The actor: At just 25 years old, Chloë Grace Moretz is already an industry vet. Her filmography runs the gamut from pitch-black horror movies to critically acclaimed indies, not to mention forays into comedy and voice acting. She can, in short, easily slip into the skin of a pint-sized vigilante (Kick-Ass) or an embattled queer teen (The Miseducation Of Cameron Post).
Moretz’s ability to transform on a dime is on full display in The Peripheral, Scott B. Smith’s currently airing sci-fi series on Prime Video. Based on the 2014 novel by William Gibson, the show centers on Flynne Fisher (Moretz), a working-class woman in rural North Carolina circa 2032. In the face of their mother’s mounting medical bills, she and her brother Burton (Jack Raynor) moonlight as “sim jockeys,” playing virtual-reality games on behalf of rich clients. But Flynne gets in too deep when she ports into a new game with very real consequences.
The A.V. Club sat down with Moretz, who has been at this since she was seven, to talk about her experiences across her chameleonic career, including a night of Christmas karaoke with Martin Scorsese, a crash course in “Germenglish” on the set of Suspiria, and going toe-to-toe with Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock.
The A.V. Club: This show is very literally cerebral, as the action shifts back and forth between Flynne’s real life and her life inside the game. How did you approach playing her?
Chloë Grace Moretz: It was funny to me how many similarities [there were] between Flynne and myself—one being that I have been a huge gamer my whole life. Growing up with four brothers, it was a big way for me to actually be able to beat them at something. You know, physically, they could definitely overpower me; but with gaming, I could best them at every corner. So that was one big way that I really connected to her.
AVC: Jack Raynor plays both your brother and your virtual-reality avatar. What was it like to collaborate with him in that way?
CGM: Being able to work with Jack was incredible. He’s seriously one of my best friends now, and I really see him as a brother of mine. I felt really lucky to be able to get that right off the bat, because usually you have to work to build that relationship. And pretty much from the minute we started talking, which was about two months before production, [we had] an instantaneous connection, and we had an uncanny amount of similarities in our lives.
AVC: Kick-Ass was the first movie I think I ever saw you in, and I remember you made a big impression. That must have been a wild role to play when you were 13 years old. How did you go about getting into Mindy’s head?
CGM: Honestly, Mindy and Flynne are the two characters that are the most similar to me in real life. You know, obviously Mindy had a very troubled relationship with her father [played by Nicolas Cage], which is very interesting, but she did love him very much. But her tenacity and her temperature and tonality is very similar to who I am. I think the big common denominator is also the physical edge. Something that I really always love to do is to get my hands dirty—get into the martial arts and let the action speak for itself. And I loved getting into Mindy Macready’s head. You know, I would love to be able to [play her] as an adult. It’d be such an interesting story to see her and how she grew up.
AVC: I read that you took a little time off from acting before accepting this role. What was it about this project that drew you back into acting?
CGM: Everything, you know? I felt really seen when I did that project. I had been wanting to do character like that for a long time. And for me, it was also about being able to work with [writer-director] Desiree Akhavan. And the cinematographer was a woman named Ashley Connor, so the whole process of making it was just so female-led, and it felt really badass. It felt like such a safe, confident space.
AVC: It’s such a beautiful film about the experience of being a queer teenager put in this intense situation.
CGM: What I loved about it was it’s a story that doesn’t feel like you’re taking your cough medicine; but you are really seeing a genuine experience. And also, there’s miseducation on both sides of the fence: The kids that are being indoctrinated, they’re there because people that are miseducated are putting them there in that position. And a lot of them are trying to better themselves or fix themselves—or so they think, because they don’t understand that it’s who they are and who they are born as. And the reality is that it’s happening today. I think the highest ratio of conversion therapy centers is in New York City, and they masquerade as therapy centers.
AVC: What?! That’s horrifying.
CGM: Yeah. So I felt really lucky to play Cameron, and she really changed me in a lot of ways. I felt really grounded in it.
AVC: Yeah, it’s a very heavy subject and a very heavy film, but it does feel like a light movie, too.
CGM: Yeah, and it speaks deeply to the tenacity and the fervor of the queer community and the LGBTQ community, and that there’s always a silver lining—because you will prevail, and your chosen family will be what matters.
AVC: What was it like to star in a Martin Scorsese movie when you were so young, especially one as grand and epic as this one?
CGM: It was all-encompassing, and I feel like [Scorsese is] very all-encompassing. He is such a cinephile, and he really imparted that knowledge to me, just in the time that I got to spend with him. One of the first things he did when I showed up to start preproduction is he had a big box dropped off, and it had probably 25, 30 movies in it. And he was like, “Before we start production, you have to watch all of these.” The movies that he gave me were different than movies he gave Asa [Butterfield]. So we had to do our homework, and then he would basically pop quiz us on it. He’d be like, “So, what do you think about this? What do you think about that?” He really got our muscles flexing.
AVC: I love that Scorsese just gave you a giant pile of movies to watch. That’s exactly what I would imagine him doing.
