Melissa Barrera On ‘Your Monster’ Role & “Not Making Yourself Small”

SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from Your Monster.

In Melissa Barrera‘s new fairytail-esque musical horror comedy, she plays a beauty who embraces her inner beast.

Ahead of Your Monster‘s Friday premiere in theaters, the actress told Deadline she was inspired to take the role in writer/director Caroline Lindy‘s feature debut because the character ultimately learns to “not make [herself] small in the eyes of other people” through her romance with the titular beast.

She knows that struggle all too well, having been fired from her starring role as Sam Carpenter in the Scream franchise last year after expressing support for Palestine in the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Barrera remains “very grateful and honored” to be still considered a scream queen by fans of the franchise, as well as her roles in Bed Rest (2022) and this year’s Radio Silence horror comedy Abigail. “I think the horror fandom is one of the most generous fandoms, and they’re so supportive and so loyal,” she said. “I hope that I continue to give them more movies that they love.”

Your Monster is sure to fit that bill, starring Barrera as soft-spoken actor Laura Franco, who is dumped by her longtime boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) while recovering from surgery and retreats to her childhood home. With her future looking bleak, insult is added to injury when Laura discovers her ex is staging a musical that she helped him develop. But out of these gut-wrenching life changes emerges a Monster (Tommy Dewey) with whom she finds a connection, encouraging Laura to follow her dreams, open her heart and fall in love with her inner rage.

Describing the film as a “comfy, cozy and campy fairytale” based on a “true-ish” story, Lindy was inspired to make the film not only by her love of Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner’s era of romantic comedies, but by her own life-changing experience with cancer.

“I kept on thinking about this time where I was struggling so much,” she explained. “It’s kind of a moment in my life where I really developed this relationship with my anger for the first time, and I kind of fell in love with the side of myself that had been dormant for most of my life. It was kind of like I fell in love with my monster. And I was like, ‘That’s a cute idea for a rom-com.’”

With a $20,000 grant from Women In Film, Lindy made her short film Your Monster in 2019 with Dewey after working together on episodes of Criminal Minds and his Hulu series Casual back when she was acting. “He has this very special quality that reminds me of the classic male lead in a rom-com like Tom Hanks, he has a little Billy Crystal edge. He’s just so comfy, cozy, and he’s such a brilliant person and actor and just kind, like good to his core,” she raved.

Dewey jumped at the opportunity, telling her “no one’s ever asked me to play a monster before.” After starring opposite Kimiko Glenn in the short, he then joined Lindy in adapting the film into a feature.

Lindy lucked out when casting Barrera, an NYU Tisch alum with standout performances in In the Heights (2021) and Carmen (2022). “It’s hard to find actresses who are at her status, who sing and dance and who are as lovable as her and who want to do small indie films,” she explained.

During her first day on the Toronto set of her new untitled James Wan-Simu Liu thriller series at Peacock, which she described as “very exciting,” Deadline caught up with Barrera about embracing her inner monster for Your Monster.

DEADLINE: It‘s such a fun take on both the horror and romantic-comedy and musical genres. What about the role and the project attracted you?

MELISSA BARRERA: All of the above. I am a rom-com lover, a horror enthusiast and a musical theater nerd. And I just felt like someone went into my brain and made the perfect role for me when I read the script and I was like, “Did I dream this up? Is this even happening?” It was so perfect. I was like, this is exactly what I want to do. 

DEADLINE: What was it like working on a more indie movie as opposed to a lot of the big budget stuff you’ve been doing lately? 

BARRERA: It was very refreshing. It feels like a collaborative effort when you’re doing an indie film like that, it’s kind of like hustling and very guerrilla style. You kind of have to go with the flow and you don’t get a lot of time to do the scenes. So, it feels more raw and organic in a way, and in this specific case — because I’ve done indies before — but in this case, it really felt like I was making a movie with my friends. It reminded me when I was at NYU and I would work with the kids in the film department on their shorts for their classes, and it was kind of like going back to that. Everyone’s just very invested and has programmed themselves that we’re not gonna sleep for the next month because it’s gonna be intense, but we’re in this together because we care about the story, and you gotta make it work. There’s something magic that happens when you’re doing a movie like that. 

DEADLINE: Tell me a little bit about working with Tommy, you two had such a great dynamic on screen.  But what was it like building that dynamic and maintaining it through all those layers of prosthetics as well? 

BARRERA: I mean, obviously we had an Oscar winner [David LeRoy Anderson] doing the prosthetics, right? So every expression, every micro expression of Tommy’s was still seen on his face, even with the mask on. It was pretty incredible. There was so much movement, and Tommy is such an incredible actor and he’s hilarious and he’s the best improviser. It was so easy to work with him. It felt like we’d known each other from before. We just kind of fell right into the dynamic and we found it on the first day because we’ve done a little bit of working through some scenes before. But it’s different, when it’s Tommy on his face, and Tommy the monster. So once we got on set on that first day and we shot the first scene where we meet — that was I think the first thing that we shot together — and it was finding the tone, finding the levels of our characters. And once we found that it, we were like, ‘OK, I’m in this adventure and we’re gonna have fun,’ and that’s what we did. 

DEADLINE: Well, it was definitely fun watching you two as well. And I loved the musical aspect, the singing and the dancing. You mentioned that you’re a musical theater nerd. What was your process for preparing for that part of the film?

BARRERA: I mean, I’ve always tried to keep my vocals in good condition, even when I’m not working on something that’s specifically musical. I try to do my vocal warm-ups and just keep my voice in shape. And I was very excited about getting the chance to sing original music. That was a first for me, and for the composers, the Lazour brothers [Daniel and Patrick], who are so incredibly talented and what they did with this, with the musical in the movie and this specific song that the movie ends with, was such a feat because it’s like a song that is in the story of this musical, that’s kind of ridiculous because it’s a musical that’s meant to be like you roll your eyes at this guy that’s thinking he’s solving the world and he’s a feminist and like writing a story about the issues that women deal with in society, and it’s so cringe. But at the same time, he’s talented, and this is the 11-o’clock number, but it also has to kind of fit Laura and her journey in the movie. So it was amazing to get to see the process of them finding the lyrics and the song, and then I was mortified because the the range for the song is insane. And I was like, “You guys, what are you doing to me? What do you think? I can sing this?” And they were like, “We know you can sing this.” So then I had to work on being able to sing that song, which is a marathon of a song. But it was just fun to get to use that love of mine that I have for musical theater and insert it into Laura and her geekiness, and also her talent, and showcase that at the end. It was super fun. 

DEADLINE: The whole movie is set in the world of Broadway. Having gone to NYU yourself, are there any Broadway aspirations in your heart? Any show that you would particularly love to star in? 

BARRERA: Oh, yes. Oh my gosh, that’s my dream. That’s what I want. I’ve been trying to get on Broadway. They won’t have me. And I mean, I grew up obsessed with Rent, and Spring Awakening, and Wicked, and Phantom of the Opera, and Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, Les Mis. I would be happy doing anything. But I think for my Broadway debut, I would love to originate a role. I would love to be on the original Broadway cast soundtrack for a show. That would be my dream, totally. 

DEADLINE: I would love to see that as well, but I think I’d also love to see you in the feature adaptation of Spring Awakening whenever that happens. 

BARRERA: Oh my God, I’m too old. I’m so old now. Literally, that was my dream. You have no idea. When I was in middle school and high school, I was waiting [for] when they would announce it. I think it’s been rumored to be happening for a really long time. And so my dream for the longest time was to be in the musical movie for Spring Awakening. I actually played Wendla in the Mexican production of Spring Awakening, and Duncan Sheik came to see us and he said that our version of ‘Purple Summer’ was the most beautiful that he’d ever heard. It was amazing. But I’ve done that, and so I’m good now that I’m 34. I’m too old to play this naive girl that doesn’t know what sex is. 

DEADLINE: Back to the movie, I also loved Meghann Fahy‘s character, and I honestly thought the monster was going to kill her at some point. So it was nice to see your two characters come together and it not be women pitted against each other. 

BARRERA: That’s exactly why Caroline wrote it that way, because it’s so easy to make the woman the villain in a situation like that. And she didn’t want that. She was like, “I don’t want that narrative.” I think it’s important, and I think it is beautiful when women show up for each other. And we had a lot of conversations about what that scene between our characters at the end would be and what needed to be said because everybody knows a woman like Jackie, like Meghann’s character, that seems like her life is perfect and she’s perfect, and you’re like, “It’s so unfair.” But then they also have their issues and they also deal with some bull— from the hands of men. So, it was important for Caroline to humanize her in the end and to have that very earnest conversation between them and have them team up, because we wanted people in the theater to be like, “F— you!” at the end.

DEADLINE: I also loved the movie’s message of embracing your inner monster and finding someone who validates that and doesn’t judge that. Did that speak to you with the role? 

BARRERA: Definitely. I think it’s hard, nowadays especially in the age of social media, to learn to love even the messy and the quote unquote “ugly” parts of you. So, it’s like our MO to just wanna show perfection or how great our lives are and how flawless we are. But that’s not real and that’s not what being human is about. And I think the story of this movie is that the Monster is actually the guide, it’s actually the person that’s … gonna teach you to love all of yourself and to use your voice and to not make yourself small in the eyes of other people. And actually, there’s other monsters in the movie. The Monster in our movie is not the monster. 

DEADLINE: And I have to say, I love all of your horror roles. How does it feel becoming a scream queen for this generation? 

BARRERA: It’s crazy to even be told that because I think there’s so many amazing actresses that have come before that I still think, “Those are scream queens.” I’m just getting started. I’m just little old me, but I do love the genre and I have so much fun being a final girl and giving people bloody fun movies that they can escape into. And I think the horror fandom is one of the most generous fandoms and they’re so supportive and so loyal. I know that the fans that I’ve made in my horror movie years, in Scream and Abigail and Bed Rest and the movies that I’ve done, are gonna show up and watch Your Monster, because they’re supportive like that. And so I feel very, very grateful and honored that people see me as that, and I hope that I continue to give them more movies that they love.