Halle Berry talks about filming “Everything We Had to Give” – the dog scene

Warning: Spoilers for Never let go.

There are some shocking moments in director Alexandre Aja's latest psychological horror film Never let gobut nothing is more grueling than the moment when Halle Berry's tormented matriarch tells her two sons, Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV), that she will have to kill the family dog ​​to, er, eat when food runs out.

Nolan is, of course, desperate. He manages to save the pup from death by cutting his mother's rope, thus freeing her from the hut, which leads to the film's next big shock. At a Q&A after the film's screening at Fantastic Fest in Austin on Thursday, Aja and Berry spoke about the intensity of filming after an audience member thanked them for not killing the dog.

“I would no longer have been able to work in the United States,” joked the French filmmaker about the possible consequences. “I would have been deported.”

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Berry added: “The dog scene was hard for me. It was hard for all of us. I'll tell you a secret about Alex. He has a little dog called Peanut. She's a tiny little thing. Every day while filming this movie, Alex would walk around with his dog Peanut in his coat and her face would stand out. We're all animal lovers, so filming that scene was emotionally hard for all of us.”

The scene, Berry said, “kept and kept putting off” because “we knew how emotional it would be and what feelings it would evoke, and we didn't want to do it.” But when it “finally came,” Berry said, Daggs – who, alongside Jenkins, was always an “outstanding” professional on set who did his best – had a bit of an acting block.

“I think it was because he didn't want to deal with the dog thing,” Berry noted. “It was hard. He knew he had to cry. Anytime someone's script says they have to cry, he suddenly goes dry. You can't cry.” The scene “just wasn't working,” Berry recalled, so “I decided to do something that wasn't in the script, to shake him up and get him out of his head and his fear and out of the dog thing.”

“The real testament to her talent was that when I shook them awake, everyone joined in, and Percy's tears started flowing, and he started bonding with his dog,” she said. “It's one of those moments that as an actor you just hope happens once in a movie, that you have a real moment… and that's how we got that scene. I think that one shot is the scene that ended up in the movie.”

Now in cinemas, Never let go In “The Evil,” Berry plays a troubled matriarch who looks after her two sons in a remote cabin in the woods after a being she describes as evil has taken over the world. As they search for food in the surrounding woods, they bind themselves to the cabin for protection. When son Nolan begins to question whether evil really exists, everything is called into question – and a fight for survival begins.

In the recent conversation with Weekly entertainment Berry spoke about filming in real woods (with bears!) and crafting an elaborate backstory for her troubled matriarch for the film, and thanked her young co-stars for helping her get into character. “A big part of acting is connecting to the child part of ourselves so we can be free and fearless,” Berry said. “We can take risks and be vulnerable. I love working with kids because they are all of those things. I've learned a lot from watching them.”

With additional reporting by Tiffany Kelly.