This contains spoilers for “Strung” on Peacock.
Peacock just dropped “Strung,” a brand new, highly anticipated steamy thriller from Malcolm D. Lee starring Chlöe Bailey, Lynn Whitfield, Lucien Laviscount, Anna Diop, Coco Jones, Romy Woods, and more.
The film, with a cast that stacks up and a twisting, turning plot as thick as oatmeal, has a bit of it all. There’s passion, suspense, the Black wealthy elite on full display, foreboding African masks, heat, sex, the seedy underbelly of the music industry, frightening violin scenes and, of course, plenty of violence.
But when you see the violence unfold — particularly between Bailey and Whitfield’s characters — just know that’s really the actresses performing those stunts.
During the 30th annual American Black Film Festival in Miami last month, where the film made its debut before a packed audience alongside the cast and Lee, the two actresses revealed they were really scrapping in the thriller.
“We were really tussling,” Bailey said.
She explained that in one of the film’s climactic scenes, when Whitfield smacks her in the face with a violin, sending her crashing onto the decadent marble floor of the estate before the two become embroiled in a near-deadly physical fight, she initially didn’t want to go too hard and risk actually hurting Whitfield. However, when she told the veteran actress she wasn’t planning to go too hard, Whitfield, teasingly replied, “Well, I am!” So neither of them held anything back. The result was a wild, brutal scene that left the audience on the edge of their seats, audibly gasping and cheering for Bailey to get away.
It was one of many moments in the film to draw a visceral reaction. Fans of Lifetime thrillers, Lee’s work, and films like “Fatal Attraction” will likely leave satisfied.
The film follows Layla (Bailey), a gifted young violinist hired to tutor the daughter of a wealthy, elite Black family. Before long, she finds herself caught in a far more sinister plan orchestrated by the family matriarch (Whitfield), quite literally fighting for her life. Bailey said the role, which pushed her into slightly unfamiliar territory, forced her to dig deeper than ever before.
“There were some days where I couldn’t pull myself out of it,” she said.
As Layla became more and more wrapped up in the family’s drama, Bailey said she had to go to really dark and “traumatic” places to fully harness the performance.
“As an actress, you have to trust yourself and trust where it’ll take you,” she continued. “There were a lot of days where I would just kind of be stuck in that mental space, and my manager, who was with me, Charmaine, she helped pull me out of it, so that I could snap back to my ‘positive Chlöe self,’ because there were a lot of traumatic places I did have to go to.”
The actress said she would ask herself what traumatic experience from her own life she could draw on that mirrored what Layla was going through, sometimes discovering emotions she hadn’t even realized were “deep within” her soul.
“I was just grateful to have a safe space where I could do that and do it in a healthy manner,” she added.
Overall, Bailey said the experience — from the blood (yes, there’s blood) to the passionate scenes (yes, there are plenty of those too) — was incredible overall, and she learned a great deal from the cast of legends around her, including Whitfield.
“This icon here, she was so present, even when the coverage wasn’t on her,” Bailey gushed. “How much she sacrifices of herself, even her energy, just so that everybody could be on their Ps and Qs in the scene, that’s something that I truly admired from [her], and how [she] taught me how to storytell.”
Of the entire cast, who also had nothing but praise for Bailey’s performance, she added, “I am just really grateful to be a part of such an elite cast, where everyone delivered just so amazingly that it just made it easy for me to play Layla.”
