Who did Selena Gomez play in The Dead Don’t Die? Unlocking Her Character’s Mystery
Have you enjoyed watching the zombie movie The Dead Don’t Die? You must have analyzed Selen Gomez’s character there then! She had a major impact on the film despite not being the lead. And that’s what her co-star from that movie Bill Muray has shared. The film had an ensemble cast including Adam Driver, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Tilda Swinton, Tom Waits, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Rosie Perez, Iggy Pop, Carol Kane, Austin Butler along with Selena Gomez and Bill Muray, and revolves around police force of a small town, as they fight a sudden zombie invasion.
Selena Gomez’s character explained
In The Dead Don’t Die, Selena Gomez portrayed a teenage traveler named Zoe. Though their demise occurred offscreen, she and her friends’ efforts did not allow the group to survive the zombie apocalypse. Adam Driver’s character, Officer Ronnie Peterson, regretfully chops off the heads of the three visitors to keep them from becoming zombies. Despite what happens, this act saved them from a potentially worse destiny in the future.
Zoe and her friends take refuge in a motel, hoping to escape the horrors outside. However, their plan fails, and Zoe’s gnawed and bloodied body is discovered later, only partially intact, by Ronnie, Cliff, and Officer Mindy (Chloe Sevigny).
Ronnie decides to decapitate Zoe to prevent her from becoming a zombie. His colleagues stare in disbelief as he holds up her severed head. Despite being very gruesome, this scene shows the extreme measures people took during the apocalyptic times.
Instead of using a dummy head, Selena Gomez contributed to the authenticity of the scene by kneeling next to Adam Driver, giving the illusion that he was holding her by the hair. Special effects were later added in post-production to remove the rest of her body and to create the appearance of guts and black smoke emanating from her neck.
Producer Joshua Astrachan noted that Gomez was “very funny and cool about it,” adding that she appreciated the unexpected magic trick of the scene and the humor it brought, much like the rest of the cast and crew.
This film marked Selena Gomez’s first live-action role since her kidney transplant in 2017.
Bill Murray reflects on gruesome scene in The Dead Don’t Die
While discussing the final scene of the movie that involved Gomez’s death, Bill Murray said that it was so hard for him to watch and he could not even watch it.
Murray was unable to see Adam Driver perform the critical act directly, as he was not in the line of sight on set. However, witnessing the shadow of Driver’s machete swing deeply affected him. “Just as a visual, it’s disturbing,” he shared. “It’s very disturbing, especially after knowing her. You can’t help but think, What if that really were happening?”
He elaborated on the emotional impact of such scenes, stating, “If you really commit to the idea that you have to kill your friends, you have to cut yourself off from them. That’s something that vibrates inside of you, that stays in you. You just don’t easily exhale that.”
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