She also had to fight for the part. It’s a charmingly self-effacing story she’s been telling in interviews lately: “I read the script and was completely obsessed. And then I met Os,” she says, referring to the movie’s talented writer-director Osgood Perkins (son of the late Anthony Perkins). To prepare, she’d re-watched Lambs and studied what Jodie Foster had done, and she came away feeling good. But then: “I got a call from my team and they were like, you know, he just doesn’t think you’re right for this role.” Crestfallen but undeterred, she made an audition tape.
“When you talk to me, the type of person that I am—I’m very different from this role,” Monroe says. “But this is my job. I’m an actor. My job is to transform and change.” Her tape won her the part. “And I really appreciated that: that I had to work and prove it not only to him, but to myself.”
Wardrobe helped too. Longlegs is set in the Pacific Northwest, mostly in 1993, and Harker is dressed to match the woodsy, overcast atmosphere: beige suits, cream blouses, dark, flat hair. Promoting Longlegs has given Monroe, who works with the stylists Chloe and Chenelle Delgadillo, a chance to go to fashion extremes. Witness the Courrèges bra and wrap skirt she wore to the movie’s Los Angeles premiere. (“I’ve never worn less, ever.”) But the film dresses her way, way down and nearly hides her in plain sight.
