Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley reunite in the intense, dark romance film The Bride!, which reimagines the classic Frankenstein story with a bold twist. After winning her first Golden Globe for her role in Hamnet, Buckley shifts focus to this daring project directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, bringing to life a complex and violent love story that premieres in theaters on March 6. Set largely in 1930s Chicago, the film follows Frankenstein’s monster, portrayed by Bale, as he seeks connection through the creation of an undead bride, played by Buckley, sparking a fiery and chaotic journey.
The film not only transforms the iconic monster narrative into a dark romance but also probes the nature of humanity and rage, combining brutal violence with moments of passionate rebellion and unexpected musical sequences. The dramatic energy on set reflects the ferocity and wildness of the story, underscoring the electrifying chemistry between Bale and Buckley.
Jessie Buckley Transforms Into a Bold, Defiant Bride
Jessie Buckley’s commitment to embodying the Bride of Frankenstein during an Entertainment Weekly cover shoot vividly captured the character’s ferocity and spirit. While surrounded by gothic dancers and atmospheric fog, Buckley executed a physically demanding performance that nearly resulted in a minor accident when her veil was pulled off, snapping her head back unexpectedly. This moment was not only planned but also inspired spontaneous improvisation, revealing the Bride’s rebellious nature.
Buckley’s portrayal channels raw physicality and emotional intensity, as she describes enjoying the freedom of movement and exploration of the female body’s wild and expressive potential, especially as a woman and new mother. The role pushed Buckley to explore multiple facets of identity through her portrayal of not only the Bride but also the original Frankenstein author Mary Shelley and a murdered woman named Ida, demanding different accents, personalities, and physicalities.
Any opportunity to just let your body go that way is so fun. As a woman, and especially post-birth, I want to be in that place more,
Buckley says.
The female body is so full of expression, and it isn’t something that’s limited to just being objectified or to be appealing. It’s something that’s way more expansive and wild and curious. Since I’ve been in that experience with The Bride! — and with Hamnet — I just don’t want anything else now.
The actress’s intense dedication impressed her co-star Christian Bale and director Maggie Gyllenhaal alike, with Bale praising Buckley as someone who injects seriousness and reverence coupled with raw, unfiltered humanity to her storytelling.
The Film’s Radical Reinterpretation of Frankenstein’s Monster
In Gyllenhaal’s reinterpretation, Christian Bale’s character, known only as Frank, distances himself from the traditional label “Frankenstein’s monster.” He embraces a deeply human perspective in naming himself after the father who created him, emphasizing his tragic loneliness after a century of isolation. Frank’s quest to find a bride leads him to Dr. Euphronious, played by Annette Bening, a brilliant scientist who is moved by his vulnerability and promises to create an undead companion.
They think they know it, but they don’t know it,
Bale explains, highlighting the film’s subversion of expectations.
It’s a great, kick-ass, bold, original film. This is real cinema.
Director Gyllenhaal embraces unconventional changes that may unsettle literary purists, challenging the notion of the monster’s identity and humanity. The Bride introduced here is fiercely alive, full of curiosity and defiance — qualities that captivate Frank and propel their combined journey.
People give me a hard time about not calling him ‘Frankenstein’s monster,’ but he just would never call himself that,
Gyllenhaal remarks.
It’s not entirely inaccurate to say that Frankenstein is his father’s name. It’s so sad to me that he calls Dr. Frankenstein his father, but isn’t that so human and real?
I sort of imagined he’s been sitting in the woods, sticking a knife in his head and crying his eyes out, and he just wants someone who will sit quietly on a log with him for the rest of his life,
Bale adds, emphasizing Frank’s longing for acceptance.
What begins as a search for companionship quickly turns into a dark, violent romance marked by a crime spree and cultural rebellion. Together, Frank and the Bride challenge societal injustices with fierce intensity. Buckley notes the personal exhaustion and exhilaration they both felt on set portraying these wild characters.
We were both intense,
Buckley says.
