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Director Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest film The Neon Demon features Elle Fanning as Jesse, a 16-year-old model who moves to Los Angeles searching for fame and fortune. Jena Malone, Abbey Lee and Keanu Reeves co-star in this surreal horror-thriller which has garnered its share of different interpretations.
Although Jesse does experience her share of nightmarish encounters in The Neon Demon, Fanning actually sees her character as the most “evil” person in the narrative:
The funny thing is that I think my character was probably the most evil one of them all. We talked about how she is, in a way, like Dorothy coming Oz but if she was the evil one. Jessie is kind of like the toxic poison that corrupts everybody else. And I like this film because (it’s reminiscent of) A Star is Born (and she) comes to a big city. But she has this plan the whole time and there’s this mystery underneath her and she uses her youth and her innocence as a mask to disguise it. There’s a lot of many different ways you can look at it.
Click on the media bar below to hear Elle Fanning talk about why being “driven by fear” during the production of The Neon Demon ending up being a creatively fulfilling experience:
The Neon Demon is now playing in select theaters. For our CinemAddicts podcast review of The Neon Demon, click on the Soundcloud bar below:
