‘Heretic’ stars Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher discuss their Mormon upbringing

Hugh Grant gets top billing as Heretics‘s biggest star, but Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher are the film’s heart and soul.

In the new religious horror film from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, East (The Fabelman family) and Thatcher (Yellowjackets) play Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes, a pair of Mormon missionaries sent to Mr. Reed’s (Grant) mysterious Colorado complex. As they begin to discuss their faith with the disarmingly charming landlord, Grant’s character becomes progressively more antagonistic to the concept of organized religion, prompting Barnes to consider second-guessing her beliefs and making Paxton more resolute in hers.

The two actresses both grew up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (colloquially known as LDS or Mormonism) – although the directors did not know the backgrounds of the actresses when they auditioned.

“They were raised Mormon, and that wasn’t necessarily on our bingo card when we were casting,” Beck says Weekly entertainment. “We weren’t like, ‘We’re going to find two actresses who were raised Mormon.’ But the reason they won the role is because they were so true when they played it. We kept going back to our casting director and asked: ‘Are there more like these two because there is a truth there.’

He continues, “We didn’t know they were raised Mormons. We could just feel it; we could feel it. We heard it in their voices and their approach. And I think the way they played the characters brought they have the utmost respect because they have Mormon families, and so they share the empathy and love that we also share for these characters.”

Thatcher and East both tell EW that they immediately felt an innate understanding of Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton — and they both chose clothes they knew young Mormon missionaries would choose during their auditions. “We read chemistry with different girls, but I had heard from our casting director that Chloe grew up Mormon and has a Mormon family, so there was an instant connection,” Thatcher says. “We found a lot of parallels in our lives and the connection, and I think they saw that and saw the truth behind our connection to the religion.”

East says her religious upbringing informed every second of her work in Heretics. “That was all for my performance,” she says. “A lot of the choices I made and the little quirks were all things that I pulled from going to church.” The actress clarifies that she wasn’t as persistent an evangelist as her character: “Growing up, I was never the one to tell my classmates about the church and why they should join it. I never went on missions or anything. ”

But Paxton’s character still seemed almost disturbingly familiar to the actress. “I just felt like I knew this character in my bones,” she says. “I wish I didn’t know so well and I had to research things, but I was like, ‘I get it.'” Unfortunately, I was this person or have this person inside of me that I can use in this movie, but it’s very nice to have a role that comes a little naturally.”

Thatcher had a similar experience. “It felt much more personal than other projects,” she explains. “It felt like I was tapping into something I knew a while ago, but it was easier to tap into because I was just thinking about myself when I was younger: how I held myself, how I presented myself myself, and just thinking about my family and specific ways and how they talk, how they just present themselves, I just had my mom’s side of the family in mind.

East thinks Heretics provides a more nuanced portrayal of her family’s faith. “You always see very extreme footage – Book of Mormon musical and even Under the banner of heaven is a very specific kind of extreme Mormonism mentality and extreme,” she says. “I know a lot of Mormon friends who watch that series and they say, ‘We’re not like that. It’s strange. It’s not us.’ And then you have a more truthful, more current, modern version of Mormonism that many of my friends identify with. And you just don’t see that much. You don’t see this version of Mormonism played out.”

Childhood friends Beck and Woods come from different religious backgrounds. “I was raised Presbyterian, went to church every single Sunday, went to vacation Bible school. Church and religion were basically my formative years,” explains Beck. “And when I was in high school, I met my girlfriend, now wife, and she’s Jewish and came from a Jewish family. And so when we got married, it was kind of a combination of religious backgrounds.”

Woods, on the other hand, married into a Mormon family. “I wasn’t raised Mormon,” he clarifies. “The idea of ​​Mormons, it was like, ‘Who are these people?’ What’s this?” Didn’t really know much about it until I met my wife. And then we have a billion Mormons, but all our friends and family are of different faiths, I mean, we have friends who are Scientologists that. We have lots of atheist friends.

Want more movie news? Sign up Entertainment Weekly’s free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, movie reviews and more.

These connections to friends and family across a diversity of faiths mean the filmmakers feel strongly about their main characters – they see themselves and their loved ones in the film’s core trio. “We have so much love and empathy for these two women,” says Woods. “The film is very personal, so all the characters feel like they’re all a little bit between them. Mr. Reed and the sisters — they all feel like people we know and love.”

The filmmakers took special care to take the characters’ faith seriously. “It’s so easy in the media, especially with Mormons, to paint a comical picture because there’s a naivety and there’s just elements inherent in Mormon culture that could be comical to outside eyes,” Woods says. “We don’t necessarily shy away from that, because I came into a Mormon family again, and there were things that were amusing to me as an outsider, and so we pushed those buttons. But the deeper we got into the Mormon culture, the more apparent it became that there’s an intelligence and a warmth and a sincerity and all these beautiful things that we really respected.”

Heretics now playing in cinemas.

These interviews have been edited for clarity and length.