We both were two greyhounds that were just let out of their kennels, and it was really, really thrilling. It was really probably the most intense, exhausting shoot of my life, but it was so fun.
Multiple Roles, One Powerful Performance
In a remarkable display of versatility, Buckley plays three distinct characters in The Bride!: Mary Shelley as the narrative voice; Ida, a murdered young woman; and the amnesiac, reanimated Bride, whose pale and scarred visage carries the film’s emotional weight. The challenge of portraying different accents and physicalities did not daunt Buckley, who transformed fully into each role, eliciting admiration from Bale and Gyllenhaal.
You recognize when there’s the arrival of a person who is not business as usual,
Bale says.
What she does is very serious, and in many ways sacred, but it’s also bloody ridiculous and hilarious and raw and profane. It’s everything that you want in a storyteller.
Gyllenhaal cast Buckley as her first choice, convinced of her unique ability to embody the Bride’s spirit. Initially hesitant to reveal the project, Gyllenhaal finally shared the script during a wine-filled evening, igniting Buckley’s passion to embrace the role.
I really tried not to write [the parts] for her,
Gyllenhaal recalls.
I’ve had the experience as an actress of someone telling me, ‘I’m writing this for you,’ and then they didn’t offer it to me. And I thought, ‘Well, who knows? What if the Bride ends up having to be 75 or something? I can’t speak to her about it.’
We drank too much wine,
Gyllenhaal admits,
And I said, ‘I’m working on something. Do you want to just read it?’ We read the opening sequence, pretty similar to how it is in the movie.
It was extraordinary. It was literally like something electrical in my hands,
Buckley recalls.
I really had no idea how to do it, which is always an exciting place to want to do something in. You couldn’t help but be terrified.
Securing studio support proved challenging, as executives were initially skeptical about casting an actor without a social media presence. Gyllenhaal fought hard for Buckley, backed by Warner Bros. co-chairs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, who championed the decision.
She had to basically convince the powers that be that it didn’t matter that I didn’t have an Instagram account, that she only wanted me to do it,
Buckley explains.
And I’m very, very grateful — it’s not an easy thing to do. And I also get it on behalf of the studio. It’d be way easier if I had a million Instagram followers for them. But I don’t think that actually works. At the end of the day, you want a story to have life, and whatever the director or writer feels is the way to make that come to life, that’s their choice.
I’m probably going to get in a lot of trouble for saying this. Maybe there was a moment where that actually had weight, and I just don’t believe it does anymore. I think people like Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Chloé Zhao, Denis Villeneuve, they’re just making their s—, doing it their way. I don’t think they can make the movies that they’ve made if they chose an ingredient based on Instagram followers rather than what color paint they wanted to use.
I’ve been an actress for many years, and I just was like, ‘I’m going to bat for this girl. Who else is going to play her?’
Gyllenhaal asserts.
When people did that for me, it changed my life, so I’m doing it. And it worked, and now she’s going to win the Oscar, so I feel very vindicated.
The Bride Emerges: Defying Silence and Finding Power
During the film’s intense scenes and the EW cover shoot, Buckley embodies the Bride’s ferocity and independence, challenging the character’s traditional portrayal as a silent, secondary figure. Instead, this Bride commands attention with an outspoken, unfiltered voice reflective of Mary Shelley’s rebellious spirit.
The movie’s called The Bride of Frankenstein, but she’s not really in it. It’s just a Frankenstein sequel, and she literally doesn’t speak,
Gyllenhaal says.
But without words, when she wakes up, she communicates ‘no f—ing way.’ She says ‘no’ to him. That’s certainly unusual now, and it must have been unusual then.
The story centers around the Bride’s quest for identity and agency, exploring her resurrection as a chance for self-expression and a challenge to societal constraints. Her transformation is turbulent, marked by violence, defiance, and evolving self-awareness.
It’s someone who has so much to say, has been so shut up,
Gyllenhaal reflects.
