You don’t get a better Evil Dead deadite performance than what Alyssa Sutherland delivers in the franchise’s newest installment, Evil Dead Rise.
Sutherland plays Ellie in the film. She lives in a Los Angeles apartment building with her three kids, Danny (Morgan Davies), Bridget (Gabrielle Echols), and Kassie (Nell Fisher). When Ellie’s sister, Beth (Lily Sullivan), comes for a visit, their opportunity to reconnect is obliterated by the discovery of a Necronomicon. When the book is opened and the spell is recited, its evil is unleashed and goes straight into Ellie turning her into a deadite and sparking maximum chaos and carnage in the building.
In celebration of Evil Dead Rise’s nationwide theatrical release, Sutherland took the time to join me for a Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party conversation to discuss her journey in film and television thus far.
The itch to act was always there, but Sutherland actually found success in a different sector of the entertainment industry first. She kicked off her career as a model.
She recalled, “I grew up in Brisbane in Australia. No one I knew was an actor.” That meant becoming an actor felt more like a pipe dream than a realistic career path leading her to believe the more practical move was to go to university and study science. However, then she was discovered as a model. “I was discovered in a shopping mall.” Sutherland continued, “My mom encouraged me to take the opportunity and travel and defer from university.” Sutherland ultimately went on to score a contract with Vogue Australia, grace the covers of magazines including Australian Style and Glamour Italy, and appear in campaigns for brands like Bulgari and Ralph Lauren. Things were going quite well in the modeling realm, but then came the opportunity to act.
“I had a screen test with the director, a lovely Australian director Jocelyn Moorhouse. I love her work. So I went through this process with her ... and I got a role in the film, but it didn't get made. But that experience really sparked it in me, and so I just started taking classes when I could and just slowly plodding my way along. I don't know how long I spent in classes in New York, and eventually it got to the point where if I was gonna keep modeling it was going to keep me from auditioning. Back in those days, you'd get an audition, you'd have a day to prepare and inevitably it would be like, ‘Aw, but I’m getting on a flight tonight to go somewhere else.’ And so I had to take the leap and I decided to move to LA, not take on a modeling agent in LA, and dedicate myself in LA.”
Finding the courage to leave a winning career behind to follow one’s gut and pursue a deep passion is a big step to take, but seeing that leap through in an industry with a habit of boxing artists in to their first great success can prove challenging. In Sutherland’s case, she didn’t encounter doubts that a model could pivot to acting, but rather, found limits with the types of roles the industry would consider her for. Here’s how she put it:
“I don't think people question whether models can become actresses. I think there have been enough that have proved themselves, so I don't think the industry as a whole pigeonholes models. What I do think you fight, especially as a woman is, 'But she's too beautiful to be a lawyer. She's too beautiful to be this.' And yet we have Brad Pitt who is an extremely good-looking fella and he can play lots of different things. So I've found that that has been a difficult thing to overcome, which is why Evil Dead Rise is such a gift!”
Evil Dead Rise proved to be a gift in a number of respects. Not only did the role of Ellie give Sutherland the opportunity to swing for the fences, get grimy, and deliver one wicked one-liner after the next, but it also gave her the chance to go big in a no-fear environment. Here’s how she put it:
“The greatest thing with Lee is that I could completely trust him and trust his taste. I never felt like he was steering me wrong. And there were a couple of times where I was like, ‘Are you sure we've got it? Maybe we need to keep going.’ And he was like, ‘No, trust me. It's good.’ I'm like, ‘Okay, all right.’ He's just wonderful and he has a great ability with me — I always felt confident. I'm so comfortable because that role is like, wow, you could really fail, and if you have a fear of failing then you're going to be way too inhibited, and he removed my fear of failing. I was able to try whatever I wanted to try.”
Heightened Evil Dead scenarios demand actors go to the extreme with their performances, but Sutherland also found herself tapping into something personal in the process, something very true to life. She explained:
“I had to tap into some real rage. And I think a lot of women have rage. I think it's quite natural for us. I think society ingrains some self-sacrificing. Women who are self-sacrificing and don't complain and they're there to serve others and to please others are put up on a pedestal. I lived a lot of my life doing that, and I don't think it served me and I think I had some repressed rage from doing that and pleasing others and always thinking of the other person; ‘Don't make the other person uncomfortable. You be uncomfortable. You can take on the discomfort so that that man isn't uncomfortable.’ And I tapped into that. And I think there are probably a lot of women that could relate to having some of that. So I found it quite easy to tap into rage and it was very therapeutic.”
That rage isn't the only pivotal part of Sutherland’s deadite Ellie. She also insisted on ensuring it had a sense of joy as well. Here’s how she put it:
“What I wanted to add to the deadite was a sense of joy. I had rage, but I also wanted the deadite to have joy, because then that gave me so much to play with. And also there's something really sinister about someone getting off on disturbing you that way and getting under your skin, and then it kept the performance from being a one note performance. So I wanted to have joy and have this sense of celebration happening because I think that fits for Evil Dead. It's like a celebration of carnage, the whole film. So it's like I wanted the deadite to have that. So I was like, well, it's been trapped with this book and tied to this book. It hasn't had a human to embody for how long? It's been tortured by being trapped in this thing! And all of a sudden I started feeling sorry for this tortured soul. [Laughs] It hasn't had its expression which sort of mirrored where I tapped into. And all of a sudden I was like, ‘This poor thing. Well, we've got to give it a body because it's been so long, so long.’ Yeah, so really the deadite is the victim.”
Looking for even more from Sutherland on her journey to Evil Dead Rise including the time she spent playing Aslaug on Vikings? You can watch it all in the video at the top of this article or listen to the conversation in podcast form below: