HELEN’S DEAD: An Interview With Actor Beth Dover!

Introduction

It’s a dinner party gone wrong – a thrilling story about a unique group of individuals, brought together by happenstance, trying to survive the night, leaving you wondering what could possibly happen next. Directed by K. Asher Levin and written by Amy Brown Carver, the film features an all-star cast, including Emile Hirsch, Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Tyrese Gibson, Dylan Gelula, Oliver Cooper, Brian Huskey, & Beth Dover.

Interview

Cinema Scholars’ own Glen Dower recently sat down with actor Beth Dover to discuss her new feature film, Helen’s Dead. They talked about the continued appeal of the murder/mystery genre, how Emile Hirsch is so great at playing a jerk, the physicality of music, and Beth’s lengthy background in comedy, among other topics.

(Edited for content and clarity)

Glen Dower:

Welcome to Cinema Scholars, Beth Dover, how are you, ma’am?

Beth Dover:

Hi. I am good. How are you?

Glen Dower:

I’m well. Before we get into discussing Helen’s Dead, I just want to ask your opinion on why as an audience, we still love the murder mystery/whodunnit genre. We’ve had the recent Kenneth Branagh Poirot trilogy, and people still really enjoy Clue after all these years. Why do you think we love a good murder mystery?

Beth Dover:

I love Clue. Well, I mean, who done it?! I mean, right? You love a good murder mystery and it’s a good ensemble. You see people working together with their personalities and there’s a franticness and all of that. So I think it’s the same reason why people, I mean, I’ll always watch a post-apocalyptic anything. I’ll never tire of it. So I think it’s similar. It’s like people just don’t tire of a murder mystery, right?

Glen Dower:

And this is a great one of course. Your film comes in at a cool one hour and twenty-five minutes, and it doesn’t let up. Let’s talk about Molly, your character, as she is the reason this party is happening. She’s the VIP.

Beth Dover:

Yeah. So Molly is, she’s like a magazine publisher. She’s sent to this dinner party in the middle of nowhere to do this expose on this social media influencer who has had a fall from Grace. And I don’t think Molly likes her very much. So, it’s at this dinner party that she sets up to make herself a social media influencer to make herself look good. And it’s basically what happens if a bunch of slightly unlikable people find a dead body. And then hijinks ensue.

Glen Dower:

Molly is there to be, we think manipulated, but we meet Molly on the way there and it’s subverted and we learn she is quite unpleasant and has her motives. You have some juicy lines in that conversation. I enjoyed that. When you’re on the phone with your wife, great use of the word moronic. So can we suggest she’s pretty much the villain of the piece? And was that interesting to you that you’re straight in there? It’s not, ‘Oh, it’s a twist at the end’. It was Molly all along going in and that Molly’s up to no good.

Beth Dover:

Right. Well, it seems like she’s going to be the villain of the piece and then things kind of take a turn. So I think everyone’s sort of the villain of the piece in a lot of ways and just watching these selfish people try to work together is always fun.

Glen Dower:

You talked about the ensemble. Let’s go through the cast. I’ll just go through the notes I made initially when I was first watching the movie. We have Emile Hirsch, of course as Adam.

Beth Dover:

The best. He’s so talented.

Glen Dower:

He is playing an asshole perfectly.

Beth Dover:

Yes, right. Such an asshole. I love how big his choices were in this movie. They were great. He was fun. Very fun.

Glen Dower:

And also the character of George played by Brian Husky. I had the note: playing a great Stanley Tucci, it seemed to me, which I thought was interesting.

Beth Dover:

I could see that! I love Brian. Brian and I have worked together on a bunch of stuff. We were working on ‘Children’s Hospital’ and ‘Medical Police’ and just a bunch of different stuff. So I’ve known him for a long time. And so it was great to get to do a movie with him and go to Santa Fe and hang out with your friend for a couple of weeks. It was awesome. But yeah, I could see that.

Glen Dower:

And just the ensemble piece also regarding the filming as well. We have the dinner party scene where there are six of you around the table. We are a movie fan site: can you explain what the process is? Of who’s on camera and you still have to react if you are not on camera. Can you explain what that process is like as an actor?

Beth Dover:

So it was fine. I mean they were shooting when we didn’t know they were shooting sometimes, so we got to improvise quite a bit and just keep going. So that was a lot of fun. And in general, in the movie, we got to improvise and sort of make it our own. So that was great. I know that a lot of times those dinner table scenes can get, you got to go here and here. So they take a while, but this one didn’t. We were working fast and indie filmmaking run and gun operation. So it was great. It was great to work with everyone. They were all skilled in improvisational stuff, so we were able to just keep the dinner party going. So it was fun to shoot.

Glen Dower:

Can you tell me what it was like working with the director K. Asher Levine?

