Malia Pyles has a hand in her mouth, an Oscar nominee attached to it, and roughly one microsecond to process what her life has become.
“There’s a microsecond where I’m like, huh, Amy Adams’ hand is in my mouth,” Pyles told Where Is The Buzz in an exclusive interview. “That’s crazy.”
Welcome to “Cape Fear,” where Pyles plays Nevaeh, part ghost in the walls, part catfish, part chaos goblin, and where the actress spent eight months trying to understand a character she describes as one of the loneliest young women on television.
She also spent that time seducing an entire sibling set, which is where we started.
Sliding Into Two DMs at Once, a Love Story
Nevaeh texts Zack as herself. She sweeps Natalie off her feet as “Amber.” Asked which Bowden was more fun to manipulate, Pyles laughed before she diplomatically refused to pick a favorite child.
“What a wonderful question,” she said. “I mean, they’re so distinctly different.”
The Zack of it all, she said, was quieter than fans might realize, and there was more of it than made the final cut.
“You don’t get to see me and Zack’s love affair, if you will, as much, but we actually did have this really beautiful scene, me and Joe Anders, that was a longer version of what you see now where we basically are practicing the ritual together and we’re sharing in breath and we do these kind of very instinctual movements together,” Pyles said. “And of course, this is like a bastardized, perverted version of Santería. It’s not akin to the actual religion, but that was its own thing, and that felt like communion in its own right.”
Natalie, played by Lily Collias, was another animal entirely, and, according to Pyles, the one who actually knocks Nevaeh sideways.
“With Natalie, it’s just really different, because I think Natalie actually throws Nevaeh off guard in some ways,” she said. “I think it’s maybe hard to tell as a viewer that’s just kind of watching passively, but the way that I’ve seen it is always that there’s something earnest in how she sees Natalie. She actually deeply cares about her in some ways, and she wants to like free her or liberate her from the hypocrisy of her family.”
The result, she said, is a relationship that plays almost like a playdate that catches fire.
“In that way, I think those two girls got to be almost like childlike in a way together, and got to have this very chaotic love that was very intertwined,” Pyles said. “And I think if you watch the rest of the season, you see that that entanglement continues to get messier and more confusing.”
As for the actress under the aliases: “As Malia, as the actor, just because I had to, I got more time with Lily Collias. We got to really kind of go there. But both actors are just incredible, and I would love to be able to explore more with the two Bowden children, as messed up as that sounds.”
Forget the Toe. The Kiss Was the Crime Scene.
Between the “let’s play” text, the disappearing toe situation, and the drone that catches Natalie mid-yoga, Nevaeh has range. But the “oh no, she did NOT” crown, Pyles said, goes somewhere far more intimate and far more uncomfortable: the 10-second kiss she plants on her onscreen mother, played by Martha Millan.
“This one was like probably the most difficult, just because she is such a fantastic person, but the kiss that I have to give my mom for like 10 seconds,” Pyles said. “I didn’t know who they were going to cast, but then when I met Martha Millan, she’s so sweet, and she is so petite, and I’m wearing these like big boots, and I’m kind of towering over her.”
The discomfort, she argues, is the point.
“I think that scene was really important to kind of contextualize their relationship and their power dynamic and kind of the trauma that exists between those two characters,” she said. “But, man, was it uncomfortable to film.”
Much of the rest, she said, came from a set that let her play, including bits with Natalie that never existed on the page.
“The beauty of this set was like I got a lot of permission and I got a lot of freedom, and so some of the parts that you see of like even me and Natalie were unscripted, and we got to kind of just like bounce off of each other,” Pyles said. “After those moments, there was always a lot of laughter. But yeah, it was a lot. It was a lot for sure.”
Two Words From Javier Bardem That Broke the Internet’s Theories: ‘My Daughter’
The reveal that has cracked fan theories wide open, Nevaeh’s real connection to Max Cady, landed on Pyles before she even had the job.
“I actually found out in the process of my auditions,” she said. “My callback was when they revealed to me that Javier Bardem specifically would be playing my father, and that completely threw me for a loop.”
She was, by her own account, already gone on the project.
