a wonderful variety of being the goof, but also showing up when he needed to and being an anti-hero, in certain respects. And then, I got to do Cherry, which was so no holds barred. Everything was on the table. Where S.H.I.E.L.D. felt like such a Marvel tried and true, we know this works this is our playground [kind of thing], with Cherry Flavor, we were completely building a new playground that had never been built before and the slide had weird spikes on it. That was so liberating because it was such an inverted experience from S.H.I.E.L.D. It feels like different cuisine, like pizza and sushi. It’s such a fun thing to be able to vary that up.
And then, going to Hacks, Paul [Downs] called me and asked me to do the table read for that part, and I immediately fell in love with it because I was like, “This is Paul Rudd in the first act of a rom-com, except he kills himself.” That’s so amazing. It’s so weird. To find humor and humanity in that was such a completely different style and, to keep the same analogy, playground, but one that ended where he died. It’s something that I hope to continue to do because I’m interested in all of those things. What I’m noticing about myself is that I feel like whatever I’ve just done, I wanna do something totally different and opposite than that. That’s what feels like it might happen again. We’ll see.
With Roy and George, it’s funny to try to call either of those things naturalism because they’re ultimately very crazy, but for Cherry Flavor and playing Roy, Justin Theroux in Mulholland Drive was a huge inspiration for me, of him serving that function in the story of getting caught up all in it, but not knowing exactly what’s going on, but going with it. He’s probably a fairly good person, but maybe a bad person that gets caught up in all of this. There’s an understatement, hopefully, that I was trying to go for in both of those because I was trying to undercut the bigger things that were going on. If feels like, right now, I’m wanting to do something a bit more heightened and a bit more crazy, as its own character.
Where do you go from here? Do you do a musical?
WARD: I can’t talk about it, but if the thing I hope it is happens, we’ll have another conversation about it.
I’m glad that more and more people are watching Brand New Cherry Flavor because it’s certainly one of those shows that you watch and really need to have a conversation about.
WARD: I’m so happy because with a show like this, what we were always hoping for is something that would just be engaging enough to get people excited and want to talk about it. With all of my favorite stuff, that’s what happens. I just finished the second season of Dave and I just think it’s such a fantastic show. I’m like, “Oh, my God, has anybody seen this? I’ve gotta talk about it.” So, I know the feeling and I’m honored that you feel that way.
This is also a show that shouldn’t work, and yet somehow you all managed to pull it off and I don’t know how.
WARD: I think that’s a fair description, and Nick and Lenore would not argue with you. I think that’s what’s exciting. The Mulholland Drive aspect of things and the history of it with [David Lynch] shooting it as a pilot, and then just adding on the rest, that shouldn’t work. That shouldn’t yield one of the best movies, in my humble opinion, ever made, but for some reason, it’s just weird enough and just enough of an attempt at something different that it makes something cool. I hope that’s what we pulled off with this.
I love Mulholland Drive too. I’m still not entirely sure I fully know what it was about, but I love it and I love David Lynch. Twin Peaks will always and forever be my favorite show, even though I still don’t fully understand it.
WARD: I love it.
I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me about a dozen times when it first came out and I feel like every time I saw it, I maybe understood one more scene than I did the last time, but I’m still not sure if I fully grasp it all.
WARD: That’s how I am with Mulholland Drive. I always like to think about exactly what the blue box is. It’s so funny because I feel like I get it, but I think David Lynch would laugh at me, if I explained it.
And David Lynch is never going to explain anything to anybody because that’s just not who he is.
WARD: Yeah. With Mulholland Drive and David Lynch, it’s so much more purposely poetic. It’s very intentionally vague and make of it what you will. It’s the perfect representation of a dreamscape. With Cherry, there is a mystery to it that is doled out and you do get to understand. It’s interesting because I’ve seen a lot of people say, after they’ve seen the series, that they don’t know what the title means. I have a guess of what the title means, but a lot of people are like, “It’s totally random.” I don’t think it’s that random. I think there’s some meaning to it. But that’ll be my Lynchian mystery.
With somebody like David Lynch, you know he’s not going to have those conversations, so it’s okay and you just go with it. And with Brand New Cherry Flavor, I didn’t know where it was going, but I just kept going with it because I was all in. Whatever came after Episode 4, I was all in.
WARD: Hopefully, it has that effect, once you get pulled enough in. The first time I saw the show, I felt like it happened at the end of the pilot, when Lisa goes to confront Lou, and Lou choke slams her, and then she goes to Boro and throws up a kitten, and she wants to set his life on fire. I remember I read that in the script and I was like, “Oh, my God, this is amazing.” And then, I saw it and I was like, “This might be a show. This is really cool.”
Brand New Cherry Flavor is available to stream at Netflix.