What happens if you try to keep your hand on a geyser? When it finally explodes, it’s going to explode with triple the energy, and that is what happens to her.
It’s a soul who’s been born again and given a second chance,
Bale explains.
And is making up for that lost time with a real vengeance of creativity, and destruction, and love, and violence, and intelligence, and stupidity, and burning the f—ing house down with it.
Buckley’s on-set energy, demonstrated through moments like swinging a wooden chair during the photoshoot, brings the Bride’s wild, untamed nature to life. Her delight in seeing herself with a reflected “third eye” foreshadows the film’s exploration of monstrous identities, both literal and metaphoric.
It looks like I’m a monster.
Aside from the literal undead status of Frank and the Bride, the movie probes the monstrous within human nature itself. Both characters grapple with their identities as “monsters” yet embody conflicting definitions of love, violence, and self-acceptance.
They’re monsters in the way that every single one of us is able to be a monster,
Bale says.
And it’s an equally violent love.
There are characters in the movie that are way more monstrous and are purely human, who haven’t been brought back from the dead. I’m more interested in that aspect of the monstrous than… Well, I also am very interested in the biting people’s tongues out and smashing their heads against the wall.
Gyllenhaal adds.
Violence and Revolution: The Bride’s Fierce Rebellion
The film does not shy away from graphic violence, central to its R rating and thematic exploration. The Bride and Frank’s reign of terror is not random cruelty, but a reaction to the injustices and violence the Bride has suffered, leading her to fight back for herself and for women everywhere.
There’s an insidious nature to an establishment that can continue to be violent towards not just women, but to everyone, and they seem to get away with it,
Buckley says.
She’s calling it out. She’s creating a revolution to speak out against the establishment that is getting away with murder. It was saying the thing out loud. You can see in my body, I was shaking from the truth of it all.
The film’s treatment of sexual violence is deliberate and unapologetic, challenging viewers without sanitizing brutal realities. Gyllenhaal emphasizes the importance of honest depiction.
I’m kind of interested in violence, as you can tell in the movie. I’m surprised sometimes by the response — people are like, ‘It’s a lot.’ Same with the sexual violence. I felt strongly that the sexual violence had to be brutal, real, because if you gloss over it, it doesn’t feel like the brutality that it is. And I got taken to task on that, too.
Not one bit of the sexual violence in the movie is unconsidered or gratuitous.
I am totally taking responsibility for my take on all of that,
Gyllenhaal adds.
And I think that it is honoring people who have gone through things like that by making it feel horrible, brutal, massive, and really difficult to watch. That’s my take, and it might be different if a man were making the movie.
The film’s raw, uncompromising tone contrasts with Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Frankenstein adaptation, which debuted around the same time but takes a very different approach.
How cool that Guillermo del Toro and I just randomly, at the same moment, are thinking about somewhat similar things? And, as it turns out, in extremely different ways,
Gyllenhaal says.
When we were both at Netflix, I thought, ‘Let’s double-feature it.’ I always thought we’ll be the 10 p.m. showing to his 8 p.m. showing, no problem.
Unique to Gyllenhaal’s project are the sweeping musical numbers, injecting surreal spectacle into the dark narrative, though the director is clear the film isn’t a traditional musical.
Defying Convention: The Film’s Dance-Infused Sequences
Can we just put to bed the thing about it being a musical?
Gyllenhaal declares.
It is not a musical at all. That’s a different form. I don’t know why that keeps coming up.
Despite this, the film features elaborate, high-energy musical scenes that deepen character development and atmosphere. Frank’s obsession with classic movie musicals during isolation leads him to form a parasocial connection with Hollywood star Ronnie Reed, played by director Gyllenhaal’s brother Jake, who returns to acting with singing and dancing in this role.
When I realized it was, it was great,
Gyllenhaal says.
He’s such an incredible singer, and I love hearing him sing. If you sit through all the credits, at the very end is one of his beautiful songs he sings. That was really a live, exciting connection, working with him on set.