“I was already so enamored with the project because of who was attached, Scorsese and Spielberg, and also Nick Antosca. I’m such a huge fan,” Pyles said. “And I love the original ‘Cape Fear, and I love psychological thrillers. I was already in it. But then I find out about Javier Bardem, and I find out about Max Cady, and my mind was just blown open.”
The first meeting with her onscreen father went better than she feared.
“When I met Javier, I remember I kind of like was creeping up to him, because I didn’t know how he would be or how he would react to me,” she said. “And I remember I was like, ‘Hi.’ And he immediately was like, ‘My daughter.’ And he gave me this big, warm bear hug. And you know, that’s the type of man he is. His kindness is completely disarming. I was immediately kind of put at ease.”
Sitting on the secret while the internet guessed wrong, meanwhile, was its own sport.
“It’s been fun, the fan theories, because definitely early days I saw some comments online being like, ‘Oh, that’s not his daughter, that’s just some random like drug dealer,'” Pyles said. “And that was really fun to kind of be like, sitting with that information and be like, ‘Ooh, just wait until you see.'”
Table for Two, Plus One Oscar Nominee’s Hand in Her Mouth
Then there is the diner scene, in which Amy Adams’ Anna corners Nevaeh, throws threats around, and Nevaeh does not so much as blink. How much of that cool was acting?
“Most of it was internally screaming,” Pyles said. “Most of it was like, ‘Oh, cut.’ And then I’m like, at the end of the day, I’m just such a fan.”
Adams, she said, made the terror survivable by treating a much younger actor as a genuine opponent.
“Thank God for Amy Adams, because I think she’s so poised and she’s also such a technical actor, and she really likes to get into the details,” Pyles said. “For me, I realized pretty early on that she did see me as like a sparring partner, and I felt like across a table there was equity.”
Between takes, the sparring partners talked about their families. And musical theater.
“As much as I was being an aggressor towards her, in the in-betweens, she was asking me about my family, and I was asking her about hers, and we spoke about musical theater,” she said. “I think that’s just such a testament to a true leader on set, that they can occupy space with people coming in at all different points of their career and just be so kind and so generous.”
Which brings us back to the hand.
“Every step of the way, I was like, I can’t believe that I’m doing this to her,” Pyles said. “Like, I had to literally bite her hand.”
Her verdict on the whole ordeal: “It was a gift. Yeah, for sure it was a gift.”
Villain, Victim, or Chaos Goblin? The Defense Rests.
The thesis of this “Cape Fear” is that nobody is purely evil. So what is Nevaeh?
“I think yes to all, which is kind of a convoluted way to answer,” Pyles said. “But I spent eight months with this girl. I tried to understand her on like a molecular level.”
What she found was less a monster than a recruit.
“This is a very lonely young woman,” she said. “Sometimes she acts in these very aggressive ways, but in a lot of ways I think she’s emulating her father, and she’s been given this sole mission in life.”
Antosca, the showrunner, gave her the detail that reframed everything.
“I talked to Nick, our showrunner, early on, and I was made aware that she’s been being groomed since she was like 12 or 13 years old,” Pyles said. “And I just think, if you were to imagine somebody in sixth or seventh grade, and how innocent they are and how directionless they are, if they had this voice that is as charming as Max Cady’s come into their life and tell them this is where the evil lies, it’s your duty to retroactively put things right.”
Empathy, however, is not a pardon.
“I have a lot of empathy for her, but I definitely think there is no justification for some of the actions that she does,” she said. “But I love the moral ambiguity. I love the flaws that are deep within the foundation of the Bowden household.”
Those flaws, she notes, have an address, and she’s living in it.
“I think you see that literally, visually manifest by me living in the walls,” Pyles said. “Like, I’m the evil that lurks in the house. But am I the evil, or are the secrets that already exist between the characters the real dishonesty?”
As for how mad fans should be by the finale, she’d like to enter one plea into the record.
“It’s a complicated answer, and it’s one that’s always in flux for me,” she said, “but I hope that people by the end of it can see that she is more than just her actions and her heinous laugh in a movie theater.”
Court adjourned. The walls, however, are still listening.
Watch Malia Pyles’ full interview below!
