Halle Berry Explains Why She Barely Showered & Lived with Dirt While Making New Film

We spoke to Halle Berry leading up to the release of Never Let Go, her chilling new thriller that sees her playing a distressed mom doing whatever it takes to protect her family. Since it’s helmed by Crawl director Alexandre Aja, you can undoubtedly expect a handful of genuinely frightening sequences throughout this story. The film’s set in a foggy wilderness, where carnivorous monsters hunt the mother and her two young boys if they don’t follow a strict set of rules that keep them tethered to their solitary house seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

“I loved it,” Belly told MovieWeb of working in the horror-thriller realm of cinema.

“I love the darker, the deeper… when you can show up to a movie set, and no matter what you look like, it’ll work for the day…
Our teeth were all yellowed, our hair was all messed up. Like, I didn’t take a shower half the time because it just helped me feel, you know, it just felt dirty
. And so it was good. And I love to sit in characters like that, where, no matter what happens, use it for the character, and it’s all good.”

Berry goes all in for Never Let Go as “Momma” to two young boys in an emotionally charged performance that screams authenticity. “A mother, you know, always sits clearly, solidly in my body since I had my daughter 16 years ago. Like, conjuring up a mother is not hard to do, and I bring a lot of my own feelings about motherhood to these mother roles. I’m a fierce protector of my children, and I get to, you know, sort of use that in this film. This was a very dark mother, you know… but also, you know, still protective and fierce.” Berry continued:

Read Our Review of Never Let Go

Berry added:

“And so, while this mother was a little dark and maybe struggling with a little bit of mental illness, in some ways.
She had been driven crazy, or was she crazy? Or was the evil real? Was it not real? Was she torturing them
… You had a lot of questions, and I love that about this version of a mother. But at the end of the day, you ask that question:
What will you do for your children? And I think she proved in this movie: absolutely anything
.”

Watch Our Interview with Halle Berry, Percy Daggs IV & Anthony Jenkins Below

Halle Berry Had ‘Little Rituals’ with Her Co-Stars of Never Let Go

Berry’s maternal turn is certainly aided by the dynamic performers who portray her two distressed sons in the film. Percy Daggs IV and Anthony Jenkins both have a bright Hollywood future ahead of them, and you’ll agree after seeing them immerse into their characters in Never Let Go.

“We cast Percy first, and trying to find his brother was really hard to do,” Berry told us, adding:

“But we noticed in the audition process how they just kind of, you know, clicked. So that was a very big part of us actually choosing Anthony, because they had a chemistry that you have to have, right? And then it was like, when we’re on the set, we spent time together.
We tried to have little rituals that would make us feel connected. And then the other thing is, they’re just phenomenal performers
… They’re very talented young boys.”