Brianne Tju Talks Being A Scream Queen For The New Generation
From Light as a Feather to I Know What You Did Last Summer, Brianne Tju is no stranger to the thriller and horror genre, solidifying herself as a rising scream queen.
Her latest project Gone In The Night finds her opposite Winona Ryder, John Gallagher Jr, and Owen Teague in a thriller that makes you question everything. “The circumstances are so outside the realm of what's normal and I like to be able to use my imagination in that way and also have the challenge of making those unrealistic circumstances feel real and grounded and human,” she told me. “For me, it's like a puzzle and, watching it, I just have to know what the mystery is. I love guessing and I think that's what's great about Gone In The Night. It will leave you guessing after every scene.”
As a Chinese and Indonesian American actress, she didn’t always see herself on screen in her favorite horror projects, but now she’s been given the chance to change that for the new generation. “I grew up watching horror films and one of my favorite scream queens is Sarah Michelle Gellar. If we look back at the really talented iconic group of scream queens that we have from the 90s and early 2000s, we don't see very much diversity, which I always found to be a shame. I thought, ‘Oh, there's no place for me in that as history has proven,’ but luckily that's not the case,” Tju shared. “The more diversity and representation we have in these horror genre films, the more perspective we're getting, the more people can actually fall in love with the genre because they see themselves reflected in it. For every role that I take on […] I have a specific set of experiences and cultural connections that are going to come through. Whether that be something you identify with or something that you're just discovering watching me, it's beautiful to see the world from a different lens.”
Tju opens up about how the industry has changed over the years. “I’ve been acting for a long time and it’s been a hustle and a grind. I feel very fortunate that I am where I am right now and that I've had the opportunity to work so much. Representation was not always a thing. I've been doing this since I was eight years old,” she said. “To see things change in the industry and the potential of what I can do as an actor and hopefully be a source of representation for somebody, I mean that's everything I want and more. I have the people I look up to and they've done so much for me, so if I can do that for anyone else then [I’m] killing it.”
Gone In The Night hits digital and on demand August 2.
