Why Elisabeth Moss Says The Ending of ‘The Invisible Man’ Was So Emotionally Difficult
The Invisible Man was a huge hit when it opened in theaters in February. Then it became one of the first new releases to come to video on demand early when theaters shut down during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Elisabeth Moss headlined the modern day re-imagining of the H.G. Wells classic.
[Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for the film The Invisible Man.]
Now, The Invisible Man is available to own on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD too. The physical edition includes bonus features in which Moss speaks about the challenges she faced in the film. Here’s what she said was the most emotionally difficult.
Elisabeth Moss says ‘The Invisible Man’ is emotionally empowering
In Wells’ tale, The Invisible Man becomes a murderer as a side effect of his invisibility potion. Writer/director Leigh Whannell imagined a modern Invisible Man as a tech genius who invented an invisibility suit, and uses it to terrorize his girlfriend, Cecilia (Moss).
“It’s called The invisible Man but it reads as this emotional drama and the story of a woman who is finding herself, finding her strength and finding her voice,” Moss said. “I think what Leigh tapped into is the emotional journey of this woman. He really did find something difficult to talk about and has been open to talking to me about it and me giving my own thoughts on what it’s like from a female perspective.”
‘The Invisible Man’ makes women feel seen
Using The Invisible Man to shine a light, pun intended, on abusive relationships was important to Moss. That’s also what made the film emotionally challenging.
“I think there are a lot of people who have dealt with invisible men in their lives,” Moss said. “These are real characters with real problems. That’s what attracted me to the project. It’s not about something that you can’t comprehend. It’s not about something you can’t wrap your mind around. We need to see people that we see in life. The world is made up of a lot of different kinds of people. I have interest in telling their stories.”
Fighting ‘The Invisbile Man’ was Elisabeth Moss’s physical feat
The Invisible Man gave Moss plenty of emotional challenges, but it was a physical performance too. When she fights her invisible tormenter, that involved choreographing a fight scene with a man in a green suit on set, and being yanked around on wires.
The most physically challenging thing was the fight sequence that we did with The Invisible Man. I loved it when I read it and so the pressure to do it justice is kinda huge. I’ve never done a moment like that and I really wanted it to be cool. They wanted me to do as much as possible although I had incredible assistance from my stunt double, Sarah. I had an incredible stunt team. That was definitely really challenging. I was pretty beat up the next day but it was fun too because it was also kinda cool and gratifying.
Elisabeth Moss, The Invisible Man Blu-ray bonus features
Why the last scene was the hardest for Elisabeth Moss
Cecilia finally turns the tables on her abuser. She uses one of his invisibility suits to frame him for killing himself, just like he framed her for murder earlier in the film. First, the timing of the scene was challenging.
“Probably the hardest thing emotionally to do was we shot the final scene the first week,” Moss said. “So that was just a little bit of mind trip trying to reverse engineer that and kind of think about what we wanted the final scene to be which is this huge moment in the movie after all this stuff has happened to Cecilia.”
Getting through that scene made some of the other dramatic scenes easier.
“That was definitely challenging because you’re dealing with a lot of information you don’t have yet,” Moss said. “In a way it was kind of cool because then we actually did know where we ended up and it was a matter of just backing up from there.”
