Written by Grace W. Emerson.

Sophie Thatcher has made a career out of characters who seem to be running from something, even when they are standing completely still. In hit series ‘Yellowjackets,’ she brought a bruised, wary intensity to Natalie, a teenager shaped by survival before she fully understood what survival meant. In ‘Companion’ and ‘Heretic,’ she sharpened that same interior voltage into something darker and more dangerous. At Cannes 2026, Thatcher arrived with ‘Her Private Hell,’ a futuristic vision of isolation and revenge from visionary Nicolas Winding Refn. And by the sound of it, the experience pushed her somewhere new.

Speaking with Elvis Mitchell during Cannes, Thatcher described her collaboration with Refn as both terrifying and irresistible. “Working with Nic was a new move for me because he’s an auteur,” Thatcher said. “It was the most intense experience of my life, but I’m craving that and I need that.”

When Mitchell asked whether she had been familiar with Refn’s work before shooting, Thatcher was clear: preparation mattered. “Yes. I think it’s so important to do your homework,” she said, adding that Cannes represented “another level” for her, something “completely surreal.” But the homework only took her so far. Once inside Refn’s world, the process became less about certainty than going with the flow. “You don’t know what’s going to happen the next day. It’s scary but it’s a good kind of scary.”

Elvis Mitchell & Sophie Thatcher. Courtesy of Jane Owen PR.

That productive fear appears to have shaped ‘Her Private Hell’ from the inside out. Thatcher plays Elle, a haunted character defined by uncertainty. Mitchell noted the confidence required to play someone so unconfident, and Thatcher admitted that feeling lost was not something she had to fake.

“I did feel quite lost while shooting this,” Thatcher said. “When I was lost it worked, because she’s [the character] so lost and so misguided … I watched it two different times. It’s interesting that this film, if you watch it in a different mind state, it’ll change. You have to be open to interpretation and to a new experience. I think this [Cannes] is the perfect place because I think people are of that mentality naturally.”

Refn’s method, as Thatcher described it, was immersive, giving his actors take after take until performance began to fall away. “He [Niclas Winding Refn] does so many takes with us that it strips us bare to an extent,” Thatcher said. “You figure out the technicality, the movement, and you become one with everything because you’ve done it so many times. Sometimes you’re so exhausted you have nothing left to give, so it’s truthful in that regard because you’re not putting on a show anymore. It’s just in you.”

There is something revealing in that phrase: it’s just in you. Thatcher’s best work often feels like that. She has a gift for making silence feel combustible, for suggesting an entire private history through posture and the way her eyes seem to register danger before anyone else in the room does.

Mitchell, attuned to the physical grammar of Refn’s films, pointed to the director’s ability to make viewers “feel the floor beneath people’s feet,” to sense how bodies inhabit a space. Thatcher said Refn’s technique of turning the monitor toward her initially frightened her, but changed how she thought about performance.

Thatcher continued: “He would turn around the monitor, and I was so scared of that at first but it helped me so much to disconnect myself from Sophie and see Elle and how I inhabit the space. And now, on Yellowjackets this season, I’m asking them to turn around the monitor and everyone’s like ‘What are you, a narcissist?’ But it helps! To be able to see that gave me a certain confidence that helped me understand how I live in the space.”

Asked what it was like working with him, Thatcher laughed about the unexpected soundtrack of the shoot. “He played a lot of ABBA on set, he had great range. It was like everything I bring up he puts into the script and I never had that before. It made me feel like I was also part of the world-building, which was really exciting.”

Music became another portal. Mitchell asked whether Thatcher had curated a playlist to inspire her performance. “The song I made him play on repeat was Frankie Teardrop by Suicide, where he’s like ‘AAAHHH’ and I’m just throwing a fit, jumping up and down, absolutely losing myself. And that was the most fun I’ve ever had on set. Ever. And I don’t think anything tops that.”

For all the film’s stillness, ‘Her Private Hell’ also demanded physical abandon. Thatcher said sequences of evasion were not tightly choreographed in the traditional sense. “So much of the physicality was improvised,” Thatcher explained. “Obviously somebody [a stunt coordinator] was there, but it wasn’t choreographed because it was just fluid and coming out of us. Something about that just unleashed this animalistic side in me.”

That animalistic quality has long flickered beneath Thatcher’s screen presence. Her characters often seem watchful because they have had to be. Mitchell asked why she is so often drawn to people with trust issues, particularly at such a young age. Thatcher’s answer was less about damage than awareness.

“It’s about being intuitive and alert, and aware of everything,” she said. “That’s how you navigate this industry. I think if anything I’m very open, and sometimes it’s easier to play opposites. It’s complicated.”

Complicated is the right word for Thatcher’s emerging screen identity. She is open, but she plays guardedness extraordinarily well. She’s only 25 years old, but her performances often carry the weight of someone who has already seen too much.

Refn’s cinema has always been concerned with surfaces that conceal violent emotional weather; neon skins, empty rooms, bodies suspended between glamour and dread. Thatcher, with her ability to make interior conflict feel physical, seems like an ideal vessel for that world. The result, she suggests, is a film that resists fixed interpretation.

‘Her Private Hell’ premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2026, and set for release on July 24, 2026.