ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to M3GAN star Amie Donald about the wildly popular horror movie, which is out now on Blu-ray, DVD, and digitally. Donald discussed her history of dancing and her real-life bond with Violet McGraw, who plays Cady.
“M3GAN is a marvel of artificial intelligence, a life-like doll programmed to be a child’s greatest companion and a parent’s greatest ally. Designed by brilliant toy-company roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams), M3GAN can listen and watch and learn as she becomes friend and teacher, playmate and protector, for the child she is bonded to,” says the synopsis. “As Gemma faces pressure at work from her boss (Ronny Chieng) to deliver a finished version of M3GAN, she suddenly becomes the unprepared caretaker of her newly orphaned 8-year-old niece, Cady (Violet McGraw). Gemma decides to pair the M3GAN prototype with Cady in an attempt to resolve both problems—a decision that will have unimaginable consequences.”
Tyler Treese: What I thought was so interesting about your role was that it was such a team effort. You did the physical movement, Jenna Davis provided the voice. How interesting was it when you finally got to see the final footage and how it all came together?
Amie Donald: I thought it was really amazing. I think they did an amazing job with pairing me with the animatronic and with Jenna’s voice. They did an amazing job there and they pieced it together so well. It just … it looks amazing. It was awesome.
It was such a success and it entered pop culture instantly. Saturday Night Live was doing parodies of it. What did it all mean to see the whole internet abuzz over your film role and what you and everybody else did so suddenly?
It was really crazy. I remember when it first went really big because I was not expecting it to go that big and everyone was making their own dances and posting them. Everyone was going crazy over the movie. It was just so amazing, but it was really crazy.
One of the things I thought was adorable is that there’s a bond between yourself and Violet now, which is similar to what we see in the movie — although I don’t think you’re going to kill anybody. How special was it that you both were able to get along so well on set and now you have this friendship?
I think it’s so nice. I love Violet. She’s amazing. She is one of my best friends and the first time we met, we kind of just clicked with each other and the more time we spent together, the closer we got. We still keep in contact today. We’re very close friends and I just love her so much. She’s amazing.
I heard that you were in the Dance World Cup. Tell me a bit about your background with dance, because that wound up being such a key role of M3GAN here.
I’ve been dancing since I was five years old and I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s been a big part of my life and I’ve gone around the world representing New Zealand. I went to Portugal for the Dance World Cup and I got bronze and silver, and I’m the first Kiwi to ever bring back any medals and I thought that was pretty cool. I also won the New Zealand and Australian nationals. Dancing’s just been a big part of my life and I was so happy that I got to incorporate some of my dancing in the movie.
I was curious about how the dance came about. Was that heavily choreographed? Did they just let you do your thing? How did the iconic dance moves of M3GAN happen?
The dance was never in the script, but one day Gerard [Johnstone, director] just came to me and he asked if my dance teacher would be able to choreograph the dance. We said, “Yeah, of course.” And one day me and my dance teacher, we went down to the studio and we put together a couple of different dances. Then we just gave Gerard all of the options and he picked out his favorite ones and then yeah, that’s how it went. It was really funny because it was never in the script, but it’s such a big part of the movie.
That’s incredible. I’m sure you’re looking at TikTok and doing dances other people are doing. How wild was it that everybody was doing the dance that you inspired them to do?
Like I said before, it was really crazy because I just thought it was so fun that people wanted to do a dance that I did. I thought that was so amazing. I like that everyone is trying it out, no matter how good they are. They just put themselves out there and it’s really nice to see that people are inspired by something I did.
There are so many great scenes in that movie. When you think back about filming, what’s the scene that first comes to mind as something you really loved doing?
I really loved doing the dance, but I also really loved doing the woods scene, when we’re running on all fours through the forest. That was a really fun scene.
It’s very primal and animal-like movement. How was getting down the movement on all fours? Because that doesn’t seem natural, but you do it so great.
Well, it was very interesting because that was the first scene that we filmed out of the whole entire movie. We were rehearsing the scene with everybody, with the stunt man, with my acting coaches — Luke Hawker and Jed Brophy. We were always trying to figure out how we could do this and make it look animal-like, and we figured out what we wanted and we gave a go and they loved it. So that’s what happened in the movie.
That’s amazing. I thought Gerard did such a great job at balancing horror and making it really fun. What stood out the most about working with him and him having that belief in you, where he’s coming to you with ideas and collaborating like that?
From the very first day, he was always really nice to me, which I really appreciated. He was always there and he was always so kind. He’d always greet me in the mornings and it was so nice to have him there. I don’t think I could have done it with a different director. He was just so amazing. I like that he’d always come to me and ask if I wanted to do it and if I felt comfortable That’s really nice. It was so amazing just working with him. He was so cool.
M3GAN 2.0 was announced right after the success of the first one. How incredible is it that you could have kickstarted like the next big horror icon?
I’m very thankful that I got this part because M3GAN is just a big part of my life now. She’s so cool. I’m very happy that I got to be a part of M3GAN and yeah, it’s just been really fun and amazing, especially for my first movie. It’s just been so fun.
I saw you’re also in Sweet Tooth’s second season. That show has such great, fantastic designs and is based on this really fun comic. What was most fun about working on that show?
I really like that I got to have a lot of fun with my character. She’s a very cheeky character. She’s just so fun and I love that I got to kind of incorporate half human, half animal in that, just like I kind of did with M3GAN, but half human, half robot. That was really fun to do.
That’s awesome. So what’s the next step for you? What are your acting goals moving forward?
I really want to keep doing movies. I hope I keep doing horrors — that would be amazing. I just want to see what goes on from here. It would be really fun.
