Malia Pyles is a new kind of femme fatale in ‘Cape Fear’

Pyles, whose mother is Filipino, captivatingly holds her cards close, steering the show's narrative while flooring it with overwhelming power. Holding her own against her co-stars like Adams and finding heartwarming chemistry with Collias, her performance suggests a new kind of femme fatale for the modern era.

Pyles spoke with JoySauce ahead of the show’s finale. In our conversation, she talks about the cinematic influences that contributed to approaching Nevaeh, the challenges of balancing sultry seduction with girlish innocence, and finding the nuance in the complex bond Nevaeh shares with Natalie.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length and contains some spoilers for Cape Fear.

Rendy Jones: With a character like Nevaeh, who is entirely new from the ground up outside any of the Cape Fear sources, tell me what was it to build this character?
Malia Pyles: I'm such a fan of all three works, respectively. I had so much to dive into. I was looking at Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro and the way that their performances manifested. Even looking at Mitchum's prowling nature, the way that he moves with so much stealth in between the iron gates of Savannah, and then looking at De Niro and his charm and his gravitas. 

Shaping Nevaeh was important to also understand what those performances that came before mine were. And then the joy of it was getting to take my favorite parts and blow it out of the water in some regards. But I was also asking our showrunner (Nick Antosca), "Can I go watch Javier Bardem’s scenes?” Before even the camera was rolling on any of my stuff. I wanted to be as studied as I could, not to try to recreate anything, but to have as much information and also feel emboldened enough to take those risks and kind of go there with it. 

RJ: You're something of a cinephile yourself. Were there any film sources that you pulled for some scenes?
MP: I had a lot of downtime filming, to be honest. We were in Atlanta for six months, and so I was watching a lot of John Waters movies. Divine in Multiple Maniacs, which was a huge pillar for me. Before the theater scene, I watched The Exorcist to kind of really see what a woman possessed looks like because I think in a lot of ways that's what Nevaeh is. 

There's a documentary called American Mystic that I watched to kind of understand different paganistic or different versions of spiritualism in America. Nevaeh, through her father, co-opts, bastardizes, and perverts this religion, and she makes it her own, and she pulls from a lot of different things. And that was important for me to also understand. 

Lily and I would have movie nights. We watched Desert Hearts, and we brought one of the scenes from it—where the women are collapsing onto the floor laughing. We brought that to our director Reed Morano, and we're like, "Can we please do this?” We shot it, but it didn't end up making the cut. But it was awesome to be able to steep myself in different parts of cinema and then get to bring that work to set.

RJ: You have a way of taking command and doing so against these adults and fellow teens making them so mystified. Tell me about channeling that intensity but also playing something of a femme fatale type.
MP: It was a tightrope I was walking for sure. When I think about Nevaeh, I go back to the fact that she is a teenage girl—that whatever version she is of Max Cady, it is at times a kind of characterization or a caricature of him. She's trying to be as charming, malicious, and slick as he is, but she's just not. She's a young girl with raging hormones. So walking that line of feeling like an aggressor but also feeling like prey at the same time was interesting.

But as far as the femme fatale, it really made me interrogate biases I had about myself too, because having to be this kind of sultry seductress in ways felt like something completely new to me. That was only able to happen because of the immense amount of trust I had with Lily and Joe. They’re such amazing performers.

RJ: Throughout the season, you and Lily have an entire rigmarole. Can you tell me about reading different parts of your character's relationship, having to instantaneously snap attitudes when need to?
MP: Immediately, I felt a lot of synergy between us, and I felt like we've always been destined to be great friends. I consider her one of my best friends. But there was a vibration of excitement. We were just so excited to be working with the people we were and by the scripts. Then we were really mystified by hearing rumors circulating on set. 

This is day zero, before the table read. I remember I had gone to a hair test, and I had wanted to dye my hair black, and they said they wanted to keep it brown. Lily had gone to a hair test, and they made her dye her hair darker, and it was because they wanted to have a "familial connection" or through line with their hair. Then it was a moment in the car together where it was like, "Are we related?" 

I remember in the synopsis for my character there was something in the small print about Natalie falling in love. So I was like, "Oh, this is just a girl I fall in love with." Then to get the episodes, one by one as those six months progressed, I was like, "Oh, this is a girl I'm falling in love with." Those three days we had in the juvenile detention center were really impactful for me because we don't get to see all of it onscreen, but there were a lot of moments of these two girls that, although they're polar opposites, they also are mirrored images of each other.

They're both women who have been robbed in some way of this father figure or this love that they've always yearned to have, but have been neglected and abandoned over and over. Then there's this kinship between them that they can't even understand, and they can't even really digest what their relationship is. It's violent, and it's passionate. 

I remember the last take we had together. It also ended up being the final take of my time at Cape Fear. That scene in the bed was longer, but there's this promise between us of “maybe outside we can be together,” then this union, and this kiss. We came out of it, and we were both sobbing, fully letting that emotion rock through us. We had spent so much time with these characters and so much time with each other. It felt special to investigate that with her. And we're going to be hanging out for a long time after this show is done. 

I feel a lot of gratitude for that storyline, even though it is deeply complicated and I don't even have all the answers to it.