Grace Glowicki Talks Marriage, Memory, and Horror in HONEY BUNCH

Grace Glowicki in Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli's HONEY BUNCH. Courtesy of Cat People.

By Shannon McGrew

In HONEY BUNCH, the sophomore film from directors Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dustin Mancinelli, Diana (Grace Glowicki) wakes from a coma with fragmented memories and, with her husband, seeks experimental treatments at a remote facility. 

When the procedures intensify, their marriage is put to the test as Diana’s memories creep back in through haunting visions, leading her to begin to question her husband’s true motives. She soon must confront the possibility that her recovery might come at a far greater cost than she imagined.

For the release of HONEY BUNCH, Creepy Kingdom’s Shannon McGrew spoke with actor Grace Glowicki about her role as Diana. During their chat, they discussed everything from working alongside her real-life husband, enduring intense prosthetics, and exploring the film's chilling questions about love, trust, and morality.

Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Grace. Without spoiling anything too much, can you talk about what drew you to the role of Diana? 

Grace Glowicki: I really wanted this role because there are just so many different parts [to Diana]. I was like, oh my God, this is an actor’s dream. I get to explore this wide range of different, condensed emotions. When Dusty and Madeleine brought it to me, I was like, "Yes, please let me do it." 

I didn’t know Ben was your husband until after I watched the movie. What was it like playing a married couple going through such a difficult, traumatic period of time, with your actual husband?

Grace Glowicki: It was interesting. We’re used to working together; we’ve done it many times, so that part of it is very comfortable for us. Normally, when we work together, it’s me directing, or it's him directing. This was the first time we had both been actors and somebody else [directing] that wasn’t either of us. We had to let go of some control, which was new. 

Because we weren’t able to control the direction of the movie, we kind of responded to that by saying, okay, we’re going to pull apart and we’re going to prepare for our roles independently so that we could meet in the scenes kind of anew. Normally, with the way Ben and I collaborate, our minds coming together causes changes to the movie, and because we couldn’t do that, we’re like, okay, we gotta pull apart because we’re not used to this. So, that was interesting. 

Actually, before Ben had proposed to me, we were just boyfriend and girlfriend [during filming], and there was a scene in the movie surrounding a wedding ring. There were actually times shooting this movie where I thought, is Ben going to propose to me on camera in this scene? I knew he was going to propose, but I wasn’t really sure when. There’s so much baked into this film about marriage that I was kind of on my toes, being like, is this going to be the moment?

Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie in Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli's HONEY BUNCH. Courtesy of Cat People.

How did Dusty and Madeleine prepare you to take on the complexities of Diana?

Grace Glowicki: We did lots of rehearsals. I think we did six weeks of rehearsal. There was tons of time for us to figure out the characters together. Maddie, of course, is an actor herself, so she was really awesome in understanding what I was trying to build with this character. Dusty had a clear vision, so he was always able to keep the choices on track to align with it. They’re a great pair in that way cause they have very different brains. 

Looking back at this experience, was there a lot you learned as a performer?

Grace Glowicki: I definitely did. It was a long shoot, and the prosthetics were very heavy. One prosthetic in particular took nine hours to get into, four hours to get out of, and I’d have to do a 12-hour shoot in between those. It was crazy. I learned a lot about endurance as an actor. There’s the performance, but then there’s also the endurance that you need. It’s a very physical job. It can look glamorous from the outside, but these indie films can be very challenging on your body and your sleep, and all of this, so I learned a lot of resilience. Because this character was so complex, it really taught me the benefit of simplifying things for myself instead of trying to have cerebral control over a performance; it’s just too much sometimes, and certainly with this one. I learned a lot about making things simple for myself. 

What do you hope audiences feel or recognize about marriage, commitment, or anything similar to that when they leave the theater? 

Grace Glowicki: I was saying this earlier to someone else, what I find so interesting about Dusty and Maddie’s movies is they often are asking the audience a question of like, do you agree with the morality of this character or that character? I hope people walk away from those debates, pick opposing sides, and get into little fights about whether they thought the character was morally repulsive or not, or whether they would do what they did. That’s what I hope people walk away from it with. 

HONEY BUNCH is now available to stream on Shudder.