After ‘The Devil’s Mouth,’ Lana Condor is ready to get out of the water

Lana Condor stars as Max, the type-A leader of the friend group whose desire for daredevil antics clashes with the sensibilities of her best friend, Sara (Kathryn Newton). For Condor, the project serves in many ways as a homecoming—not just to her action roots (viewers might remember that her earliest roles were in X-Men: Apocalypse and Deadly Class), but also to her body. She’s been vocal about her struggles with body dysmorphia, spurred on by having taken ballet classes at a young age during which she was constantly second guessing her physical appearance. If her work as the martial artist ballerina in Pretty Lethal served as an onscreen redemption of that activity, The Devil’s Mouth is the next step in Condor’s journey to reclaim her body and mind on her terms. It’s a film that puts her and the rest of the cast through the wringer, but in testing her anchors, reveals just how resilient she is as an onscreen presence. 

JoySauce spoke with Condor about returning to her action adventure film roots, the gift of working on location, and how the film has made her think about what it means to hold on to friendships as an adult. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length and contains spoilers for The Devil’s Mouth. 

Zachary Lee: I know recently, you’ve been known for your work in the romantic comedy space thanks to To All the Boys I've Loved Before and Moonshot. Lately though, with Valiant One, Pretty Lethal, and now The Devil’s Mouth, you’ve been coming back to your action adventure roots.
Lana Condor: Thank you for that question. It’s awesome. My true love has been action. That’s where I started, as much as I love the romance space. Whatever I like to pleasure read or watch when I’m not working, though, is action and thrillers. My heart goes there all the time, but it was fun in particular to do something like The Devil’s Mouth because I’ve never done a survival movie like this before, especially with a shark. 

ZL: Do you feel like you were able to transfer any training for Valiant One or from Pretty Lethal to the stunt work you have to do here?
LC: Totally, but I would also say Deadly Class, which was a very physically challenging show, was my first boot camp. I know this sounds crazy, but I love putting my body into some duress because it helps with the suspension of disbelief. I was safe during filming, but for something like The Devil’s Mouth, when you’re actually paddling to stay above water, your ability to suspend disbelief is so easy. Deadly Class definitely helped me with that. 

I think when my body's going through something, I respond accordingly. I’ve done a few physical films recently as you mentioned, but there was something unique about The Devil’s Mouth in that I was swimming for 12-13 hours a day. After filming, I told my team, “The next film that I do, I would love to be dry, clothed, and not moving."

ZL: The only movie that’s coming to my mind right now is the movie Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson did, Mercy. We need you to just be in a chair the whole time.
LC: [Laughs] Or that movie Jake Gyllenhaal did, The Guilty. Give me some voice work!

ZL: I was listening to your Mythical Kitchen interview, where you talked about your last meal, and you said how you enjoy eating spicy food for the same reason you just outlined, about why you like putting your body in duress: it’s an entry point to suspend disbelief and focus on just the task in front of you.
LC: We filmed this in Thailand, and spice in Thailand is on a different level. I don’t even claim it as spicy; I claim that as gasoline. It’s a chemical. It’s not natural! Weirdly though, because of how physically demanding The Devil’s Mouth was and the mental strength it took to get into the water every day for 13 hours, it made the production experience so much better. The crew took such great care of us, and one of the ways they did that was giving us the best snacks to keep our bodies nourished so that we had enough calories to burn.

In between takes, particularly if setup took a long time, we could leave the water to “dry off.” But a lot of times we would just stay in the water because to go from wet to dry back to wet, you might as well just stay wet. When we were pulled out, we would do “re-feeds” where they would feed us a lot of food, but a lot of it was incredibly spicy food to wake us up. They would say, “What do you want to eat today?” I would say, “Give me a spicy papaya chicken salad.” Eating something like that would wake me up to help me keep going.

ZL: So if you were to go back on Hot Ones, it would be over in a couple of minutes due to your newfound spice tolerance?
LC: I mean, the first time I did it, I projectile vomited.

ZL: You’ve talked about how there are probably three scenes in total where you are dry. So much of your work as an actor is you being underwater. What is that like for you as an actor where you just have your face, where you don’t have access to the rest of your body to portray your character?
LC: To add to that, it’s not just the face sometimes. A lot of this movie we’re under the water, so a lot of this communication had to be nonverbal. What I found is, given just the nature of this film, the entire cast had to all be on the same exact page. We almost had to be able to read each other's minds. 

There would be days where we would be filming underwater, and we just wouldn't surface, and so you get all your direction while you're underwater via an underwater mic. When you’re underwater, I can’t turn to Kathryn and talk about a scene. A lot of it is just showing that you understand what's being said to you, all just through your vibe and through your eyes. That’s what we had to learn just as the actors, and I think it shows in the film because our eyes had to be the primary way we showed our fear. 

ZL: I’ve heard you talk about that you wanted to play Max as if she was the “human shark,” that maybe the rest of the friends have to worry not just about the shark, but about her if she snaps.
LC: I love that you said that because that's something I worked on a lot with (director Jeff  Wadlow). He was very big on the nonverbal and what isn’t said. At the dinner table scene where you can feel Max being a bit more shifty, you can feel the tension even if nothing is said. I love stuff like that. I think it's so uncomfortable and awesome, and I think it set the tone very well. When I watched it, I was like, “Kill Max! She’ll probably be the first to die, because she’s such a pill.” But that was on purpose. We wanted to do that.

ZL: You’ve played a lot of coming-of-age characters. But I think your film here is an interesting turn, because it’s asking these mature questions of how do we maintain friendship as adults, are we connected just by an old thread or are we really friends? I’m wondering how the film might have made you think about that.
LC: That's one of the reasons why I thought that the script was so brilliant: it is absolutely a classic shark film but the relationships and the friendships are at the heart of it. I think that we talked a lot ad nauseum while we were filming it. Would Max and Kathryn’s characters be friends if they met that day? 

I think the reason why they're friends is because of all their history that they've had together. But I don't think that if they had met that day, they would gravitate towards each other at all. I think that's what's so interesting. I've had friendship breakups where I thought that we were going to be each other’s ride or die forever, and then I realized the only way we were going to be able to grow is if we grew apart.

I do think that if it ended on a positive note and everyone lived, the friend group might have broken up. I think they might have gone their separate ways. 

ZL: On another level, you’ve shared how your brother is in the military and your father’s a journalist. With Valiant One and Coyote vs. Acme, it feels like you’ve been able to play roles that either are or have aspects of their vocations. What has it been like to connect with your family through the art you get to make?
LC: I play a lawyer in Coyote vs. Acme, but it’s a similar vibe! I didn't actively make that choice, but what I will say is my brother doesn't watch a lot of my work, but also a lot of my romance stuff; he's not the demographic, so that's okay. I think they’d enjoy something with The Devil’s Mouth because he’s in the Navy.