Both Bale and Buckley participated in elaborate dance routines, blending styles described as a hybrid of Lady Gaga’s dynamic moves and traditional tap dancing. Intensive rehearsals and long shoot days made these sequences physically demanding but creatively liberating.
You get to humiliate yourself in a really wonderful way,
Bale observes.
I love humiliating myself, and it was fantastically exhausting, but in a really ecstatic and joyful way.
Our first ever day of shooting was a ginormous tap dance sequence for seven hours,
Buckley recounts.
It was so wild and so fun. It was like, ‘Okay, I think we’ve started!’ It felt like running a marathon. At least twice a week, I had to go and get a massage because everything would just be sore.
One particularly ambitious dance number featured 200 extras, creating a scene packed with dynamic action and dramatic storytelling, despite the long makeup process for Bale that delayed shooting schedules each day.
I had 200 extras dancing, really important acting — the major things we need in order to tell the story [in that scene], there’s like 150 of them,
Gyllenhaal explains.
My shot lists have 40 things on them per day. And because of Christian’s makeup — it took six hours because it was so subtle and real — it meant that sequence that he was in a lot of, we’d have to get slowly pushed [later every day]. We’re all kind of exhausted and euphoric at the same time. It was a weird way of working.
Behind the Scenes: Family, Collaboration, and Catharsis on Set
Director Maggie Gyllenhaal incorporated her family into the production to foster a comfortable atmosphere amid the challenging shoot. Her husband, Peter Sarsgaard, appears in a major role alongside other family members, including their daughters Ramona and Gloria, who join as extras and dancers respectively.
I just thought if they want to, come be in the movie!
Gyllenhaal says with a smile.
And they did. I love having them be in it. My little daughter, she’s 13 now, but she was 11 then, is sitting on the bar at the end. And my other daughter was, for a long time, a really serious dancer, and so she’s with the dancers.
Sarsgaard appreciated the familial reunion and collaborative environment the shoot fostered, reconnecting various talents across different projects.
Everyone was in their comfort zone on some level, and Maggie makes it very comfortable,
Sarsgaard observes.
Jake doing what he does in this movie is what I’ve been waiting for him to do for a very long time. Of course, Maggie had done Batman with Christian, and I’d known Christian for 30 years. I’d done maybe three movies with Penelope before, so it felt more like a reunion, everybody coming together to do something really special.
Christian Bale found a unique way to maintain his sanity during the demanding makeup sessions that required him to remain still for extended periods by screaming loudly as a form of release, transforming the experience into a bonding ritual with the crew.
I would scream like crazy, every day,
Bale reveals.
Just to [release the] despair, all of that restraint that you have to display when you’re sitting still for that long…. I didn’t want to do it driving into work because I thought I might cause a crash. And I didn’t want to do it by myself because I thought everyone would just think I’m going nuts.
Oh man, I’m telling you, the whole crew got involved by the end, because people would hear us screaming,
he adds.
We would open the doors, and gradually, a bit like the Bride’s revolution, a few people were going, ‘Can we do it too?’ And then by the end, there were like 30 people who would hear us and run to the makeup trailer to be a part of it and scream as well.
This ritual echoed the film’s core themes of release, rebellion, and reclaiming life, underscoring the intense yet cathartic nature of the production.
The Bride!’s Unprecedented Blend of Horror, Romance, and Musical Energy
The Bride! stands out as a fearless reinterpretation of a legendary horror icon, blending sharp social commentary, intense romance, and unexpected artistic elements such as elaborate dance sequences. Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley’s performances anchor the film, delivering a story filled with emotional complexities and physical bravado.
This movie defies traditional classifications, offering a cinematic experience that confronts dark themes of violence and empowerment, explores the monstrous within us, and channels raw, chaotic energy into a revolutionary narrative.
Directed and written by Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Bride! opens new doors in genre filmmaking, promising an unforgettable, boundary-pushing story that challenges conventions and ignites conversations on identity, rage, and love’s wildest forms.
