Mia Goth is 'fearless' in Maxxxine, director Ti West says

Watch: Maxxxine director Ti West talk about his collaboration with Mia Goth

Mia Goth has given the X trilogy her all since the beginning, and is "fearless" not only as an actor but as a collaborator according to director Ti West, who hails Goth's work both in front of and behind the camera when speaking with Yahoo.

The pair reunite for Maxxxine, the sequel sees Goth reprise her role as Maxine Minx, the sole survivor of the Texas massacre that took place in X. Ready to take on Hollywood and have her name up in starry lights, Maxine auditions for horror director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki) and lands the part but her dreams may be shattered by the infamous serial killer the Night Stalker... if she doesn't stop him first.

West and Goth have been close collaborators since filming began on the 2022 original, and it's clear that the director could not think any higher of her: "From when I first met me until now, she was very dedicated, she was very ready to work extremely hard, and I think to be seen as someone who was willing to leave it all on the field.

"She's a very fearless actor, and that's what I was looking for in a collaborator and ultimately the partner in crime in all this. Someone who is willing to work as hard or at times harder than me, and vice versa, and she's just been the perfect person for that."

Reflecting on their journey together on and off screen, West says that it's "hard to say" how they've grown: "We've been doing this for nearly five years now so people keep asking what it's like to be done or what it's like for you guys and it's a little bittersweet to be where we are now. But that's such a 30,000-foot view of something that we don't have that perspective on [yet]."

Maxxxine explores the seedy underside of Hollywood

West was keen to "embrace the artifice" of Los Angeles in Maxxxine, unravelling the "facade nature" of Hollywood to represent more than just Maxine's journey to stardom: "The summer of 1985 was this kind of intersection of the backdrop of moral panic and censorship in movies and TV, and things like that.

"There was a serial killer in Los Angeles, it was a good contrast for one of the most glamorous cities in the world to also have this really seedy, dark, scary underbelly to it, and that just felt like the right time and place to put this character in her attempt to make it to the top of Hollywood."

Joining Goth to make this happen for Maxine in the third film were a number of actors, including Debicki, Giancarlo Esposito, as Maxine's agent Teddy Knight, and Kevin Bacon, as private investigator John Labat who is hired to look into the would-be Hollywood starlet.

West admits he's "such a fan" of all the new cast members, adding: "To go from two very contained movies into a much broader ensemble in Hollywood and to go out to a lot of really successful, talented, famous people that I've always liked and have them want to be a part of it... I was really grateful for them, for them to have been a part of it and they're all just such great actors and they're just great people as well.

Read more: Everything we know about Maxxxine

"It was really fun to collaborate with them, and I think they all had a little bit of a reason to do the movie. It was a little different than the last things they've been doing. That's always fun as the director when the people coming in are really ready to shake off whatever they were last doing because then they're really open to trying things.

"They're really open to figuring out where they can go as a performer, and I think all of them showed that in the movie in folds."

A unique trilogy

Maxxxine, X and prequel Pearl each have their own distinct look and feel, and for West it was important to convey something with each.

Saying he had "so many" influences for the trilogy, West reflects: "Being part three of a trilogy where cinema and how it affects people at different times in their lives, or from different eras of filmmaking, is such a through line for me that it was more about recreating both an era and recreating a feel of a certain time in cinema.

"So it's less one specific thing, or this particular reference or that particular reference, and more just the feeling of what you know in my nostalgia and my mind what movies felt like in the era."

Going on to talk about Maxxxine, he adds: "I think it's more the 80s in general, I'm trying to think if there's anything that really encapsulates it. It's probably better for other people to say."

The director admits that having fan expectations this time around was something that weighed on him after the X films became a huge success, though he feels "it's more in the back of [his] mind now" than whilst shooting.

"I think because I'm not on social media I don't see any sort of fandom or discourse or anything like that. I hear about it, but I don't experience it day-to-day, and I've been so busy working that my heads down just focused on the movies," West says.

"I definitely was aware in writing it that people will be expecting it and I have to kind of subvert expectations, in my opinion. But now that it's finally time to show people the movie and people are showing up dressed as the characters, it's becoming more real to me in that regard, but I think part of the fun of the three movies is that they're all very different.

"Hopefully people like all three, but it's totally reasonable to have your favourite, and surely argue with other people about which one you think is the best or which one you think is the worst. That's kind of the fun, the ongoing conversation for lack of a better term when making these movies."

Maxxxine premieres in cinemas on Friday, 5 July.