Heretics stars Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher are the heart and soul of the Hugh Grant starer religious horror film. The actresses play Mormon missionaries, Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes who are deployed to the mysterious Colorado compound of Mr. Reed (Grant). At first, the latter seems welcoming but gradually turns antagonistic and sadistic in the name of religion, and the girls get trapped inside his house.
He propels them to choose between two doors over which he wrote belief and disbelief. When asked what it has to do with them leaving the house, he says “everything,” as shown in the film’s trailer. In the aftermath, Barnes starts to second-guess her convictions while Paxton becomes more firm with hers.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, East and Thatcher revealed that grew up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which is also known as LDS or Mormonism. Therefore they felt an innate connection and understanding to their characters.
“We did chemistry reads with different girls, but I had heard from our casting director that Chloe grew up Mormon and has a Mormon family, so there was that instant connection,” Thatcher told the outlet. She explained that perhaps it was the truthfulness of their connection to religion that eased their screen test and compatibility.
East admitted that her religious upbringing contributed to her work in the film Heretics. “It was everything to my performance,” she said. “A lot of the choices I made and little idiosyncrasies were all things that I’ve pulled from going to church,” she added before clarifying that she was never as pessimistic as her character.
Director Scott Beck also weighed in on the topic revealing that they never intended to cast people based on their religious beliefs. “They were raised Mormon, and that was not necessarily on our bingo card when we were casting,” he said. But rather it was their performance that felt truthful.
According to Beck, the way they played their characters brought the respect, love and empathy they have for the community. We kept going back to our casting director, asking, ‘Are there more people like these two? Because there’s a truth there,'” he added.
