Interview: Director Adam Mason and Co-Stars Hayes MacArthur and Jessica McNamee Talk I’M JUST F*CKING WITH YOU

This week, I’m Just F*cking With You, the latest installment of Blumhouse TV’s Into the Dark series that exclusively airs on Hulu, arrived on the streaming platform. Directed by Adam Mason, the episode revolves around a square peg named Larry (Keir O'Donnell) who checks into a gaudy roadside motel on his way to a wedding, only to meet the facility’s unusual manager, Chester (Hayes MacArthur), who manages to push Larry’s buttons with a series of increasingly disturbing pranks that push Larry to the brink. And once Larry’s sister Rachel (Jessica McNamee) arrives to check in to the same hotel, she finds herself mixed up in Chester’s sinister shenanigans.

Daily Dead recently caught up briefly with Mason and both MacArthur and McNamee to chat about the approach to the darkly comedic elements of I’m Just F*cking With You, their characters, and how Mason paid tribute to his pal Johannes Roberts’ brilliant poolside scene from last year’s The Strangers: Prey at Night.

So, congratulations on this episode, guys. It's been really fun to watch all the Into the Dark episodes because they're all so different, and this was definitely right up my alley. Plus, I like the fact that one of my favorite scenes from last year was the pool scene from The Strangers: Prey at Night, and you guys really give that a run for its money with your pool scene here [laughs].

Adam Mason: I'll tell you a funny story about that. One of my closest friends is actually Johannes Roberts. He directed that movie, and he's my son's godfather, too. So when we were making this movie, I was like, "Right, you motherfu--er, I'm gonna totally rip off your thing." I was texting him the night we shot our pool scene, and he was laughing because I'd totally ripped off his movie. He did such a great job with that scene in The Strangers, though, so this was my tribute to him.

Can you talk about approaching the idea of this story and finding a way to balance these horrific elements versus the comedy? It's a fine line to walk and I think you guys pull it off really well here.

Adam Mason: For me, that was the key to the whole thing. As soon as I read the script and I was just laughing the whole way through—even when it gets really dark. So, when it came to casting, I just knew that the cast was going to be the most important thing. With Larry and Chester, I was desperately trying to cast in the comedy world, as opposed to casting from a list of people you would expect for horror movies—physically imposing guys who were six feet tall and look like they might chain people in their basement as well.

So, trying to find that balance was important, but to me, the whole movie plays as a comedy and I was trying to play a joke on the audience as much as Chester is playing jokes on Larry.

For you guys, coming into this, what was it about this script and this idea where you were like, "Oh, I really want to be a part of this?"

Jessica McNamee: I don't generally like these kind of films unless there is a comedic element. I can't sit through a really gory or scary film because I just don't enjoy it. But, I read the script and was laughing throughout the whole thing and I was like, “I cannot believe it, this is so fu--ed up.” One second, you're terrified, and the next minute, I was belly laughing. So that, for me, felt really fun.

Hayes MacArthur: Yeah, I had never played a serial killer before, nor would I have thought that I would have ever been given an opportunity to play one. But what I figured out from working with this group that we worked with, was that it was a lot of the same tricks and timing that comedy takes to get a scare. It's a setup and then managing the expectation or that character for what the audience is seeing, and then flipping it and turning it on its head. So, I made the connection for the first time that maybe a scare and a laugh are the same technical trick.

That was a great shift, because it allowed the bad guy that I was playing to actually have something that he wanted, so instead of trying to get back at the world or do something where you see bad guys in movies, it's something very external, where it’s almost like Chester's trying to help Larry become a better person. I also had this theory that everyone that Chester had ever met liked him and laughed at him, until he met Larry. And as soon as Larry blew him off, that's what made him become Chester’s pet project.

In regards to Chester, was it cool to play this character where it's about these unexpected moments and keeping the audience off balance? And because there is this air of mystery to him, did you dive into who this guy would have been before we meet Chester in this story?

Hayes MacArthur: Adam and I spoke a lot about that as we were filming, where he was coming from, how many people he had killed before the story started. We even did a montage of different photographs of people that he killed to figure out all of that backstory stuff. But I think the real trick to what we were thinking was how much can Chester torture Larry before Larry would just leave? So, part of the game was how do you keep the cat in the box for as long as you can before you have to forcefully kidnap them?