The Thicket‘s Juliette Lewis reveals to The Contending why Cut Throat Bill is “the dream part of a lifetime” and the reason it reminds her of her late father. *Spoilers ahead!*
In the middle of Elliott Lester’s western The Thicket, we finally get a showdown between bounty hunter Reginald Jones, played by Peter Dinklage, and savage madwoman Cut Throat Bill, played by Juliette Lewis. She insults him, he insults her back, and there’s an interesting spark between the two, a kinship, an understanding.
“In the moment, you see she has an affinity for him being an oddball,” says Lewis. “They have this discourse about things. It was really interesting to play because you can’t lean too heavy on it. I have to give credit to Peter, who’s such a phenomenal person to share space with. He has the same presence as DeNiro, that electricity. There are certain performers you just walk into the scene, and it’s just on. And you’re not saying or doing much and that’s how I felt with him, and he said the same. We knew how important this scene was.”
Lewis Calls Cut Throat Bill “Dream Part of a Lifetime”
If you thought Lewis was feral in Yellowjackets, you ain’t seen nothing yet in The Thicket. In her introductory scene, she shoots a grandfather and kidnaps teenager Lula (Esme Creed-Miles).
As an actor who’s been working since she was a child, Lewis calls Cut Throat Bill “the dream part of a lifetime.”
“I always want to disappear in a role and not be myself. I’m 30 years in and I think I might have achieved that for the first time [with this part]! You’re hardest on yourself, but while watching this, I felt transformative in every sense. Every cell of my body was this hardened, calloused, painful savage person who’s in pure survivalism mode.”
Playing Bill even made her think of her late father, actor Geoffrey Lewis, and what it was like watching him behind the scenes on sets as a kid.
“When I was on set in all this gear and the big gun and the flask and the layers, I was reminded of all my dad’s movies and the first sets I went on when I was 8. It was all bloody cowboys and a fake train. It was a playground for me because I was literally babysat in hair and makeup. It reminded me a lot of him and those early Americana films.”
Who is Cut Throat Bill?
In traditional westerns, Cut Throat Bill would be a man, but in The Thicket, the villain’s a big question mark regarding gender, and she wields it like a weapon. Lewis had fun playing with this concept, down to developing the voice for the character.
“I noticed I couldn’t yell with this voice. That was tricky, and I didn’t know until I tried. I was trying to play a person who had a near decapitation vocal cord injury [something Bill experienced in her past]. I left Elliott a video message talking like her, and he went for it!”
Lewis says she developed Bill based on her people-watching skills, having absorbed so many different types of characters during her travels, while also considering the time period.
“She reminds me of ranch people. She grew up around livestock and horses and ranch life, deep into a different culture where there is no feminization. People like that exist, and they’re a bit different than our current nomenclature for it. Early on, it’s just people that survive in a different way. Even men, there’s no identification with self other than living off the land and surviving. It’s real flight or fight, early survivalism.”
The Thicket Ending (Spoilers Ahead!)
Throughout the film, Reginald is hot on Bill’s trail, desperate to rescue Lula. Lewis says some audiences and even characters in the film don’t want to believe that her character would kill Lula because Bill’s a woman, but as the actress, she tends to believe otherwise.
“I really think she would have disposed of her in the end. It’s self-hatred, and she sees what she could never protect or save in herself and she’s pained by it. I love that there are so many layers to it. Is it mothering? Is it sexual? Is it sadistic? Is it caring? It’s all of those things, and gross killers that we read about have those layers. I always take things back to the animal kingdom. If you see a cat playing with that mouse? Good god! They’ll keep it alive, but it’s going to die in the end, and they’re having fun with it.”
In Bill’s final showdown with Reginald, she calls out, “Mama!” before she collapses, a moment Lewis improvised.
“We did a few takes, and Elliott liked that. Because I was like, how does this person die? There’s a brutality. Even so, when that person faces leaving their body in their final moments, it still really moves me and makes me sad. I feel like she had a flicker of humanity. That was my effort to show humanity with her.”
The Thicket is available to download or rent online and is also in select theaters.
