Exclusive: Annaleigh Ashford Breaks Down Her Journey From SWEENEY TODD to HAPPY FACE

It was a real delight and treat to go from playing a broad, physically, comedic character that is one of the most iconic and famous roles in the American musical theater to something where I had a camera, I mean, inches away from my face for most of the eight hours of content that we filmed

and it was nice to show an audience what was behind my eyes and in my heart

He's lying to you. He is trying to get you back in his life

Or there is a family who lost a daughter who will never get answers

Is that what your work said to you? Do you know how manipulative that is? What your father did is not your responsibility

The shit that he said and the shit that I saw. I knew. I knew something was wrong

I never did anything about it. You were a child. But I am an adult now. remember what happened last time you went because I do you weren't okay for months

Melissa you were a ghost I just I I know that if I don go there and deal with him then he won stop doing this he will never leave us alone I not sure that you want him to leave you alone

What does that mean? Because even after everything that he has done, you still love him

He wasn't always a monster. He became one. Before that, he was just my dad

You never saw that, but I did. Well, it's so nice to talk to you

Congratulations on this series. You've done really beautiful work here. Thanks. Obviously, this is based on a true story

There's a lot of emphasis in the show about kind of the obsession of true crime within the culture

Was this a story you had been familiar with before starting? Yeah, I was actually familiar with Melissa Moore's journey through her podcast, Happy Face

and then also through my own true crime consumption. but my mom is actually the true crime officinato in the family

And she's the one that I call for all things true crime. And she knew everything about this story

That's wild. What was her response then when you told her about the project

She immediately understood how unique the show would be because she knew how important Melissa sort of place in the true crime I would say the true crime cycle is you know the true crime machine And Melissa has a

really unique voice because she has become an advocate for not only the victims of crime

but also for the families of the perpetrators of crimes and how both sides of the courtroom

are really touched by the trauma of an act of violence. So she knew that this show was going to be a unique take

especially if it was from the point of view of a family member of a killer

You know, that's something we've never seen before. And our show, I think, has proven to be a really lovely outlier in this genre

Yeah, and we get to see Melissa's journey, you know, through kind of the whole cycle of the story

And the kind of acting, you know, required in a series like this is much different from

something like Sweeney Todd, where you're playing to the last row, right? I mean, here, her, Melissa's emotions are under the surface and you have to use kind of

you know, there's a lot more subtlety, I guess, in a performance like this. How do you approach acting in these very two different mediums

That's a great question. I would approach both characters and any character in any medium with the same foundation So really the basics What do I want How am I going to get it Who is this person

What is their relationship to everybody else? What is my obstacle? And then the medium really dictates the expression of the character and the physicality

And so for something on stage, you know, the tone of the piece and, uh

you know, the genre is really going to dictate my physicality in the way I play

but in something like this, I would say the same is true. What's the tone

What's the genre? And it was a real delight and treat to go from playing a broad, physically comedic character

that is one of the most iconic and famous roles in the American musical theater to

something where I had a camera, I mean, inches away from my face for most of the eight hours of

content that we filmed. And it was nice to show an audience what was behind my eyes and in my heart

I did miss though. I always miss on camera. I always miss like what their response is. That's what

you get in that theater. They don't get on TV and film