For Melissa Barrera, acting was something that was not so clear, although since she was little she watched soap operas and imagined herself alongside the children of Code of Fame or some soap opera where Belinda acted. What Melissa liked was sports, she was on the basketball team, the athletics team… but she also liked to go to the theater. “I think that from a very young age she had been cooking up this acting thing but the precise moment was when I did the play of Romeo and Juliet in Monterrey professionally. Tickets were charged, we had rehearsals for 5 months, it was a very ambitious staging by Telõ, we did shows from Tuesday to Sunday and they wanted the play to be like on Broadway. That was my first professional experience and I was happy. I felt fulfilled, I was in my last year of high school, so I went to school like a zombie in the mornings, I came to do homework and run to the theater. It was a taste of professional life as an actress and I thought, yes, I could dedicate myself to this, do it for the rest of my life. So at the end of the season I applied to universities that had an acting career in their programs.”

I personally don’t like the horror genre, I have had to watch the obligatory movies because as a communicator it is not possible not to, so I had to ask him where his taste for horror comes from.

“Note that I’m kind of a masochist (we laugh). I have always liked the adrenaline that horror movies give you. I remember that from a very young age, at sleepovers with my friends, the most anticipated activity was watching a horror movie. We were all together, we had to be scared. When I was little it was a hobby and I watched them all. Then I left them for a while because I was traumatized by the first Saw, the game of fear , it was too body core , very graphic scenes and I thought, this is not for me.

“In fact, I have never seen The Exorcist nor will I see it. I don’t like exorcisms and demons. I’m more into earthly horror and fantastical things, the super natural. I don’t like religious or very graphic things either. But I love the experience of watching a horror movie because if you’re also with people, friends or family, it’s very fun when someone jumps and gets scared or scares you even though it wasn’t even a moment in which that was supposed to happen, I really enjoyed that whole experience and now that I have had the opportunity to make many horror films, I have realized that it is the most fun. As an actor it is the closest thing to returning to your childhood and imagining that you are playing in your living room with your brothers and cousins. Because you don’t get scared, you know the trick, that blood is almost honey, you know the timing , so you have to scream and be scared, take your imagination to that place where you completely commit to the story and then you have to scream from within, it’s that. You pretend that a monster is chasing you.” It had never occurred to me to see it like this, something adrenaline-inducing, frighteningly fun.

Well, not spectacular enough to make it to Hollywood. Melissa tells us that it was her decision to arrive in Los Angeles at the right time, firmly believing that this was her path and no other, that led her to audition for these films. “Having that absolute confidence in myself that my mother taught me, at the end of the day it was energy and the manifestation of it. I believe a lot in energy and that belief and security of knowing what was going to happen, that it was only a matter of time, led me to continue working, auditioning, forgetting the voices around me that told me ‘these are the rules and it’s going to take a while.’ so long, and most of them go and try it and come back…’ I knew they didn’t apply to my case. It was about charting my own path and knowing that I was going to achieve it. It’s hard work, discipline, taking advantage of opportunities when doors open to you but it’s also a matter of luck, it’s being at the right time, in the right place to be given a chance. And I have always trusted my instinct, I believe that our body speaks to us and many times we ignore it. When I decided to go to Los Angeles it was immediately after Club de Cuervos . I finished recording in February and I knew it was time to leave, I had just done something really cool in Mexico at that time, at that moment there was not going to be anything better, I had nothing to stay. I started researching what I needed: a manager, an agent, people to get me auditions. There it is not like here, the casting directors talk to you directly, I left a job and someone from that job left the next project.”

“I started putting together my demo with scenes from soap operas, plays, I found my manager between coffees with friends and recommendations. She still had a contract with a Mexican television station, but she needed to end the contract early. I can’t explain more to you than the feeling , and my stupidity. I bought my contract for a fortune, practically everything I had earned I returned but I knew it would be worth it. I went to Los Angeles and two weeks later I had my leading role in the Vida series (Prime Video). It was trusting my path, my instinct, my abilities. That’s my story and what has worked for me. Keep knocking on doors and make it my job to make sure that everyone around me wants to work with me again. That helps a lot. People recommend you. It has happened to me many times that in meetings with directors or executives, they tell me that they have spoken wonderful things about me. People who want to work with you ask for references, they do their research. For me it has always been super important that all the people around me have a very good experience with me. And I feel like that has kept me working. Now I have been on hiatus for 6 months, but they are the first in the last 12 years of my life. I’m promoting Abigail and Your Monster .” On this tour, destinations like London, Chicago, and Taiwan are on the map of their promo.”

Her favorite scene in Abigail was the one that included the blood cannon explosions. “It’s a unique experience. There are few productions that have the resource, they sign it up for you and you only have one opportunity to do the scene well. It was fun”. And Your Monster was the part of the musical. The film is not a musical but Laura, Melissa’s character, is an actress in musicals and she agrees that she loves them. Her favorite is Rent but Spring Awakening has a special place because it was the first one she did in Mexico City .

She confesses to us that his favorite horror movie is Hereditary by Ari Aster because it has one of the most terrifying scenes, for her taste, which is the one in the car. “I had to pause it because I literally had to get up and assimilate what I had just seen. I also like Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan , I really like movies that use a narrator you can’t trust. But the Final Destination movies were the movies she watched at sleepovers and to this day I can’t go behind a truck with cut down trees or I have to check the airplane table when I get on,” we laughed.

A good script, a great director Melissa has to feel that she wants to play the character regardless of whether she is the protagonist or not. She has to be a challenge. But what really scares Melissa are the moths and flying cockroaches, although she confesses that if she had to face anyone for a role in a movie, she would do it without thinking, that’s courage!