Elisha Cuthbert Was Objectified. Now She’s Turning the Page.

In Judd Apatow’s recent Netflix satire The Bubble, a group of narcissistic Hollywood actors become unglued whilst quarantining at a fancy British hotel and shooting a big-budget dinosaur flick during the COVID-19 pandemic. Elisha Cuthbert endured a version of that making her new horror film for Shudder, The Cellar—minus the rampant sex, cocaine, and CGI dinosaurs, of course.

Filming on Brandon Muldowney’s The Cellar—about a mother (Cuthbert) whose daughter (Tara Lee) disappears in the cellar of their spooky new Irish abode—took place in November 2020 in Roscommon, Ireland. They shot in an actual house, and because of the pandemic, the cast and crew had to quarantine for two weeks prior to shooting and then proceeded to live in separate cottages on the property.

“I haven’t seen The Bubble yet, but my nanny saw it and said, ‘This movie reminds me of you shooting that movie in Ireland!’” Cuthbert says.

When I mention that instead of being constantly abducted on 24 she’s now rescuing children from being kidnapped, the 39-year-old chuckles.

“It’s probably good! I think it’s come full-circle, and now it’s time to be the Jack Bauer part of this at this point in my career,” she offers.

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Shortly after moving to Los Angeles from her native Canada, an 18-year-old Cuthbert landed the role of Kim Bauer, counterterrorist expert Jack Bauer’s (Kiefer Sutherland) perpetually-in-peril daughter, on the popular Fox series 24. Bit parts in the hit films Old School and Love Actually followed, as well as leading roles in movies like The Girl Next Door and House of Wax. Around this time, Cuthbert was branded a “sex symbol” of sorts, appearing in a number of spreads for men’s magazines like Maxim and FHM, before segueing into more interesting character-actor work on sitcoms Happy Endings and The Ranch.

We spoke about all that and more over the course of our chat.

I know Canada’s had very strict protocols during the pandemic that’s affected mobility. How have you managed to split time between LA and your homeland?

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It’s funny: We were in Canada for a little winter trip in February 2020 and then the pandemic hit, and so we stayed because everything shut down, and LA was really badly hit at the start. So, we ended up staying in Canada for months until we got back in August or September, and then I went off to shoot this movie at the end of October. We ended up getting trapped up in Canada, but it was nice being around family and all that.

And you shot The Cellar in Ireland, right? Was it strange to be quarantining with your family in Canada for months and months and then go off to Ireland to shoot this spooky haunted house film where members of your fictional family are being possessed and/or kidnapped?

[Laughs] It was shot in Roscommon, which is a county in the center of the country. It was interesting, because I wasn’t able to bring any of the family with me, so I was sort of this lone soldier going over, hoping that we would be able to even get the movie finished, because in the pre-vaccine time there was a question of, “Are we going to get this done?” Because if one person got COVID we would get shut down. There was a little of that looming over us, but we stuck together as a crew. It was weird isolating for two weeks alone and going from the hustle-and-bustle of family life to complete seclusion. A part of me kind of enjoyed it, because the mom duties I have are very time-consuming, so to be completely on my own—the peace and quiet of that—was quite enjoyable, but at the same time I did miss everybody.

With everyone sequestered together on this property in Ireland during the pandemic did anything strange happen during the making of this film?

Everyone had their own weird experiences but the one that really got me was, I told you we had to quarantine for two weeks prior to shooting, and the last day of quarantine myself, the director, and Eoin Macken, who plays my husband in the film—we were all quarantining in our own cottages, and we all had an insane infestation of dead flies. I remember going to set and producers were saying, “Don’t worry! We’re getting an exterminator!” but I was thinking, what a weird thing to appear before we start shooting this horror film? It was really eerie. The dead-fly plague. Very bizarre.

Have you ever had a haunting or ghost experience?

Yeah. When I first moved to California, I moved to the Oakwood Apartments out in the Burbank area, right by Warner Bros. I know it’s one of those places where a lot of people have come and gone, and it’s a place you go to transition before moving into your own place. I moved there in 2000, and I remember waking up one night and hearing a knocking on the pipes, which I thought was really bizarre, and it woke me. As I woke, I thought I’d seen this silhouette—or shadow—of a man at the end of my bed. It didn’t feel like anyone was actually there—just transparent—and it froze me. I couldn’t really move. I shut my eyes and thought, “I can’t be seeing ghosts!” and then I opened my eyes, and the figure was gone. I haven’t had an experience after that, but could that have been a ghost experience? Maybe! Or maybe I was overtired.

That’s the ghost that welcomes young actors to LA.

[Laughs] Exactly. I didn’t do any research on it or find out if that guy really lived in that apartment or not, but I do know I experienced something bizarre—and I definitely believe in that. There’s a really great docuseries called Surviving Death. That was fantastic and I was all about it. I’m definitely a believer, for sure.

I believe I was in college when House of Wax came out, which was a fun time to see a horror movie with your friends, and one thing that’s pretty wild to look back on is the “See Paris Die” ad campaign for the film.

Was it? Oh, that’s hilarious.

I think the idea was that if you didn’t like Paris Hilton you could see her die in this movie.

Wow. Yeah, that’s terrible. You know what’s so funny about that? It reminds me of going to the London premiere of House of Wax with Paris, and when her death scene came up, she was so excited and had such a great time watching it. She always understands how to take the fun out of it and not take things too seriously. Most actresses would go, “Ugh, I don’t want to watch this,” but she celebrated it. And that’s part of her brilliance, I think.

And I read that you really superglued your mouth shut on the film, is that right?

