Alien Star Veronica Cartwright on New Scary Thriller Movie The Ruse | Interview

Photo Credit: Mena Films

ComingSoon Senior Editor Brandon Schreur spoke to Alien’s Veronica Cartwright about starring in the new scary thriller movie, The Ruse. Cartwright discussed what made her want to get involved with the project, playing a character with dementia who also needs to come off as suspicious, and more.

“When the in-home caregiver assigned to an elderly patient mysteriously vanishes, Dale (Madelyn Dundon) is quickly sent as the replacement nurse,” the official synopsis reads. “She rushes to the remote seaside home, only to find herself in the middle of chaos—forced to deal with an unruly patient, mysterious neighbors, and terrifying supernatural occurrences that seem to plague the home. Is the house haunted? Or is something even more malevolent to blame? As the walls close in, unsure whom she can trust, Dale fears for her life and that of her patient. Starring the legendary Veronica Cartwright (Alien, The Witches of Eastwick), you won’t want to miss this scary thriller that is guaranteed to keep you guessing till the very end!”

The Ruse will be released in theaters nationwide on Friday, May 16, 2025.

Brandon Schreur: To start, I want to ask how it was that you got involved with this project. When you were getting the script for the first time for The Ruse, what stood out to you the most and made you want to be part of this?

Veronica Cartwright: [Director Stevan Mena] got in touch with my managers and my agent, and they sent the script over. I thought it was really a good script, and that it could be a really good thriller. They don’t make movies so much like that anymore. I liked the challenge of my character, who spends most of the time with a cannula up her nose [laughs]. But Olivia was a good character to play, she was really interesting. She’s a little OCD and a little possessive about things. She has odd twitches, but also total moments of lucidity. It was fun to play.

I’m sure. One of the things I really enjoyed about this movie is that up until — not even the third act, kind of just the last 10 or 15 minutes — you’re never entirely sure what is going on. Maybe the place is haunted. Maybe there’s a killer on the loose. Maybe your character has been lying the whole time. There are so many twists and turns. When you did read through the whole script for the first time, what was your reaction? Could you predict at all where this was going?

No, but I thought it was very clever. The whole thing with the wig is still shocking to me; I had totally forgotten about that [laughs]. All of the sudden I went, ‘Oh, yeah, I forgot about that, that’s really good, that was a really good twist.’

[Madelyn Dundon] was wonderful to work with. She was great, she’s a lovely young lady. It’s nice having people you can work off. You know, it was a very small budget. That house didn’t need that much added stuff. Our set decorator ran around, he was taking things from one room and sticking them in another. The house was very eclectic.

Sure. I was going to ask you about that, too, because, like you said earlier, the house does feel like a character in this movie. The way it’s filmed — it looks kind of small. What was it like filming in this location?

[Laughs] It wasn’t small. It was big, actually. It was a very big house. The way with all the doors being — there’s one door, and all of the sudden there’s another level to it. Yeah, I think Cory [Geryak] did a really good job with the cinematography and getting that creepy feeling with things like, ‘Didn’t I just go down there or not?’ It was a cool house, I must say. Three stories!

Oh, interesting. You also mentioned earlier that The Ruse feels like a throwback movie, in some ways. A lot of the bigger movies don’t do this — they play it one way or another. This has the freedom to be its own thing and go in a whole bunch of different directions. I mean, there’s some thrills, some scares, and some drama, then the ending reveal kind of reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock just because it’s like, ‘And here’s why all the people did what they did.’ Was that something that stood out to you about the project, too? Getting to be part of something that’s so different than so many other movies that are coming out right now?

Yeah, it is sort of one of those. The puzzle master is the detective, at the end, who is putting everything together. I thought that was a very interesting way to go. You don’t usually have those things, you’re supposed to figure things out for yourself. And most of the stuff you can figure out, but all of a sudden, there are several twists and turns. I’d forgotten about them when I saw it.

I loved how that detective character came into it, too. It didn’t feel obvious or like now the movie needs to tell the audience everything that happened; it felt so natural where, ‘Here he comes, he’s figuring it out, let’s watch him walk through it.’ I thought that was great.

Oh, good. I hope other people think that, too, when they see it.

You mentioned Madelyn, who plays Dale in the movie. I wanted to ask you about her, too, because I loved the back-and-forth the two of you had going. What was it like having her as a screen partner?

