Known for her various roles in Vampire Academy, Mako Mermaids, Lightning Point, and The Preppie Connection, Lucy Fry has an extensive body of work in both TV and film. Last year, Fry appeared in the indie Mr. Church. This year, Fry can be seen in the popular Australian miniseries Wolf Creek, as well as the time-travel thriller 11.22.63.
In the supernatural thriller, The Darkness, Fry plays Stephanie Taylor, a teen who returns home from a Grand Canyon vacation with her family only to discover that they’ve brought back a supernatural force that preys on her fears and vulnerabilities. In this one-on-one interview Fry reveals the challenges she faced in shooting the film and bringing her character to life.
What did you think when you read the script?
Lucy Fry: It was one of the scariest things I ever read. The supernatural element really terrified me. I’m not really in touch with that. It was foreign and really terrifying to see a family that felt so familiar, who on the surface felt like a normal, loving family. Then this spirit comes in and pulls out of the darkness. What scared me was that it was so relatable, that it could happen.
Did you audition for the role of Stephanie? What was that like?
Fry: When I was auditioning for it, I had to read certain scenes, but I couldn’t finish them because they scared me so much.
What was your approach in developing the Stephanie’s character? What did you see as her weakness, her strength?
Fry: I saw her weakness as a fear of being alone. She has a family but they haven’t given her a lot of attention. She feels as though she has no space in the family and there’s no room for her. So she starts to expect that physically and she becomes bulimic and anorexic. She’s kind of wasting away into nothing and has these desperate cries for attention. What she wants more than anything is to be seen and heard. I felt so much empathy for her and for her journey to connect with her family. She feels shame and anger and tries to deal with her anger. 
What did you draw from in bringing out the problems of a girl with an eating disorder?
Fry: Unfortunately, it’s ingrained in much of our culture to want to be skinny and be a certain size. When I was in a series where I had to fit into a tight costume for six months, I remember doing all sorts of things to keep my hips from getting wider. It was excruciating. Even in high school, I remember having these ideas about how to stay really small and how I was being cruel to myself. It’s awful how accepted this is in our culture. I wasn’t consciously aware of how destructive I was being. It was really great to try to expose that through Stephanie’s character. I felt good that I had the opportunity to share that, and to bring about more empathy about that situation.
The film’s paranormal advisor said you were being followed around the house by a ghost. What was that like?
Fry: The whole thing was very creepy. There supposedly was this paranormal presence in the house, but I couldn’t really feel it. What with the filming, I didn’t feel threatened. It kind of opened up the possibility for that to be a real experience.
What was it like shooting in the Desert?
Fry: It was quite beautiful. Very dry. Since I’m Australian, it was a foreign landscape that I couldn’t really connect with. It was quite eerie.
What can you tell us about Cleveland?
Fry: We’re expecting to film that soon. It’s a great script. Each person in the story goes through some transformation. They get to a point in their life where they’re finally doing what they want to do. It starts with them being stuck and then they each go through these crises. My character is the whimsical person who just moved to New York and she’s wondering about her career.
Alex A. Kecskes is a published author of "Healer a Novel" and "The Search for Dr. Noble"—both now available on Amazon. He has written hundreds of film reviews and celebrity interviews for a wide variety of online and print outlets. He has covered red carpet premieres and Comic-Con events for major films and independent releases.