CGM: That’s exactly it. And we spent Christmas dinner together, basically, and we all just sang karaoke on the floor. He’s the most genuine guy, and he’s just so cool. [He has] more pep in his step than any other director I’ve worked with. He was gung-ho every day—more so than, like, us as kids. And at the age of 11, 12 years old, that is an absolute dream—with someone who, to me, was so much so an adult and had been around for so long, talking to children. He treated us as equals, and he really allowed us to have a conversation and cared about our opinions on the projects that he showed us.
AVC: What was it like to work on a movie of that scope, even in terms of the production design?
CGM: I mean, everywhere you looked, everything you touched was tangible. You know, you pick up a piece of newspaper on the set, and it was from that day, the day that we’re supposed to be filming, in that year—the actual printing of the newspaper. The attention to detail was crazy. I don’t think I’ll ever be on a project like that again. It was a one-of-a-kind experience.
AVC: Watching you, as a teenage girl, being mean to Alec Baldwin is so much fun. What was it like to guest on that show?
CGM: Oh, my gosh, it was crazy. I mean, that really helped me up my game at a young age, going toe-to-toe with Alec Baldwin. Tina Fey and everyone on that set were so present and so ready. And you know, you’re crunching through 10-, 15-page scenes that are just back-and-forth dialogue. The comedic timing is insane. And you’re just shooting it on a TV schedule, so you have no real time to do it; you have three or four takes to get it in. Kaylie Hooper was a really fun role. She was super manipulative; she was ready to take [Jack Donaghy] on, and I just think we had a great rapport. Alec really kept me on my toes, for sure.
AVC: Jo-Ann is such a fascinating cipher. She really changes every time we see her in this movie. What was your approach and your core idea of who that character is?
CGM: I had a really fun time playing an amalgamation of people that I’d worked with as a child actor; I grew up on sets. So I knew the interesting intricacies of people like the other actors that I worked with throughout my career. And it was really fun to delve into those characters and those people and put them into Jo-Ann and just really go there.
AVC: You were also working with quite a team of powerhouses on that movie, both in front of and behind the camera.
CGM: Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart are two really great actors, and Juliette is formidable. To be there with them and be directed by Olivier Assayas was a dream come true. That’s definitely another role that really helped me level up and just bring my A-game. I think there’s so much underneath the level of that movie. There’s so much to be seen and be felt as you watch it, that I think changes every time that I’ve seen it. I glean different aspects, especially as I’ve grown up. When I first shot it, I was probably 16 years old, 17 maybe. And now, being 25 … I actually watched it not that long ago because a friend of mine hadn’t seen it and really wanted to watch it.
AVC: Having seen you in superhero projects, it’s really funny to watch that scene where Jo-Ann acts in a fake superhero movie.
CGM: Yeah, it was so fun. When you’re filming those things, you’re saying gibberish; you feel kind of ridiculous when you’re doing it. So being able to film a superhero movie within a movie was so funny.
AVC: You’ve acted in a lot of horror movies, from Let Me In to Carrie, but Suspiria seems like it must have been a whole other level in terms of intensity and gore. What was that experience like for you?
CGM: I mean, it was very hard, but it was fun. When I got into the prosthetics, it took me six and a half hours. And then I would work a full 12-hour day, and then four hours to get out of it—so it was really brutal. I think at one point on that project, I spent 26 hours on set; it was the longest time I’ve ever spent on set before. It was crazy. But you know, working with Luca Guadagnino is something that I would do over and over and over again. I absolutely love him, just as a person. He is so fun and so present and so brilliant with the way that he works. He sets you up like a little spinning top and lets you go.
AVC: What was your approach to playing Patricia?
CGM: Being able to play that character was really interesting. It’s really only, like, a 20-page role; it’s the very top of the film and the last five minutes, so I came in the third month of production. They were three weeks from wrapping, so it was intense. They were deep in the trenches. And [Guadagnino] wanted my entire sequence in German, and he wanted it shot in all oners. So he was like, “No brakes, no nothing. You have to learn it all in German.” And then two days before we did it, he was like, “I don’t want just German—I want it to be Germenglish”—like, German and English integrated. And it needed to flow in proper sentences as if she’s speaking both languages. And I was like, “Cool!”
AVC: No pressure!
CGM: Yeah, no pressure at all! And we did it, you know? And it was awesome. There was nothing that I had on the table that he wasn’t totally game for, and he really pushed me hard in the best way possible to be the best that I can be. And obviously, working opposite Tilda Swinton in head-to-toe prosthetics was really cool, too.
AVC: This movie was directed by the late, great Lynn Shelton. You were working on a lot of heavy projects in and around Laggies. What was it like to work on a light rom-com with Keira Knightley in the midst of that?
CGM: I was such a fan of Keira from so young. I grew up being in love with Pride & Prejudice. I just thought she was the coolest and I just had like the biggest love for her, so working with her was very exciting. And Lynn was a really, really special woman. I also got to make a good friend in Kaitlyn Dever; we remained really close for a long time, and I still know her very well.
It was just nice. It was a really nice project. It was easy, it was fun, it was really low-budget, and we all just had a nice time together. Quite frankly, I feel like a lot of films can feel very arduous. But we were just kind of happy! It’s one of those projects that I look back on really fondly. It’s a great film, and it withstands the test of time. It’s a really interesting cast, and it’s a really sweet romantic comedy.