Beth Dover:

Asher’s great. He had worked with my friend Malin before, so I knew that he was a great guy. And so he’s fun man. He’s kind of all over the place and exciting in a fun way, you know what I mean? He keeps the energy up with the cast. So it was great. It was great. And he was very collaborative with all of us. If we had things we wanted to add, and he was open to that. So it was cool.

Glen Dower:

Sure. And so did you audition for the piece or were you approached to take on the role by the director?

Beth Dover:

I was approached. Asher got in touch with my reps and we had a great conversation. I think he had seen a thing I did called Burning Love, which was like a sendup of The Bachelor, essentially. It’s sort of a parody. It’s fun, it’s on Hulu, you should check it out. So yeah, we had talked a little bit about that, so I think he was a fan of that. So I went down to Santa Fe and did the movie. It was great.

Glen Dower:

Great. And did you have anyone in mind when you approached Molly, perhaps Anna Wintour, maybe some influencers or Reality TV stars?

Beth Dover:

A little bit of an Anna Wintour or those people that are just sort of above you, above it all, and very judgmental. I used to temp, I was a temp in New York City, so I worked at Sotheby’s one time and there was this one woman who was just very condescending and the way that she spoke. I was terrified of her and I was 21. So its an amalgam of those types of people that I pulled her from.

Glen Dower:

That line reading you gave of ‘Your house is…white’. That just tickled me a lot. Just the way you delivered that and just the way, like you say, it was so condescending, but faking niceness.

Beth Dover:

Yeah, it’s nice. And it’s white! The house is white. I’m not giving you any type of insult here. It’s white.

Glen Dower:

Have you ever been to parties like that before? Because I’m guessing in the showbiz world, shall we say, you have to put on a front like that? Perhaps you’ve been to a party or a networking dinner?

Beth Dover:

I’ve certainly been to a dinner party where maybe not everyone was the most likable, but I got to say I’ve been pretty lucky working in comedy. I think a lot of times I’ve had so many good friends who are lovely and not jerks, but I’ve been to a couple. I’ve been to a couple. I love hosting a dinner party, but there is an element of stress and you’re not there in a way because you’re running around trying to make sure everything’s okay.

I hosted Thanksgiving this year and I go, you know what? I’m going to be present this year instead of worrying, and I’m just going to curate a vibe and we’re all going to have a nice time because if the stuffing doesn’t come out at the right temperature, who cares? It’s all about being together and having a good time. So I think that was good. Also, ordering stuff from Whole Foods and not having to make it also helps.

Glen Dower:

For sure. The roles you’ve done and the ones that jump out that our readers might know you from is Orange is the New Black of course. And also Bob’s Burgers. How does your approach to roles change?

Beth Dover:

Well, I had not done voiceover that much when I did Bob’s Burgers, so it was so fun to get to do and sort of learn how much, especially with Bob’s Burgers, you can improvise a little bit before I did one before COVID and one sort of post where we were just alone. But the one that I did before we were all in the same room and so we were able to kind of riff off each other and I didn’t even know that that was a thing that you could do in animation.

I thought everyone was sort of singularly in there, but with Bob’s burgers, they had us together and riffing and that was so much fun. And you’re in and out in no time. So it’s just a fun, creative job and you can be in your sweatpants. I mean, what better than that, right? So yeah, I mean it’s a different process, but it’s all acting and it’s all comedy and fun and all of that, so there’s a similarity in that way.

Glen Dower:

Back to the movie. What I enjoyed was the pacing and the fact there was no fat on it, if you like. We meet the characters, they are awful and they have a bit of backstory here and there, but we’re straight into the movie. And your introduction specifically was very The Shining I thought. You have the aerial driving shot and chapter introductions. I thought that was an interesting little motif like we’re on the road to doom here.

Beth Dover:

Yeah, I think that was a function of the editing because it was sort of written slightly differently and I think it came together better in sort of a non-linear way. So I think they sort of created it that way, which I do think works and moves it along and kind of shows motivations for things and all of that. So I think that that is probably why that happened. But yeah, it does seem like the Shining at the beginning there. Yeah, that was reshoots. We shot it in Santa Fe, but that particular drive was shot in Santa Clarita, so that was where we were.

Glen Dower:

Yes I was put on the edge a little bit, and then you have those scenes with Emile and his girlfriend, we know Helen’s going to die, but we want each one to be guilty for some reason. We don’t have anyone to root for.

Beth Dover:

I know, it’s so true. It’s like you’re rooting for no one and everyone you’re like, they could do it. They could have done it. Yeah, this person could have done it.

Glen Dower:

Did you enjoy the outcome as a member of the audience too? When you read the script were you surprised with the ending?

Beth Dover:

Well, it was surprising. And then I don’t want to give too much away, but yes, the end, you’re like, oh, and then off into the sunset. So yes, but I got to do a fun little scene there at the end, which I won’t give away, but if you watch it, fun scene there.

Glen Dower:

I know we are coming to the end of your time, so if you’d like to do an elevator pitch for the film, what would you say to someone who was thinking about going to see Helen’s Dead?

Beth Dover: