Morena Baccarin faces a world that’s been taken over by monsters in the new thriller Elevation — and she knows exactly what she would need in order to survive a real-life apocalypse.
“My family,” Baccarin, 45, exclusively told Us Weekly, referring to husband Ben McKenzie and their children. (She shares kids Frances, 8, and Arthur, 3, with McKenzie, and son Julius, 12, with ex-husband Austin Chick.)
Baccarin went on to add some more items to her list, telling Us, “But after my kids and husband, a really good book that I could read over and over and over again, some sort of device to play music, or [to] play crossword puzzles. It wouldn’t even be about contact with [other] people, but more about, like, art or entertainment. And clothes!”
Set in the mountains of Colorado, Elevation — which hit theaters on November 8 — follows single father Will (Anthony Mackie), Nina (Baccarin) and Katie (Maddie Hasson) as they venture away from the safety of their homes to save the life of a young boy in peril. The twist? Monsters have invaded the Earth, causing all humans to live above 8,000-foot elevation where the creatures can’t survive.
“I read the script and it was a bit of a page-turner for me,” Baccarin told Us of taking on the role. “I really enjoyed how scary and fun and how unique this character was. [Nina is] tortured, she is in a bad place. And she’s desperately trying to save humanity. So I felt like those were some very noble goals.”
Baccarin added that it can be “unfortunately rare” to find female characters who have a “real purpose,” adding, “I was really drawn to that.”
Purpose is certainly something Nina has; an innovative physicist, she helps create a weapon meant to extinguish the predators who are eliminating humans one by one. Baccarin, for her part, appreciated getting to portray a woman in STEM — and being allowed to execute it authentically.
“Usually the STEM women in films are, like, beautiful [and] long-haired, but they have glasses on because they’re a little dorky,” she explained. “It was really refreshing to [play] somebody that had some darkness to her [and] wasn’t perfect. [Someone] that was a bit of a mess.”
When asked about her trend of taking on roles of strong, independent women — Baccarin stars as Vanessa in the Deadpool franchise and is gearing up to portray Mickey Fox on the upcoming series Sheriff Country — the actress referenced Sigourney Weaver’s recent Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
“She was asked about why she always plays such strong women. And she said, ‘Because I think I’m just playing women. They usually are strong because we have to be. We don’t have a choice to give up,’” Baccarin recalled. “And I thought that really sort of epitomized who [NIna] is [in Elevation]. She still has a lot to do and is going to figure it out even though she’s in a dark place.”
Playing a flawed character in a post-apocalyptic setting also meant spending a lot less time in the hair and makeup chair, which Baccarin couldn’t have been more grateful for.
“I think I was in hair and makeup for, like, 15 minutes for this movie, which was also really, really refreshing,” she told Us. “The least amount of time I can spend in hair and makeup, I usually go for, honestly.”
Baccarin added that although there are times where a lengthier hair and makeup process is required — she cited “playing Marilyn Monroe” or prosthetic use as a few examples — she believes the film industry is entering an era of letting people look “a little more realistic” on screen. That philosophy worked in her favor when stepping into the role of Nina.
“[Nina] was somebody who did not care about her looks — not because she was ugly, but genuinely because she had bigger things to think about,” she explained. “Looks wasn’t a part of the character’s story that we were telling. So we literally had to just do dirt and make my hair look like I hadn’t combed it in however many months or years it had been.”
While Baccarin said it could be a struggle to not look a mess on her downtime after not brushing her hair on set, she found the experience to be “really liberating” overall.
“It was so amazing,” she said. “I realized [how] to just be in the moment in the film and not have to be touched up a lot or not have to worry about looking a certain way.”
One thing that wasn’t so easy? Relying heavily on the use of CGI when it came to fighting monsters on set.
“We had, like, renderings and drawings of the creatures, but we couldn’t see it, obviously. So that was a little challenging, especially when you’re in Boulder, [Colorado], and in mountains and it’s just, like, beautiful scenery and they’re like, ‘Imagine that between those two peaks right there is the [monster] thing.’ And you’re like, ‘OK, right. I gotta really put myself in this creepy, eerie quiet world with very few humans in it,’” she said with a laugh. “But I think that’s the challenge and the fun of what we do.”
Elevation is in theaters now.
With reporting by Nicole Massabrook
