Final Destination star Brec Bassinger isn’t sure how she’d handle having a premonition about her own death in real life.
“To be honest, [I would] probably [be] very paranoid, which I think Iris kind of did that and isolated herself,” Bassinger, 25, exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the release of her new movie, Final Destination Bloodlines. “But I can’t even imagine, like, would [I] do the same thing?”
Warning: Spoilers below for Final Destination Bloodlines.
Bassinger plays young Iris in the latest Final Destination installment, who is able to cheat death after a shocking premonition gives her a peek into the future. The film follows her granddaughter, Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), who then inherits her grandmother’s ability to see her family’s demise.
Iris, meanwhile, spends her life trapped away in a bunker trying to escape her own demise. It’s something Bassinger doesn’t envy, telling Us she could not fathom “living every day in fear of your death.”
“I don’t envy her,” she quipped. “Not even a little bit.”
When getting into character, Bassinger, who made a name for herself by playing powerful female characters on shows like Bella and the Bulldogs and Stargirl, channeled a little bit of herself. The actress described Iris as a “very strong” and “fearless” woman.
“I like to believe women are very in tune with their bodies,” she explained. “And just something Brec, I really always trust my gut instinct. So making Iris, like, a very extreme version of that, even though in my head it was her first time having a premonition, she just trusted her instincts so much that she acted upon it.”
It wasn’t just the character of Iris that drew Bassinger in. As a longtime horror fan, she was thrilled to join Final Destination Bloodlines and take on some of the more extreme scenes.
“I feel like you get to be put in situations that you wouldn’t necessarily be in in real life. Like, falling 50 feet on a wire or standing next to someone who’s engulfed in flames,” she told Us. “I get to experience things that are outside of my wildest dreams.”
That included standing right next to someone while they were set on fire.
“We had multiple days where we were setting people on fire and like the whole fire department would be there,” she recalled. “But it didn’t matter how many times I had seen it, it would still just put me in this state of like fight or flight, which was really helpful for my scene and my character!”
She noted that the use of practical effects — like implementing “real flames” instead of only using CGI in the scene — helped add to the “intensity” to the moment. Add in the reveal that her character is hiding the secret that she’s pregnant — and not married — during the 1960’s, and the stakes became higher than ever.
“Already having to put myself in Iris’s mindset of being pregnant in the 1960s [and] unwed, that’s all on my mind. So getting to remove like, ‘Oh, picture this person’s on fire dying and they literally are on fire.’ It takes away something that I have to think about,” she said, noting how “helpful” it was to build her character. “There were like a couple particular shots and parts of that sequence that I was truly so terrified of what we were filming.”
While Bassinger’s young version of Iris survives, her older counterpart — played by Max Lloyd-Jones — isn’t so lucky (don’t worry, we won’t spoil the details). That said, if a prequel opportunity arose, Bassinger wouldn’t hesitate to reprise her role.
“I think as an actor that would be such a fun journey,” she told Us. “There is such a big gap and you see the start to the finish and there is such a discrepancy between the two women. I think as an actor getting to see how that happens would be such an interesting journey to go on.”
Final Destination Bloodlines is in theaters now.
