Greta Lee has loved survival stories since she was a child. She remembers devouring the “Drama in Real Life” section of Reader’s Digest, with its tales of rock-climbing catastrophes, bear attacks, and cars plunging underwater.
“I really love those kinds of stories,” Lee tells Krista Smith on the Netflix podcast Skip Intro. Lee’s latest movie, The Last House, certainly qualifies as a tale of survival.
In the film, directed by Louis Leterrier (Now You See Me, Lupin), Lee plays Ann, a mother whose ordinary, chaotic morning takes a terrifying turn when she, husband Jason (Wagner Moura), and their children discover they cannot leave their home. As their predicament grows increasingly inexplicable — and dire — the family must figure out how to survive with only what they have inside.
Lee was immediately drawn to the question at the center of the screenplay: “How do we make the most out of the least?”
For her, the family’s confinement creates an opportunity to rethink consumption and “how all of these different elements are shifting in a way that I think should make us think twice about how we choose to live our lives.”
What ultimately matters, Lee says, “is your family. And it’s those relationships, and it’s not all the stuff, and it’s not keeping up with the Joneses. It’s not climbing — bigger, better, more and more and more.” To sum it up: “It’s just love, actually.”
Still, making The Last House required more than emotional preparation. A key part of the film involved intense water work, so Lee and her co-stars were put through extensive underwater training.
“We became divers,” Lee says. “I think I have my commercial diving license. I could go do that if I wanted to.”
When Smith presses her, “Would you ever want to?” Lee doesn’t miss a beat.
“No,” she lightly quips.
Lee trained at the London School of Diving, where she learned to clear her mask, equalize the pressure in her ears, move between air tanks, and hold her breath underwater. She also discovered that she is naturally buoyant.
“I’m a floater,” she says. “My pockets [were] filled with weights just to make sure that I didn’t rise to the surface.”
During her first breath-holding test, Lee became convinced she had achieved an astonishing time. “I came up, and I was like, ‘OK, how long, guys? What was that? Eight minutes? Twelve?’ … And they said, ‘That was two minutes.’”
Once filming began, though, Lee found she could remain underwater even longer. “If the camera’s rolling, I’ll do it. I guess I’ll do almost anything.”
The experience even helped Lee overcome a lifelong fear of sharks — one so intense that, as a child, she was afraid to close her eyes in the shower. After spending days filming in the water, “I’m not afraid anymore,” she says. “I can just be in the water for hours because of what I went through making this movie.”
Hear more from Lee — including what she learned from her young co-stars, the two movies she would choose if she were trapped inside a house forever, the exact level of “famous” she is, and how she went from an “edgy New Yorker” to a California “plant person” — in her full conversation with Smith on Skip Intro.
Watch Greta Lee on Skip Intro exclusively on Netflix, or listen wherever you get your podcasts. And watch The Last House, streaming now.
