Maria bakalova movie#

She's been here longer and she's very successful, but us coming from Europe and leaving everything behind - I felt it would be great for her to be that outsider.'īodies Bodies Bodies begins like a Gen Z character study, as Bee attempts to navigate Sophie's ultra-privileged, extremely online, arrogantly nihilistic friend group (played by Rachel Sennott, Chase Sui Wonders and Myha'la Herrold). I was so homesick, so lonely, and then what was so great with Maria was casting her was an expression of the feeling. 'I literally left my whole life behind to work on this film. 'It's such an important role, because especially in this day and age, who is the outsider? Like, what does that stand for?' Reijn, who is Dutch, muses. ('I was like, 'Who is this force of nature?!'' recalls the filmmaker.) Bakalova was already a fan of Reijn's previous film, the arthouse prison drama Instinct. Director Halina Reijn sought out Bakalova for the part after seeing her in Borat. So, the more difficult the role, the more different than me the role, the more interesting it will be.' In Bodies Bodies Bodies, she plays Bee, who is invited by her new girlfriend, Sophie ( Amandla Stenberg), to crash a reunion weekend with Sophie's friends. Of course, I'm dreaming about longevity, and I think that's achievable only through the diversity of work that you can put out there. 'I wanted to keep exploring the things that I've never thought I can explore before and to challenge myself. 'I quit the idea of, 'I want to work only and especially in this type of genre,' because I'd never got to work on comedies before Borat,' Bakalova says.

She did a pandemic parody with Judd Apatow, The Bubble, and now stars in the A24 satirical slasher, Bodies Bodies Bodies. ('Which I appreciate a lot, because I'm kind of a nerdy person and I like to read,' she says with a smirk). Suddenly, there were people wanting to set up meetings, auditions to take, and scripts to read.

Maria bakalova movie#

Then she answered an open call for a lead role in a Hollywood film and, faster than you can say my wife!, became a movie star.īefore Borat, Bakalova had never made a film outside of Bulgaria. Having theatrically trained at the Krastyo Sarafov National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts, she had imagined herself acting in the types of films Vinterberg and Lars von Trier set forth in their dogma - austere dramas without special gimmicks or effects. His work that he's put in Dogme 95, the movement, and everything he's done - he's been my biggest inspiration.' 'I think I got shy as well, because I'm so starstruck by the work he's put out there.

'I became a cinema actress, honestly, because I saw The Hunt with Mads Mikkelsen and I was like, 'My god, that's the movies that I'm dying for,'' Bakalova tells A.frame.

(Bakalova is the first Bulgarian actor to be nominated for an Oscar.) The Danish filmmaker was a fellow first-time nominee for directing Another Round, the actress' favorite movie of 2020. 'My table was the same table that Thomas Vinterberg was sitting at,' she says now, grinning into her computer camera as if still in disbelief.īakalova was attending as a first-time Oscar nominee for her supporting performance in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, in which she plays Borat's semi-feral 15-year-old daughter, Tutar. It was whom she was sitting with during the ceremony. When Maria Bakalova found herself 6,715 miles from her hometown of Burgas, Bulgaria, at the 93rd Oscars, the surreal part wasn't that she was there.