From writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour, the wild thriller The Bad Batch follows Arlen (Suki Waterhouse), a young woman who has been left in a Texas wasteland fenced off from civilization that must try to navigate the brutal and unforgiving landscape. After being captured by a ruthless group of cannibals led by the Miami Man (Jason Momoa), Arlen tries to survive any way that she can, eventually winding up in the town of Comfort, but quickly learns that she also doesn’t agree with the way the eccentric founder The Dream (Keanu Reeves) handles things and that it may be better to fend for herself.
At the film’s press day, actress Suki Waterhouse and filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour talked about how much The Bad Batch evolved, the challenges of the shoot, extra scenes that will be included on the Blu-ray/DVD, cleansing themselves afterwards, and what’s next for Amirpour.
Collider: How close is this final product to what you originally envisioned this film to be, and Suki, how close did things turn out compared to the script that you first read?
SUKI WATERHOUSE: I didn’t know what it was going to look like or be like. You read the script and you’re just like, “What?!” I had no idea, at all.
ANA LILY AMIRPOUR: [Jason] Momoa said he had a similar reaction. I don’t even fully know. I do know elements. I knew about the airplane junkyard. Once you know that location exists, my camera man and I go there and shoot tests, so we know.
WATERHOUSE: My jaw dropped, when I first say that first location.
AMIRPOUR: I show pictures, play music and act it out to try to give [the actors] some idea, but it’s different once it’s them.
WATERHOUSE: Lily acts out the whole script for you. It was really entertaining.
AMIRPOUR: It’s a monkey show. It took forever for Momoa. He has ADD, so he’s be able to go for 15 minutes, and then he’d have to take a break, have a beer, and make some mac and cheese. It took two days in Atlanta. People were coming in the house, and he’d be like, “Let’s go do this for a second.” And then, he’d come back and be like, “Okay, let’s do this,” and he’d grab the script. But, I feel like it helps. It is surreal storytelling and there are extreme visual elements. Some of it is just only in my head, so I try to help prepare there. I told Keanu [Reeves], “There’s gonna be a pool in your living room and pregnant girls everywhere and drugs on the table.” How do you prepare someone for that? It’s trust, really.
Suki, was there a specific moment when you realized just what you’d gotten yourself into, with all of this?
AMIRPOUR: Five minutes into day one.
WATERHOUSE: No, I think it was before shooting, when we were just hanging out. I was like, “I’m just going to do what you tell me to do.”
AMIRPOUR: I think she knew it was not for the weak-willed.
WATERHOUSE: That was written on the audition. It was like, “Don’t audition, if you’re a pussy!”
AMIRPOUR: I don’t think there are many girls like [Suki]. She’s special. She’s tough, wild and feral.
Was it difficult to walk around with the leg brace on?
WATERHOUSE: It wasn’t a breeze, at all. My leg was stuck in it.
AMIRPOUR: She had the VFX prosthetics that she was wearing, and then she had a giant armature over her leg that encapsulated her entire leg.
WATERHOUSE: And it would melt and come off. You just learn to walk anyway. I was really grateful to have all of that stuff because you’re right in it and right there.
AMIRPOUR: I actually feel like Jason’s pants gave him a walk, too. He had those Dancing with the Stars pants on, with the high waist. He’d get this slow Latin thing going on.
WATERHOUSE: There was a lot of movement in the hips.
As an actor, when you go through an experience like this and you make it to the other side, is it very rewarding, or did you wonder how you were going to make it through the shoot?
WATERHOUSE: Yeah, it’s hard, but you’re still doing an awesome fuckin’ movie with some of the coolest actors in the world. It’s not like, “Boo hoo, this is hard!” It’s really hard, but I’m still doing the coolest movie ever. That would be like, “Go home and shut the fuck up!”
AMIRPOUR: Her saying that is just a testament to how brave and fearless she is. Honestly, I think she has survival reflexes that kick in. It’s a primal instinct to just survive. She was on that skateboard with shit all over her and crows pecking at her face.
WATERHOUSE: I just enjoy that. That was the most scared I was, with the crows. There was a crow that kept coming around me and I was scared that it was going to peck my face. They were disgusting! They were horrible!
AMIRPOUR: They’re actually as smart as dogs and really trainable. We put little bits of meat on her, so that they’d come over.
WATERHOUSE: They’re just animals. They can’t help it. They were just eating around me. Could you imagine, if I still had crow marks on my face? It’s like a horrible flying rat.
AMIRPOUR: More often than not, every set piece, every location and every setting for the film was extreme. We had to dump waste and put all of this crazy garbage in it, and we had hundreds of extras and fireworks. Everything was really amplified.
Each time you move around the landscape, it visually looks so different, and one of the scariest aspects of it, for me, was that you never knew when somebody was going to show up, or what they were going to want or do.
AMIRPOUR: I love that! I so love hearing that. It’s cool that you couldn’t anticipate that.
Do you feel like there were other people, groups and communities, all around the outskirts of what we actually get to see, inside of the wall?
AMIRPOUR: Yeah, imagine that reality. I actually think it would be so cool to have a VR for The Bad Batch, where you put it on and the first thing you do is go through the gate. And then, there you are and, suddenly, you see a golf cart and wonder whether you could outrun it, or maybe you come across a hermit. It would be so interesting to see what else is there.
WATERHOUSE: There are some extra scenes going on the DVD, like what you’re talking about, where you see all of the tourists getting on the bus.
AMIRPOUR: There will be some extra treats on the bonus features. One of the interesting things about being stripped down to bare bones survival is watching what human beings do next. What would you do? I’m always so into that kind of storytelling.
The story leads off on a bit of a hopeful note, in the sense that you feel like maybe Arlen has finally found a place where she can be accepted. Was that something that you intentionally wanted to do?
AMIRPOUR: I think that however you are is going to be reflected in how you feel at the end of the film. I have talked to people that feel so overwhelmed by the constant hostility and how hard it is that it doesn’t feel hopeful. You must be an optimistic person. But it’s also like, fuck, after going through that much, it is nice just to have a barbecue.
Suki, what did you do to cleanse yourself of this shoot?
WATERHOUSE: I still am cleansing myself. No. I don’t know. I probably went mental.
AMIRPOUR: She went to Burning Man. She texted me and was like, “Oh, my god, I thought about you and the film.” I was actually glad she hadn’t been before because the movie actually became the first of that kind of thing she saw.
WATERHOUSE: I went three months after the shoot, and I could just imagine her going around on her bicycle by herself.
Ana, do you know what you are going to do next? Do you have a film you’d like to get into production, or a type of film you’d like to explore next?
AMIRPOUR: I do. I’ve written my third movie, but I don’t like talking about it before. It’s like when you have a crush on someone and you want to be cool and not scare them away.
Will it be something very different?
AMIRPOUR: I don’t think anything is ever gonna be like The Bad Batch again, so it’s safe to say that it’s gonna be different. I don’t think anything is ever gonna feel that hard, but in a good way. But I also feel a competitive machismo feeling of, well, now what am I gonna do? It won’t be people in coffee shops having conversations about colleges. I’m not gonna do that next! It’s gonna be something that gets me.
The Bad Batch is in theaters, On-Demand and on iTunes on June 23rd.
