Sydney Sweeney’s character Claire in Apple TV+’s tense psychological thriller “Echo Valley” is a volatile, heroin-addicted young woman whose reckless decisions escalate into deadly ramifications. Her downward trajectory comes to a head when she arrives at her mother’s (Julianne Moore) remote home, high, frantic, blood-soaked and unraveling — a storm of emotions that erupt uncontrollably.
“When you have a scene partner like Julianne, it’s not as hard as you would think,” she tells Variety of the intense, unhinged moments. “She is such an amazing actress and just so emotionally available and open, it makes you feel safe. So I felt very, very comfortable going to very deep raw places.”
To discover what those “raw places” would be like for an addict who has reached the point of no return, she took to YouTube for research. “I watched a lot of videos. There’s a YouTube series of this guy that interviews people on Skid Row that have struggled with addiction and are [still] currently. I watched a lot of them and drew from different stories that they would tell or mannerisms that they have.”
And, she says, sometimes she just let the emotions flow naturally. “Sometimes, to be honest, I don’t really plan anything, or I don’t like to think it through,” she laughs. “I don’t know if that’s great, but for me, it’s like, you don’t really rehearse a conversation that you’re gonna have. Like, I didn’t rehearse things out. I kind of like being able to see whatever’s gonna happen, happen. It’s really exciting. And then you can learn in the process and discover new things.”
In the gripping drama, Sweeney’s Claire finds herself over her head in trouble when her reckless actions trigger a spiraling crisis. When she bursts into her mother’s quiet rural life — shaken, bloodied, and desperate — Claire draws them both into a dangerous reckoning on murder and cover-up. As buried truths come to light, mother and daughter must navigate a gauntlet of fear, betrayal and fierce devotion.
“It’s a domestic drama wrapped in a thriller, which is very unusual,” says Moore, who plays the strong mama bear who goes to drastic lengths to protect her daughter. “It really reminded me of those sort of old-fashioned movies from the forties where there was a woman at the center of a story, a woman who seemed rather ordinary, who was able to achieve kind of extraordinary things. I was really grateful to be able to do something like that because these kinds of stories don’t come along very often.”
Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney and “Echo Valley” director and producer Michael Pearce
Although the emotionally charged interactions between Claire and Kate make one wonder if the actors needed a long nap after shooting them, it wasn’t like that at all, because that mother-daughter relationship on screen came easily because of the special bond Moore and Sweeney had from day one off screen.
“It was very emotional, the scenes that we were filming were complex and deep and very electrically charged, but we were having so much fun together,” Sweeney says. “Like, at any moment we would call cut. We were laughing and talking and having a good time together and with the crew. So what you see on camera wasn’t what was off camera.”
“Echo Valley” is now streaming on AppleTV+.
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