Heather Graham is undeniably an accomplished actress with several incredible performances over the course of her career. However, her newest movie, Suitable Flesh, finds Graham delivering a performance that will blow viewers away. Recently, PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with the film’s director, Joe Lynch, and he praised Graham for coming into the role with a “fearless” approach.
In Suitable Flesh, Graham plays Elizabeth Derby, a psychiatrist who becomes obsessed with helping a young patient suffering from extreme personality disorder. She soon finds that her desperate need to save the teen leads her into dark occult danger that will lead to a horrific fate if she doesn’t find a way to escape. In regard to casting Graham in the lead role, Lynch made it clear that there was no need for auditioning. “We offered it to her,” Lynch said, explaining that they wanted to take full advantage of having the opportunity to work with someone who has a vast “body of work.”
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“What was exciting about it was that I knew that she was fearless in many cases, with many of the roles that she’s done,” Lynch went on to say, then reference one of Graham’s most acclaimed past roles. “Everyone refers to Boogie Nights, which is great, but they always talk about the beginning of Boogie Nights. They don’t talk about that scene in the limo, that shot on VHS [scene] where you can watch a person literally crumble mentally under the stress of everything that she’s been put through. Then it culminates into this one moment of violence and there’s a look that she gives that camera, and it haunted me forever. It still haunts me to this day.”
Lynch also pointed to Graham’s “fantastic” performance in the Gus Van Sant film Drugstore Cowboy as an example of why “there was no doubt that I could work with her.” Noting how her role in Suitable Flesh required Graham to essentially play several different parts, Lynch said, “When you hand an actor the opportunity to play not one character but make sometimes four characters, it’s like, that to me, that’s catnip.”
“At the same time, we needed to make sure that she understood that there had to be these dichotomies,” he continued. “There had to be these parameters between the two characters so that the audience was never one step behind until we made sure that they were one step behind and going, ‘Who’s who at this point?’ We needed them to go on that journey and allow them to go, ‘Oh, wait a second. Hold on. I know what she’s going through in someone else’s flesh.’”
Lynch went on to say, “It was actually a two-hour conversation, but 20 minutes in… she said, “Let’s do this. I really want to do this.” To be able to let an actor like that who’s been in so many things, but maybe not something like this before, I don’t think she’s ever done anything purely straight horror.” He then clarified, I say shouldn’t say ‘straight.’ This is so far beyond straight horror. If anything, it’s very queer horror.’ Pointing to the fact that even though she has done some horror work in the past — such as From Hell (2001), with Johnny Depp, and the lesser-seen horror film Blessed in 2004 — Lynch said Graham’s performance in Suitable Flesh “felt like it was something different for her, and she acknowledged that as well.”
He then shared an unscripted on-set moment that had him laughing, recalling, “There’s a moment in the film that was not scripted, a bunch of them, but the one in particular where I had this low angle and she’s sipping the brandy and everything, and she puts her feet up and she goes, ‘I feel like a new woman,’ and she wiggles her toes. I will never forget… I just burst into laughter.” He continued, “And you know what? Those are the moments that the actors feed on, also, because they know that something is working.”
Lynch added, “That was definitely one of the times where I knew that she was so ingrained, not just in her character, but she knew the entity’s character so well at that point, that she was able to embody the entity and show how much fun it could be in this situation where you get to live life in someone else’s body, in their house, in their sexuality. There’s something, there’s a perverse thrill that the entity gets in that, and Heather harnessed that and took it to town.”
Suitable Flesh was written by Dennis Paoli, as inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Paoli originally crafted the story with his late filmmaker Stuart Gordon, whom he collaborated with on the iconic films From Beyond and Re-Animator. In addition to Graham, the Suitable also stars Judah Lewis (The Babysitter), Bruce Davison (Ozark), Johnathon Schaech (Shudder’s , and Barbara Crampton (Jakob’s Wife, From Beyond, Re-Animator). Suitable Flesh will be available in theaters and everywhere you rent movies on Friday, Oct. 27.
