Rachel McAdams felt “underutilized” in Sam Raimi’s 2022 MCU follow-up “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” he said on Total Film, and he “promised” himself he would collaborate with her once more after the movie ended.
As a result of this promise, Raimi casts McAdams in “Send Help,” his most recent comedy thriller.
“First, she was the perfect person because she’s such a brilliant actress,” Raimi added. “I had a chance to work with her on my last film and saw how talented she was and actually underutilized, and I promised myself that I would work with her again. And then this film came up, and her warmth is wonderful.”
He continued, “The fact that she has not really played a dark, terrible villain before, [producer Zainab Azizi] is the one that told me this, really sets the audience up to be surprised.”
The poisonous power dynamic between an underappreciated and neglected employee (McAdams) and her younger, jerkish employer (Dylan O’Brien) is flipped in “Send Help” when they are abandoned on a desolate island.
“Because the movie’s focus is not a whodunnit, but what comes next, that’s what really the movie wants to do to the audience,” Raimi added. “They don’t know what’s right around the corner. It turns left when they think it’s gonna turn right, that was an important factor, that she, this good person that we know and love, becomes this terrible villain.”