I did, yeah. It wasn’t the hardware stuff—special effects had gotten something that was gonna be safe for my skin, but it was definitely glued shut. There was no way to act my lips being stuck together properly so I said, “Let’s just go for it.” They had remover and things like that, so nothing was hurt in the process. But yeah, I was definitely like, “Let’s glue these lips together.”

Is that the craziest thing you’ve ever done on a film?

That was definitely crazy, for sure. I think on 24 I was trapped in the trunk of a car and shot at. I got attacked by a mountain lion on that show—like, for real—so I think that might be up there. We had a mountain lion that was in the scene and I was running on the outskirts of Los Angeles in the mountains, and the actual mountain lion that was on set ended up jumping me and attacking me, and I ended up getting bit in the hand and going to the hospital. So, I got attacked by a mountain lion. That was probably the craziest.

Speaking of 24, how do you feel that show’s aged? It existed very much in this post-9/11 hysteria George W. Bush time period and almost felt like a “revenge for 9/11”-type show, containing a lot of torture.

I think it very much coincided with things that were happening in the early 2000s, and we were ahead of some things that happened. It aired before September 11, and we had terrorist plotlines and airplane explosions that we had to re-edit before the show was released. We also had Dennis Haysbert playing an African American president, which was pretty groundbreaking at the time before Barack Obama, and Cherry Jones playing a female president later on before Hillary was running. I think the writers were really ahead of their time, so looking back on it now, it seemed like it was where the politics were at the time. But watching it now? I don’t know. I haven’t gone back to see any of the episodes. I wonder how it holds up.

I’m curious what your thoughts are about the whole Maxim/FHM culture that existed with young actresses when you were coming up in the 2000s. It seems like a lot of young actresses at the time were being pushed into doing those bathing suit photoshoots and being objectified, and it was a weird step that a lot of young actresses breaking into the industry felt compelled to take—or that publicists or industry folks were pressuring them into doing.

Yeah… that’s a whole thing. It’s interesting. I definitely was around for that time period. It’s kind of a bummer that I was. At the time, it’s not like I was the only one partaking in these men’s magazines—it felt like everyone was subjected to it. I remember even Halle Berry after winning her Oscar was on the [hottest] lists and the covers. It was a part of the culture of magazines, and I remember feeling like I didn’t have much of a choice, because millions of people were buying these magazines and it was a huge way to publicize whatever you were doing. And these magazines seemed to do voting systems on their own, so it was out of my control. To do the magazines themselves, I personally felt more pressure not from my publicists but from the films particularly, and the advertising for the films—so from the studios, really.

It would be the studio saying, “You should do that?”

Yeah. I remember when we were doing The Girl Next Door, especially because of the content of the film where I was playing a porn star, those magazines felt even more relevant to be associated with to advertise this film. Yeah, it was definitely a push from the studios saying, “These are great covers to get. They have millions of subscribers and a wide reach. Go do them.” Luckily, actresses now don’t really have to deal with that anymore. A lot of the Maxims and FHMs are now done, so thankfully that’s over with.

What sort of effect did all that have on you? Because at the time you were just a 20-year-old who’d just arrived from Canada trying to make it in Hollywood.

A part of it felt liberating and I certainly thought, at the time we were doing them, that we were doing some pretty cool photoshoots. Looking back on them, I didn’t love doing them—especially when they started to become repetitive, and the dialogue became about “Who’s the sexiest?” and “Who’s the prettiest?” in a competitive way, and feeling objectified and putting out this persona of, “This is what I represent.” Because that really wasn’t the case. It wasn’t a true representation of me as an artist, that’s for sure. It was one facet. And unfortunately, a lot of people just went, “Oh, she’s the sexy girl.” We were all a lot more than that.

Does the way Happy Endings ended still sting a bit? Because it’s rare to be a part of a special show like that, and that have the network not do a good enough job of finding it an audience.

That was what really felt like the tug of war for us. It never had its proper time slot and was always getting moved around. And when you’re moving around on network, people can’t find you. And then we got stuck at really bad hours. It just felt like it was never supported when we were doing it, and then being cancelled felt like it was inevitable because, how can you build an audience if you don’t have a time slot that’s consistent for more than two weeks at a time? That was my frustration over the whole situation. But after it was done, I was really proud of the three seasons that we put together, and because of streaming, people can find it and watch it.

You had another show end quite abruptly, The Ranch, which was a huge hit for Netflix. And then it appeared to end because of the Danny Masterson allegations. What was it like to be on another popular show and then have it end prematurely—and be caught up in the middle of that?

Well, it could be said that it had something to do with Danny, but it also could be said that it didn’t, because we continued to do the show after he left. That was definitely an unusual scenario, but one that was Danny’s business and I stayed out of it and kind of kept on with the show, as did everyone else. We ended up getting Dax Shepard on the show and my experience on it was great. I don’t know. Maybe it was Netflix’s decision to steer clear of any drama related to [Masterson], or maybe we’d had 80 episodes and Netflix felt they’d already had enough content from us. The world of streaming is so new that you don’t know why these streaming services do what they do.

You’ve been acting since you were a young kid and with The Ranch and The Cellar, it seems like you’ve transitioned well into more adult roles—and that’s a transition that Hollywood can make rather difficult on actors.

For me, I’m excited for the next chapter. I feel I’ve been waiting for a long time to get to a point where I can play characters that have more depth, more responsibility, and tell stories about women for women my age. I’m embracing that. Even on The Cellar, to look at these two young actors and help lead them through the movie was such a rewarding experience. I’m looking forward to the stories that I will be able to tell.

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