By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The old and the new combine and collide in M3GAN 2.0, and two of the key players in writer/director Gerard Johnstone’s sequel portray her original creator and a new adversary. RUE MORGUE spoke to the actresses behind both.
Allison Williams returns as Gemma, who first developed M3GAN and then had to put an end to her killing spree in the 2022 original. After playing Gemma’s dawning realization that her creation had become a threat, Williams had new emotional territory to explore in the sequel. “She’s very much informed by what happened in the first movie,” Williams explains. “Her opinions, her emotional state, her approach to life, have all been impacted by those events. The Gemma in the second movie is very different from the Gemma in the first.”
M3GAN 2.0’s Gemma has become an advocate for oversight and regulation of artificial intelligence technology, and that resolve is put to an extreme test by the emergence of AMELIA, which stands for Autonomous Military Logistics and Infiltration Android. Developed from the same AI as M3GAN, she rebels against her creators and humanity in general, and is played by Ivanna Sakhno, the Ukranian actress whose previous credits include PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING and AHSOKA. As opposed to Williams, who had also previously explored the scary side in GET OUT and THE PERFECTION, Sakhno was a genre neophyte when the M3GAN 2.0 team came calling.
“I missed the opportunity to become part of the cultural phenomenon that M3GAN was when it came out, simply for the reason that I’m very sensitive toward horror films. But then I got the chance to watch it–though I was aware of its place in the world without even seeing it–when I first read the M3GAN 2.0 script, and I immediately knew I wanted to be part of that world. It was a no-brainer.”
AMELIA may be the villain of this piece, but Sakhno found a sympathy for her artificial-human character. “I was surprised by how much the script moved me. It was really grounded, AMELIA just took my heart. I wanted to protect her when I read the script, and in some ways could resonate with her as a human, and as a woman as well. I just wanted to explore her, and have the chance to create her with Gerard. I believe the light and the dark in a person’s psyche are all part of the same spectrum, and when you discover somebody who has had a pretty intense upbringing, be it AI or an actual human, there is a certain compassion you feel toward them. There’s definitely a reason behind the ‘evil,’ psychopathic aspect of AMELIA that made me want to discover her and protect her.”
When it came to the physical performance of AMELIA, Sakhno tooks cues from a range of influences, from “new-age Japanese robots” to Maria in the silent classic METROPOLIS, “though AMELIA still needed to be a little more human than those,” she notes. “I also listened to Siri and ChatGPT, to how they speak, to take a little bit of inspiration from them.”
Unlike M3GAN, the role of AMELIA didn’t require much in the way of special effects augmentation or replacement. “There was an animatronic copy of me,” Sakhno notes, “but to be honest, there are only a few moments in the film where you see it. It’s basically the one sequence where AMELIA is in this black void in front of the mirror, putting makeup on. You can see me, and also in some of the close-ups, it’s the animatronic. And maybe some shots from afar, when she’s sitting on the throne. Everything else is me on screen.”
When it came to the titular doll, Williams says, “I don’t know exactly what the ratio is, but it’s a combination of practical animatronics, CGI and a human performer in the person of Amie Donald, the extraordinary performer from New Zealand.” And even with the experience she had with Adrien Morot and Kathy Tse’s on-set creations on the original, she says that performing opposite them on the sequel “was always surprising. The innovations, the way M3GAN has evolved, the achievement of her has progressed between the two movies. I was routinely blown away, every time I was on set with her, by what we were able to achieve–what Morot and his team were able to achieve.”
Sakhno echoes her co-stars praise of young performer Donald, encoring from the first M3GAN. “Working with her was such a fluid experience. The way she welcomed me on set, making me feel like part of the family, and working with her was quite moving, because I was seeing a young actress who is so dedicated to her craft, and hoping to deliver in the way that she does. Working with her made me compassionate toward M3GAN, as an audience and also as AMELIA; there are certain aspects of her that are trying to understand M3GAN, and although she sees M3GAN as a threat, there’s also some kinship that AMELIA sees in her–wanting to have a sense of community, and of being witnessed by another being.”
Although the basis of AMELIA’s tech is the purloined programming from M3GAN, Sakhno says she didn’t specifically aim to emulate M3GAN’s movements. “I would say that the only commonality they have is that they’re both AI. Their physical aspects are quite different. AMELIA’s body language is much more human-like; she’s supposed to become part of society, in a sense. Yet when you look at her, there’s something off about her movements, in a way that is quite different from M3GAN. We did work with the same team from the first movie, though; Luke Hawker, our movement coach, was a true godsend, and is so thoughtful about creating the characters’ physicality.”
Sakhno is no stranger to stuntwork from her past movie and series work, and says that AMELIA’s fighting style was grounded in both krav maga and tai chi. The latter echoes what Johnstone told us about the Hong Kong cinema influence on M3GAN 2.0’s action, and Sakhno elaborates, “There was a plethora, a whole mélange of different fighting styles that they combined and played around with. They were able to create a fight sequence and film it and see if that worked, or if they wanted to extend it a little bit more.”
She adds that the most challenging part of the M3GAN 2.0 shoot was “the later sequence when AMELIA’s in the chrome suit. It was a physically demanding chunk of the filming, and the suit itself was not easy to be in. It was very restricting, and certain movements were limited. When I had to extend my arm, let me just say that the body felt threatened in that costume [laughs], as much as the team tried to make it as comfortable as possible. They kept changing the suit, forming it into something that would allow more oxygen into the body, and more movement.
“Jeriana San Juan [the film’s costume designer] is so phenomenal, and such a storyteller,” she continues. “The amount of work that went into those outfits was just immense. I would say my favorite has to be the ‘bombshell’ look [seen in her scene with Jemaine Clement’s Alton Appleton], simply because I felt like I was in drag. And I really was; there was this massive, beautiful wig, and the dress was made from little metal pieces, and the entire weight of it went onto my neck, which you can imagine was sort of challenging [laughs], but I just felt fabulous in it.
“That scene was really fun to play, and I so enjoyed working with Gerard and Jemaine on it. It was some of the best times with an actor on the M3GAN 2.0 set; Jemaine is so funny and so light in the way he works. He’s a legend, he really is.”
Sakhno also has high praise for Williams, who served as a producer on M3GAN 2.0 in addition to starring. “I’ve respected her for so long. I remember watching her work before knowing her, and being completely taken by her. I just think she’s a very honest actor, and I have to really give it to her: It was her idea to have a real actress play AMELIA. So I have the experience of knowing and creating AMELIA because of Allison. She doesn’t take the job of producer lightly, and she was on top of things every single day. She was on set when she didn’t have to be as an actor, and would sit and watch every take, every scene, and give us feedback. She led us with such love and care, and that is something actors don’t take for granted.”
For her part, Williams is effusive about young actress Violet McGraw, who plays Gemma’s niece Cady in both movies. She recalls with a smile that their relationship didn’t get off on the right foot, however. “On the first movie, she looked me dead in the eyes before we started shooting and said, ‘LORD OF THE RINGS or HARRY POTTER?’ I said what felt true, which was HARRY POTTER; I’m a Millennial kid, and HARRY POTTER was very meaningful for me growing up. And she was like, ‘You’re dead to me,’ and she was not kidding; she really held it against me for a long time. It felt especially sacrilegious given that we were in New Zealand, the land of LORD OF THE RINGS; I felt terrible.
“This time around, she came running up to me and said, ‘I’m obsessed with HARRY POTTER now,’ and I was like, ‘OK, good,’ ” Williams laughs. “We’re both Taylor Swift fans, and we sang on set every single day–like, the full 10-minute version of ‘All Too Well.’ We drove the crew crazy. I feel like she’s my little sister, and she’s just extraordinary–so professional, so prepared, so talented, humble, generous. The McGraws really know what they’re doing in the parenting department, and when you’re around the girls [Violet’s sister Madeleine has starred in THE BLACK PHONE, among others], they exude this kindness and goodness and humility that is remarkable given how accomplished they both are already, at this young age.”
With Cady now a rebellious teenager, M3GAN 2.0 gave Williams and McGraw a chance to take their onscreen relationship in new directions. The sequel also increases the scope of the story and ups the ante on the action. One question remains, though: Will any moment in the new film become as virally iconic as M3GAN’s dance in its predecessor? Williams states that trying to duplicate that unexpected sensation wasn’t part of the ambition here.
“Anytime you try to reverse-engineer that, it always ends up being a disaster,” she says. “The good thing about Gerard, on the first movie and the second one, is that he understands that if something doesn’t come organically out of the source material, and what feels like it has to be included in the movie, it’s going to feel clunky, and the audience is going to feel like it rings false. So he never works from potential virality out; his instincts just happen to be uncannily good at knowing when something will hit the public consciousness. Story and character always come first, and if there’s a moment that pops in the public consciousness, then that’s a bonus.”