She’s just a lovely, lovely young lady. We had an Airbnb that we were in. The producer, [John Caglione Jr.], Cory Geryak, who was our cinematographer, myself, and Ginny, who came with [Caglione Jr.], and she was sort of our den mother who cooked us food, and things like that, and made sure we were all okay. We all lived in the upstairs part. There were all these bedrooms and, oh my god, a beautiful lake outside. It was a stunning piece of property. There was a big, huge Viking stove. I mean, with a barbecue thing in it. It was fantastic.

Then, Madelyn had her own apartment down below. So, it was great. We would eat meals together, but we all had our separate places and different wings of this Airbnb. She was lovely. She was so sweet to me. She respected me and asked me — we just worked really well off of each other, I think. I think she’s terrific in it, I think she’s really good. I want to see good things happen to her.

Totally and again, I think the two of you just play off each other so well, it made it all the more fun to watch. As we mentioned with The Ruse, you’re never really sure what’s going on, up until the end. There’s one point where the finger does get pointed at your character; maybe Olivia has been the one who was lying, and she could have killed the nurse at the very beginning. I don’t want to spoil it or anything for anyone who watches the movie, but I’m curious if, when you come to that aspect, does that change your whole performance in this movie? When you’re filming the scenes that happen earlier, are you thinking, ‘I have to act kind of suspicious, but maybe not too suspicious?’

No, I mean, I just played her. We did shoot one scene where I actually got up, left, and I didn’t have my cannula in, and then I come back, get into bed, and put the cannula back in. But that wasn’t in the movie, I was sort of disappointed because that really made it like, ‘Oh, Olivia could really have done it.’ I guess Stevan decided not to put that in, but I kind of liked that aspect. 

But, no — [my character] has dementia, so sometimes she was totally with it, and other times she was off on her own thing. Memories of her husband and stuff like that, not quite picking up on things. 

Other times, she was totally lucid, talking about the music and stuff like that. I didn’t know anything about that, but that was Stevan’s daughter who wrote that whole section, because I think she’s a conductor or something. So she wrote that whole section about listening to this part and the fifth of this — I’m going, ‘Oh, okay.’ It worked out really well, I thought, it made it so intriguing because I didn’t know any of that, but it was really cool. I wanted to make sure I did it justice. But it was, it was very cool with the music, there.

No, I had the same thought, because I don’t know much about that kind of music, either, but when you start talking about it, I was like, ‘She really sounds like she knows exactly what she’s talking about, I’m sure they probably did the research for this scene.’

Thank you, Stevan, for having your daughter write that [laughs].

I wanted to ask about working with Stevan, too, because, before this, I wasn’t too familiar with his work. Then I started going back and looking at some stuff today; he seems really impressive. He’s got some good titles and really seems to know what he’s doing as a director. You’ve been in the industry for so long and done so many different kinds of projects, what’s it like working with someone who’s kind of up-and-coming like this?

Well, he knew exactly what he wanted. He was in the room at all times. With different things, he would say — especially the stuff with items on the side of the table and stuff like that — that [Olivia] is very OCD and has to have things in certain places. The mug and things like that. Those were all things that Stevan came up with, and he was very, very particular about it. He’d run in and set up everything exactly the way it had been. You do scenes, and sometimes he’d just be so excited about the way it was turning out. He really gave you free rein to do a lot of stuff that you felt your character would do, so that was nice. It’s nice to have.

That makes total sense. Veronica, you’ve been in so many horror and thriller projects over the years. All the way back to The Birds, along with Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Alien. Is this a genre you find yourself specifically drawn to, wanting to be part of these things, or does it just kind of happen?

[Laughs] It’s all accidental. I don’t know what happens. But the scripts get sent, and if the part is really cool and really different or something I haven’t done, then I’m happy to do it. I certainly don’t go, ‘I have to be in this horror movie.’ But I even did The Town That Dreaded Sundown, and that was sort of a horror movie, too. So, I don’t know. They keep picking me. I don’t know why.

I think it’s because you’re really good at it. The Ruse is being released in theaters this May, which I thought was really exciting because low-budget, indie movies typically go straight to VOD, and then it’s harder for people to find and discover them. The fact that this is going to be playing in actual theaters, I thought was really cool.

In general release! Really, I’m proud of that. As you said, independent movies, they’re limited runs. They get little, tiny theaters, and stuff like that, or special things. But, yeah, to have it nationwide is really cool.

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Thanks to Veronica Cartwright for discussing The Ruse.

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