For 27-year-old actor Myha’la, who has made scene-stealing turns as an American-in-London investment banker in the high-stakes drama series Industry and in the horror-comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies, her latest project offers her biggest challenge yet: holding her own opposite the likes of Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, and Ethan Hawke.
In director Sam Esmail’s Leave the World Behind, based on the National Book Award-nominated novel from Rumaan Alam, Myha’la joins the Hollywood titans in playing an unlikely group of characters confronting an inexplicable cyberattack while together in a quiet Long Island vacation town. The California-born performer found that spending weeks alongside some of her acting heroes making the apocalyptic thriller was anything but a disaster: “I was really excited to just soak up everything that I could from all of them. That was one of the things going into this that I was the most excited about — that I was gonna be with all of these people who are masters to me.”
Ruth (Myha’la) and G.H. (Mahershala Ali)
Myha’la plays Ruth, the daughter of G.H. (Ali), owner of the vacation home currently occupied by renters Amanda (Roberts) and her husband, Clay (Hawke). Despite being utter strangers, the two families find themselves forced to rely on one another in the face of looming catastrophe.
Myha’la had the unique opportunity to collaborate with writer-director Esmail (Bad Robot) on her character. In the novel, Ruth is G.H.’s wife; here, she is reimagined as a spiky member of Gen Z and a foil to her father, who takes a calm and measured approach to the unprecedented times at hand. “Sam and I had a conversation when I found out I was doing this film about who this person is,” Myha’la says. “[Ruth’s] sort of in this in-between stage of, ‘I’m a child and I’m an adult,’ and she has a really unique perspective on all the things that are happening to them.”
Ruth finds her place as an unexpected voice of reason during the crisis, putting aside any pleasantries for the sake of honesty. Myha’la laughs: “I may or may not behave in exactly the same way.”
