{"id":369004,"date":"2026-04-08T05:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T05:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/369004\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T05:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T05:07:11","slug":"meredith-alloway-talks-lili-reinhart-slasher-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/369004\/","title":{"rendered":"Meredith Alloway Talks Lili Reinhart Slasher Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt takes no more than two minutes for Meredith Alloway\u2019s new dark-comedy Forbidden Fruits<\/a> to let the audience know just how wild the ride is going to be.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the campy horror film\u2019s first scene, Apple, a red haired (well, red wigged), Lili Reinhart<\/a>, tosses her steaming hot cup of coffee all over the lap of a pervert parked beside her in the mall\u2019s parking lot, just seconds after his license plate \u201c#1DADDY\u201d is shown on screen. And it only gets wilder from there.<\/p>\n

\n\tDirected and co-written by Alloway, Forbidden Fruits centers on the women of Free Eden, a trendy women\u2019s clothing store in a Dallas mall, that happen to make up a witchy cult. Apple, the Regina George of this mall universe, is flanked by her fellow fruit-named Fig (Alexandra Shipp<\/a>) and Cherry (Victoria Pedretti<\/a>), when newcomer Pumpkin (Lola Tung<\/a>) levels up from food court worker to Free Eden employee.<\/p>\n

\n\tApple and co. induct a clearly-has-a-motive Pumpkin into their after hours cult, and things start unraveling from there, slasher style. The film is based on a play by Lily Houghton, who also co-wrote the script with Alloway.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I read Lily Houghton\u2019s play, I was coming off of a lot of research on female criminals and serial killers,\u201d Alloway tells The Hollywood Reporter on a Zoom days before the film opened. \u201cWomen do this for such different reasons than men. I\u2019m continually upset when another male serial killer thing comes out, which is fine as long as there\u2019s also women that we\u2019re exploring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlloway was introduced to Houghton through their mutual manager at Linden Entertainment. The director notes that Houghton loves Jennifer\u2019s Body (Body screenwriter Diablo Cody<\/a> later boarded as producer their new movie), and both yearned to create something campy. \u201cWhat if we do a slasher?\u201d the director recalls asking Houghton when they met to discuss a collaboration. \u201cWhat if we use genre as a tool to help people understand how these people feel, how violent and chaotic and messy and beautiful and joyful female relationships can be?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tShipp as Fig, Reinhart as Apple and Pedretti as Cherry in \u2018Forbidden Fruits.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSabrina Lantos\/IFC Films\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tAlloway and Houghton succeeded on that front. Forbidden Fruits\u2019 core group of women are all, in their own increasingly unhinged way, driven by the bond of female friendship. Tung\u2019s Pumpkin, however, is less convinced about the sisterhood element. So, it makes sense when the third act reveals that Pumpkin and Apple are actually half-siblings, and Pumpkin sought out the Free Eden gang to avenge the death of their father.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe screenwriters kept the heightened language of Houghton\u2019s play, with help from Cody.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe, I think particularly as women, come up with these codes and these languages and secret ways of communicating, especially when you\u2019re young. [We were] tapping into that,\u201d notes Alloway. \u201cThe biggest challenge was finding a cast that could deliver the language, take the world seriously, still understand the comedy and in the back of their brain, be present in a scene and [know] ultimately the tone of this is satire.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tReinhart, Tung, Shipp and Pedretti walk that line the entire film, even when it digs into its darker, less campy, moments. The group\u2019s former friend Pickle (Emma Chamberlain) is the source of much of that darkness, along with the girls\u2019 often vulnerable confessionals in the fitting room mirror. \u201cThe confessionals were the heart of who the characters were. Lily and I from the beginning described the movie as a razor blade in a Jolly Rancher,\u201d Alloway explains. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tShipp as Fig and Pedretti as Cherry in \u2018Forbidden Fruits.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSabrina Lantos\/IFC Films\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tAlloway says there was one group rehearsal with the women before shooting and several conversations about the characters and the motivation behind pieces of dialogue. \u201cWe talked about the costumes. We talked about the ways that they use their makeup and their hair and what they\u2019re wearing as armor for the way they want to present [themselves] to the world,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe director told the actresses to make Pinterest boards for their characters and direct message her anytime. \u201cIt was really fun to see what the girls came up with,\u201d she notes.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe women of Free Eden meet tragic ends one-by-one as a tornado approaches \u2014 Cherry in a mall escalator and Fig being struck by the mall\u2019s skylight. Eventually, it comes down to Pumpkin and Apple, fighting to the death in a mall fountain, a more intimate moment by choice, according to Alloway.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think sometimes horror in particular just puts the pedal to the gas even more, and then by the end of the movie, you\u2019re just spiraling out of control. I wanted the end to be intimate, and I wanted the girls to be wet and messy,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, Pumpkin is strangled to death by her half sister in the fountain, a move Alloway says she waffled on. \u201cHonestly, I really didn\u2019t want to kill Pumpkin. Up until we were shooting, I had an alt version where maybe she doesn\u2019t die, and Sharon finds her and she comes back to life. She wasn\u2019t drowned. She was just knocked out,\u201d she admits.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTung as Pumpkin in Forbidden Fruits.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSabrina Lantos\/IFC Films\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was like, no, the whole point of the movie is that these women relationships aren\u2019t perfect, that we\u2019re operating in systems that don\u2019t allow us to all survive in the way that we should. It would be a bow on the ending that wasn\u2019t earned and didn\u2019t feel honest and real,\u201d she continues. <\/p>\n

\n\tWith the film now out, Alloway says wishes she knew what Apple does next. \u201cPoor Apple, her whole life, she\u2019s been trying to protect the women around her, including her mother who has also abandoned her,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBeing abandoned as a woman can pit you against other women, can increase your need to survive, which I think Apple\u2019s always trying to find the snake. In that moment, she\u2019s thinks, unfortunately, \u2018My sister is the one who has created all of this chaos,\u2019 and she has a psychological break and is just trying to survive,\u201d Alloway adds. \u201cApple has had to protect herself for many, many years and survive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It takes no more than two minutes for Meredith Alloway\u2019s new dark-comedy Forbidden Fruits to let the audience…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[25462,36126,156,142671,43349,31712,409,111,139,69,142672],"class_list":{"0":"post-369004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-alexandra-shipp","9":"tag-diablo-cody","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-forbidden-fruits","12":"tag-lili-reinhart","13":"tag-lola-tung","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-victoria-pedretti"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}