Alexis Kendra Interview for The Cleaning Lady
The Cleaning Lady screened at this year’s Arrow Video Frightfest, and told the troubling story of a cleaning lady Shelly (Rachel Alig) who becomes obsessed by her perfect boss Alice (Alexis Kendra). Telling some very dark truths, The Cleaning Lady is a film that slowly works up to the action and trauma, and has some very unsettling moments.
Whilst at Frightfest, we sat down with leading lady Alexis Kendra to get the full lowdown on the project. Given that, in addition to starring in the film, she also produced and co-wrote the piece, she was the perfect person to interrogate. Find out all about the shooting process, where that opening idea came from, and her love of Hellraiser‘s Clare Higgins, below:
As we speak, The Cleaning Lady is screening to the Frightfest audience, what do you hope audiences are going to make of The Cleaning Lady?
Well, I obviously hope they like it. I hope that they have a fun time with a film that’s a slow burn. This movie really takes you on a ride where you really get to learn and understand the characters, and kind of be with them and grow with them. It leads to a very disturbing set-piece. That was the intent as a co-writer, I wrote this with the director Jon Knautz. I’m hoping that people enjoy that ride.
So you wrote, produced and starred, how do all of that come together?
It’s going to sound a bit manic, but I co-wrote the film, I play the lead, I produced this film, and I was also the production designer. I had an art director so I wasn’t spread too thin. It was manageable because of my art director and my team. I’ve worked with Jon on two films, Goddess of Love was the first film, that premiered here at Frightfest three years ago, and then this one. We’ve also done a couple of shorts. We did a short with Missi Pyle and Omar J. Dorsey called Viper, and then we did a proof of concept for The Cleaning Lady. In that, I actually played Shelly. Shelly is the burn victim maid and the make-up and what went into that – the three hours in the chair – playing a character like that was really, really exciting. I was lucky enough to have that opportunity to do that in the short and then in the feature, I was the other role. So I got to play a girl that very bad things happen to.
So was it the make-up time in the chair that put you off playing Shelly?
Oh no, not at all. I loved it. It’s actually kind of calming. You listen to a bit of music and then when they start to cover your face, it’s hours, and you get into this meditative state. It was not bad. However, I only did it for four days so I don’t know. You’d have to ask Rachel [Alig] who plays Shelly, she may say something different.
Alexis Kendra Interview for The Cleaning Lady
So what was it about Alice that appealed to you?
Well, Alice was really exciting for me because there was nowhere for me, now speaking as an actress, to hide behind. A lot of roles I’m drawn to personally, like in Goddess of Love, I play like a really psychotic obsessive stripper who was drug-addicted, drank all the time, chain-smoked. It was one of my favourite roles, but it’s a bit easier in a way to play a role that’s that out-there because you’re kinda hiding a bit. But when you’re playing a very soft-spoken blonde, hopefully approachable, hopefully likable, there’s nothing. It’s almost like I was naked out there. That was hard for me. I had nothing to smoke, I had nothing to drink, I had nothing to do but listen and respond, and that was challenging for me.
I really liked the dynamic between the two female roles, did you and Rachel have much time to work on that together? From talking to other filmmakers these films always seem to be shot super-tight, but did you still have time with one another?
No, actually Jon and myself, now as the producer, fight for twenty-five day shoots.
Wow, that’s a lot longer than some of the other films.
A lot longer. That’s the only way. Jon, the director, is a true craftsman. He has taught me everything I know about producing and about being a filmmaker, and he fights. He fights for days. He won’t make a film if it’s shot in two weeks. Some will, and can look good, but Jon’s preference is to do the twenty-five-day shoot. That’s also my preference, so that’s how we did it. Because of that, we had the time for rehearsing before. Jon is so wonderful to work with as a director because I trust him so much. He’ll go twenty takes, thirty takes maybe. Me as a producer, ‘I know we’ve got twenty-five days, but this is getting a little bit crazy, I think I did a good enough job’ and he’s like ‘you didn’t, it wasn’t honest enough.’ Then he puts me in that moment and when he says ‘got it, circle that’ I know we’ve got the shot. I just have full trust in Jon as a director. I know when I see my performance as an actress that it will be handled beautifully. Not just my role, every single actor feels this way. All the actors were treated the same way and I believe he got the best performances out of everybody because of his craftsmanship.
So because of all this, me and Rachel had the opportunity to rehearse before every take. Jon would be there, we’d try things. Rachel would say ‘I have an idea’, Jon would say ‘that’s great, let’s include that, let me see it’. We’d see the whole scenes real time, we’d rehearse with the camera, we’d rehearse without the camera. There was wonderful rehearsal time where we really got to really play as actors. Off the set it wasn’t as much because we filmed so many hours a day and it was stressful, but it was more professional as actors, but that was fun space to play-in in the rehearsal.
Alexis Kendra Interview for The Cleaning Lady
There’s some really dark subject matter explored within the piece, such as Shelly’s whole teenage life with her mother. Similar stories have surfaced recently on the news about parents engaging their children in this type of activity, it seems to be quite a timely subject matter.
That’s not why we chose that, although that is horrific. We really wanted to dive into a character’s background. We wanted to dive into Shelly’s background and really let the audience in a way feel for the tragedy that she was forced to grow-up in. She was a victim as a child. What happened to her was not okay. Maybe she was already crazy as a child, I don’t know, we were not saying that was the reason, but I believe it added to it. We wanted the audience to have a sense of Shelly’s backstory and the tragedy that her mother put her through as a young child. So people could understand her actions today, why she’s now obsessing over Alice.
The Cleaning Lady opens in a very interesting way…
A lot of people have commented on this!
…I mean in the first two minutes you’ve got some rats being blended alive. It was confronting, it definitely works at grabbing the audience’s attention. Was it always in the script, or did it come later?
So Jon wrote that scene, I had nothing to do with that one. He writes the first scene at the end of the script. So that came absolutely after him and I carved everything, wrote it all, it was all done, he’s like ‘I have an idea for the intro’. He wrote it and asked what I thought of it. I just loved it. It throws you into a horror movie. Our movie is a slow-burn, that was the intention, but we wanted to say ‘this is a horror film, welcome.’ Here you go, now trust us, go on this ride and then it’s going to get crazy’.
Alexis Kendra Interview for The Cleaning Lady
What are you up to now that The Cleaning Lady is out there?
A couple of things. Currently, we’re filming a true-crime documentary. That’s why Jon cannot be at the screening. We’ve never done a documentary so this is our first time doing this. It’s dealing with a murdered family. It’s a horrible story including two little children. There’s a man in jail accused of this crime and he swears he did not do it. The trail is starting in January, our documentary will be a series, and it’ll be a did he or did he not do it? We want to take people on that ride. That’s what we’re working on right now. I also have a vampire screenplay that I’m securing financing for.
I’m hoping not a Twilight vampire film?
Yeah. I mean I love all vampire films, but this one is more current. It’s modern day. This is the way I would discuss it, it’s kind of like if you were to think about Hellraiser, the elements of luring men in, using your sexuality and then they end up in the floorboards. Then you combine it with elements of Interview with a Vampire and not being able to kill. That’s what will be the next film.
Clare Higgins is just amazing in that film, such a great villain.
That was my favourite part of it. I always said ‘that’s going to be a movie I do someday, I don’t know how or when’, but I could not get that image out of my mind of her bringing them back.
The Cleaning Lady screened as part of Arrow Video Frightfest 2018. You can read our review here.
