Amy Madigan gives one of the most memorable performances of the year in the new horror movie Weapons and many fans are hoping she’ll get an Oscar nomination for her work as Gladys.
The 74-year-old actress, best known for playing Annie in Field of Dreams, was kept entirely out of the marketing for the movie to not give anything away about her character.
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If you’ve seen the movie already or don’t care about spoilers, we have some cool new information about Gladys thanks to director Zach Cregger.
“Look, I’m more than happy to sing Amy’s praises in the press all day long. She’s so incredible in this movie. Without her, the movie doesn’t work,” he told Vanity Fair. “She saved me. It’s just hard to discuss her character without getting into spoilers, so it’s tricky.”
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In the movie, Amy plays Gladys, the supposed “aunt” of Alex who is taken in by his parents as she’s allegedly sick and not doing well. Quickly after moving in, she uses her magical tree to do witchcraft and take control of anyone she wants. After putting Alex’s parents into a vegetative state, she forces Alex to help her lure his classmates to their house so she can feed off them and maintain her strength.
Zach says that he never came up with the answer about Gladys’ backstory and presented Amy with two options for her to use, but told her not to tell him which one she went with.
“I presented Amy with two options of her origin story. I was like, ‘You can pick one of these two,’” he told VF. “They’re very different options. And was like, ‘You don’t have to tell me, but it is either this or that.’ I don’t know which one she picked.”
The first option was that “she was once a regular person, but her spells and corrosive actions are a last-ditch effort to heal herself of a life-threatening illness.” The second option was “that maybe she’s not a person at all.”
Zach opened up about the origin of Gladys’ look.
“I like to think that maybe Gladys went to Boca Raton and looked around, and then just scraped an outfit together, and was like, ‘This is what a person does, right?’” he joked with the magazine. “She didn’t really think it through. Maybe that’s what’s going on.”
Three major stars dropped out of the movie before it started filming.
Gladys is only briefly seen in a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it moment in the first trailer.