Megan Suri on It Lives Inside

Megan Suri was permitted to conduct this interview amid the actors’ strike by Neon’s interim settlement with SAG-AFTRA.

Megan Suri is a giant horror fan, so when the prospect to star within the new movie “It Lives Inside” got here, it felt preordained. “I grew up watching [the genre],” she tells POPSUGAR. She immediately related with films like “The Collector” and “Paranormal Activity.”

“I’m just a bit little bit of an adrenaline junkie. And I really like feeling concern,” she admits. Horror films, Suri says, can elicit feelings from an viewers like no different: “That’s what’s thrilling to me, particularly while you go and watch it in a theater and also you’re surrounded by that common vitality.”

In “It Lives Inside,” Suri performs Sam, an Indian American excessive schooler who’s operating from her household’s tradition — and her former greatest good friend Tamira (Mohana Krishnan). But Tamira is being affected by a demonic spirit referred to as a Pishach, and Sam should embrace her tradition to assist save her good friend.

“All the horror films that I grew up watching, I by no means actually noticed somebody that appears like me,” Suri says. “So when this got here my manner, it actually felt like I’d manifested it in a loopy cosmic manner.” After she met author and director Bishal Dutta, “It was simply so obvious that I wanted to so badly be part of this challenge in any form or type,” she says.

But when it got here to really filming the film, one factor gave Suri extra stress than anything: screaming. “How do you observe that?” she says. “You cannot observe that at house with out individuals calling the cops on you, so the primary time I ever screamed was on set, and it was so weak. But so cathartic.” On days the place she knew she was filming screaming scenes, she was all the time extra burdened. She remembers considering: Oh my god, I’ve to scream as we speak. I’ve to scream as we speak, and it must be a blood-curdling scream. I do not know if I can try this.

Suri admits she had “no method” for screaming, and by the point she was carried out with takes, she would “virtually go out.” She was much less burdened towards the tip of the film although, when she did a few of her personal stunts and acquired to be in additional of an “motion ingredient.”

The film locations a selected highlight on Indian meals, and Suri admits she associated to Sam as a result of when she was youthful, she was embarrassed by Indian meals. “You by no means needed to take your Indian meals to high school since you did not wish to odor, or it appears to be like bizarre,” she says. “But I bear in mind having a second once I grew to become an grownup and studying about individuals loving Indian meals and the way a lot pleasure that introduced me as somebody that was normally embarrassed to take that to high school, although that is all I ate once I got here house.” Suri is glad not solely to convey Indian American illustration to horror, but additionally to see how the movie has resonated with audiences of all types. (She acquired to look at the film with a giant crowd when it premiered at SXSW in March.)

Of course, Suri is just allowed to speak to POPSUGAR as a result of Neon, which is distributing the movie, has an interim settlement with SAG-AFTRA, which is currently on strike. Suri says that the strike has pushed house the significance of “solidarity” for her. “I’ve been doing this for over a decade,” she says. “I’ve not been a sequence common, I’ve not carried out the roles which might be paying substantial quantities up till now, so I really feel like I perceive what it means to be within the floor and to be combating for roles that in any other case would not be there.”

“During this time, it is extra vital than ever to battle for the person who is not on the A-list or and getting these large checks,” she provides. “I actually hope that this involves an answer quickly. I do know that all of us wish to return to work.”

“It Lives Inside” is in theaters Sept. 22.