NEED TO KNOW
Billie Lourd is tapping into her unhinged side.
The actress stars in the upcoming Alex Winter-directed dark comedy Adulthood, led by Josh Gad and Kaya Scodelario as siblings Noah and Megan, who are suddenly thrown into chaos after they find a dead body in the basement of their childhood home.
Lourd, 33, plays Grace, a caregiver to the siblings’ mother who isn’t their biggest fan. Also along for the ride is Anthony Carrigan as the enigmatic Bodie, dragged into the fray as the mystery unravels into madness.
“I love doing comedy, but there’s so much comedy in horror, and that’s what was so fun about this character,” Lourd tells PEOPLE. “It was a little wink of she’s this psycho, and so you can laugh at her.”
“But I was really committed to this. I really wanted them to give me $10,000 and I really wanted to ruin their lives,” she adds of the characters played by Gad, 44, and Scodelario, 33. “I was thinking about the ways to play that darkness to make it funny. And I think Anthony was doing the same.”
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Carrigan, 42, says he was “stoked to be asked by” Winter, 60, to take part in Adulthood, as they’d worked together before on Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020), so signing on was “a no-brainer.”
“He came to me with this script that was so out there and hilarious and offbeat and weird that I was just like, ‘I don’t care in what capacity, I just need to be a part of this,’ ” he tells PEOPLE of the Michael M.B. Galvin-penned screenplay.
Adds the Barry alum, “And the fact that it was Bodie, this character, who is so unique, and I feel like everyone has some form of a Bodie back home.”
For Lourd, working with Winter — who also had a role in the film — was a dream, as the Scream Queens alum is “obsessed” with the actor-filmmaker and considers him “one of the coolest, smartest, most multifaceted dudes of all time.”
“He’s doing Waiting for Godot [on Broadway] and going to TIFF to premiere this movie. What more could you ask for in a human? What a legend. Obsessed with him. I want to grow up to be him,” she raves.
Adds Carrigan, “He has a genius-level intellect, genius-level perspective and philosophy on things.”
“You’d feel dumb if it weren’t for the fact that he’s so inclusive that he actually makes you feel smart,” he explains. “He’s not one of those smart people who’s looking down on you.”
And the story itself, Lourd says, “was just straight up through and through dark” — which was a big part of what drew her in, as “there’s no real happy ending.”
“I love that because life doesn’t really have a happy ending, unfortunately. Well, for some I guess it does, but not for everybody,” she tells PEOPLE. “I love that about this, and I love that I got to be the villain. I’ve never really gotten to be the villain in this capacity.”
Adulthood, which premiered Thursday, Sept. 11, at the Toronto International Film Festival, is in theaters Friday, Sept. 19.
