Madelyn Cline wears baggy blue jeans and a green crop top with a mask and sunglasses. She stands in a cobble street on a sunny day.
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Madelyn Cline Takes Greece

Madelyn Cline shares a candid behind-the-scenes look at life on the set of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

Photography courtesy of Madelyn Cline
26 December 20222 min read

Working alongside the exceptional ensemble cast of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, relative newcomer Madelyn Cline (Outer Banks) had a very natural reaction: “In walked Edward Norton and Daniel Craig, and I just absolutely Error 404-malfunctioned. My brain had left the chat — to say it was intimidating would be the understatement of the year. I had to give myself a pep talk in the mirror every day.” For the second installment of this fan-favorite mystery, writer-director Rian Johnson assembled a fresh roster of dazzling talent — along with Craig and Norton, the cast includes Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Cline, Kate Hudson, and Dave Bautista — to tell an edge-of-your-seat whodunit set in Greece. Cline plays Whiskey — the ambitious head-turning girlfriend to Bautista’s eccentric Duke — whose streaming mascara and shrill screams act as a barometer for the mystery’s unraveling. 

The magnetic actor made the most of that intimidation, channeling her fish-out-of-water feeling into her character, and taking every opportunity to learn from the superb performers and director:  “I felt like I was in a masterclass,” says Cline. “The way that [Johnson] was able to move and be so specific and present with us was just such a gift.” It turned out that the cast’s offscreen antics weren’t too far off from their characters’: “We would have dinners, and every single time we would play Mafia, which is a murder mystery game. We would go to the local vintage store and get costumes so we would actually play these characters, and it would turn into a dance party.”