Maika Monroe on Victorian Psycho: Maybe Everyone Is Evil

Winifred Notty doesn’t just lie. She performs. The new governess at the center of Victorian Psycho has to convince a house full of people that she belongs there, all while concealing what she’s capable of doing to them. The trick is that she isn’t quite as convincing as she thinks.

When I spoke with Maika Monroe during the film’s November 2 press day, I asked a question that had been stuck in my head since seeing it at Fantastic Fest: how good an actor is Winifred herself?

“I think she’s a pretty good actress, but not really ’cause she slips up a lot,” Monroe told me.

It’s a funny answer, and it gets at what makes her performance so entertaining. Winifred is constantly working to look like an ordinary person. Her face occasionally betrays her before she’s caught up with the expression she ought to be wearing.

An Actor Playing Someone Who’s Acting

Maika Monroe said she and director Zachary Wigon had a lot of rehearsal time to work through the character. Wigon also sent her videos and clips of real serial killers and people described as psychopaths, including one analyzed by a psychologist who paused the footage to explain the behavior on display.

The point of that video, as she described it, was how facial expressions could reveal what someone was trying to suppress. You can see it in Winifred’s attempts at self-control, and especially in the moments she fails.

The performance is also tied to the camera, which keeps tipping Ensor House as if the room itself can’t keep up with Winifred. She said Wigon knew his shots before filming and explained the planned camera work during rehearsals, allowing her to anticipate the timing of a scene. Wigon has already explained why the house looks so clean; Monroe fills in how carefully it moves around her.

In my Fantastic Fest review, I argued that her crooked smile is the reason to see it. Talking to her made the precision underneath the apparent chaos easier to appreciate.

The Joy Is the Disturbing Part

I asked Maika Monroe whether the discomfort should come from Winifred’s violence or the fact that she seems so pleased with herself. Her answer was immediate: “I think how cheerful that I was about the violence and the joy that came from that.”

Monroe won’t let Winifred off the hook as a mere survivor. “I think she’s trying to survive, but I do think she enjoys it very much,” she said. The keepsakes Winifred collects, Monroe added, show how much pleasure the violence gives her.

And yet Monroe doesn’t see everyone else at Ensor House as morally uncomplicated. Asked about Winifred’s relationship with the wealthy Pounds family and Miss Lamb (Thomasin McKenzie), Monroe drew a sharp contrast. Winifred craves the family’s approval, only to become frustrated as she discovers that they’re “quite evil as well.” Miss Lamb, by contrast, seems to offer an innocence Winifred hasn’t encountered before.

“I think she had probably experienced only really harsh people,” Monroe said. Meeting someone so naive is both new and exciting for her.

Is Winifred Lying to Us, Too?

Winifred narrates her own story, handing us a mind with a vested interest in explaining itself away. I asked whether viewers are supposed to feel like accomplices or one more group of people she’s manipulating.

Maika Monroe said she hadn’t considered that question before, then asked how I felt about it. I admitted I suspected Winifred was lying to the audience for sympathy. Her reply: “Probably lying, but what can you do?”

Monroe called the narration an extension of Winifred, though one in which the character is sometimes trying to convince herself of things, and sometimes lets another side of her personality show through.

I closed by asking what she hoped audiences would feel toward Winifred on the way out. She hoped they might find a little understanding, perhaps even some joy, despite the character’s disturbing choices.

“I think at the end you don’t totally know who’s evil in this, or maybe everyone is,” she said.

Would she return to Winifred? She’d like to, but no announcement was hiding in her answer: “I would love to, but I don’t know. Maybe her story’s over. We’ll have to see.”

For now, there’s this gloriously terrible governess and a final trailer. Victorian Psycho, directed by Zachary Wigon from a screenplay by Virginia Feito adapted from her novel, stars Maika Monroe, Jason Isaacs, Ruth Wilson and Thomasin McKenzie. It opens in theaters nationwide from Bleecker Street on Friday, November 13, 2026.