Daniel Waters, writer and director of the upcoming surreal comedy Sex and Death 101, told SCI FI Wire that he crafted the role of serial killer Death Nell specifically for Winona Ryder, with whom he first worked in 1989’s Heathers.
“Yeah, I just thought it was a great idea with her from the beginning,” Waters said in an interview on the film’s set at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. “Not everyone agreed with me, but, I mean, she’s definitely the delicate, broken-down version of the role,. … I think that whatever’s been going on in her past ties in with this role very interestingly.”
In Sex and Death 101, Ryder’s character stalks Roderick Blank (Simon Baker), a man who in turn is trying to track down the women named on a list of all the people he will ever have sex with. Ryder’s character is supposed to freak the audience out, Waters said.
“Winona’s been gone for a while, and people are like, ‘Well, what’s going on with her?’” he said. “And it’s much like the character, too.”
But Waters said Ryder is “still the exact same person that I remember working with. She’s a little too into Heathers, though. It’s crazy. It’s like being cornered by a really obsessed fan, only, ‘You’re the star of the movie!’ So it’s kind of like, I keep asking her to ask, ‘What was it like working with Winona?’ ‘Well, you know, you are Winona Ryder, right? I just want to make sure that it’s clear.’ [She’ll say,] ‘God, what a great film.’ I’m like, ‘Really? Are you allowed to say that out loud? OK. All right, that’s good, I guess.’”
Waters described Sex and Death 101 as a dark satire—so dark that it originally included jokes about 9/11. “The way that the script originally ended is Winona Ryder’s character talks about her backstory, and it was her abusive husband screaming at her on the phone at his job, and he was a trader at the World Trade Center, and, like, the plane comes and blows it up,” he said. “So she thinks like September 11th was like this great cataclysmic cleansing experience, and after that she decides to become a serial killer.”
Fortunately, that joke didn’t make it into production, he said. “It certainly did not,” he said, adding: “Note to all writers out there: Always put a September 11th third act, so you have something to change to make the producers happy. Like, ‘OK, I guess I’ll change the September 11th third act, but you have to let me have the attempted necrophilia scene.’”
Sex and Death 101 is in production.