‘Her Private Hell’ Interview: Nicolas Winding Refn and More

(L to R) ‘Her Private Hell’ director Nicolas Winding Refn and Charles Melton.

Opening in theaters on July 24th is the new movie from visionary filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn (‘Drive’) called ‘Her Private Hell’, which he co-wrote with Esti Giordani.

Release Date: Jul 24, 2026

Run Time: 1 hr 50 min

The film stars Sophie Thatcher (‘Heretic’), Charles Melton (‘May December’), Havana Rose Liu (‘Bottoms’), Kristine Froseth (‘The First Lady’), and Dougray Scott (‘Mission: Impossible II’).

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with director Nicolas Winding Refn, Sophie Thatcher, and Charles Melton about their work on ‘Her Private Hell’, developing the screenplay and the themes Refn wanted to explore, his unique visual style, how Thatcher and Melton approached playing their characters, and their experience working with the acclaimed filmmaker.

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‘Her Private Hell’ director Nicolas Winding Refn.

Moviefone: To begin with, Nicolas, can you talking about having the idea for the story, developing the screenplay, and the themes you wanted to explore as a director with this film?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Well, I had two ideas. I had an idea of Private K going to hell and then I had an idea of a young woman coming to a city that doesn’t exist. Then to connect some kind of narrative between them, I needed a third idea. So, the Leather Man, the glam monster became the connecting dot. Obviously thematically, I think father-daughter is the most apparent one. One story is about a girl whose father is always leaving her and now her lover is marrying him. She creates her alter ego, which is the perfect father that’s searching for his daughter. So it had that kind of duality in terms of what they both represented. But I would say father-daughter was my authentic emotional odyssey from myself. I had explored son-mother in ‘Only God Forgives’, so this was a way for me to bring in the second half of me into the story fold.

MF: Charles, can you talk about your first reaction to the screenplay and how you approached playing your character?

Charles Melton: I knew I was going to do it before I read the screenplay, when I first met Nic. What was incredible about the process of filming is that the script kind of was just an outline for what it was like on set. Shooting in chronological order, the things that would be revealed to you in the work. You’re not jumping to the future, you’re not jumping into the past. You’re living in this unreality. I think it’s such a special place to live in. There was just this absolute trust and seeking truth with Nic and just being in the world of what he created. It was the only time that I did not read the script from when we started filming to the end. My trust was in Nic, and in this world, the script just disintegrated and it turned into sparkles. That’s amazing because I wasn’t constrained as an actor on just the page because if there’s anything we know about the artistic greatness of Nic as an auteur is that it’s off the page. You can’t put who he is on a piece of paper because he’ll fold it and make it into this beautiful thing.

Sophie Thatcher stars in ‘Her Private Hell’.

MF: Sophie, can you talk about your first reaction to the screenplay and did you understand how you wanted to play the character right away, or did it take some time to find on set?

Sophie Thatcher: It was a visceral reaction in the sense that I felt emotionally touched and could see the references that Nicolas had floating around like Kurosawa, and Brian De Palma. I just didn’t know how the two worlds were going to mesh. So there was a lot of confusion in the air after reading it, but I think there’s beauty to that. At the time, it made me really scared, but he really helped me to learn how to embrace the unknown. Again, with the character, I knew that she was going to reach some kind of breaking point, but I didn’t know how she was going to get there or what that was going to be. I’m very keen on mapping out a specific character trajectory and this gets to this, like cause and effect, in a very much more technical sense with my other movies. But with this, you really had to surrender yourself. So, that was a new experience. I feel like just within the course of filming because we shot in order, I was learning about her every day and we were bleeding into each other.

MF: Sophie, what was your experience like working with Nicolas Winding Refn and watching the specific way that he makes movies?

ST: I mean, it was just entirely different from anything I’ve done because he was so open and would have a new scene or new ideas after our dinner the last night or a dream that he had. He’s very good at following his intuition and there’s a looseness and there’s a sense of freedom within his filmmaking now. It all feels so dreamlike and like entering this fantasy world. They’d built all the sets from scratch, which is great because that’s such a core part of the world building. The world building of this is so strange and so it’s an unreality. None of it is real. That’s how it felt as soon as you stepped onto the stages. It was like a dollhouse. So you were immediately transported into something very otherworldly. It felt like people don’t make movies like this anymore, and I felt very grateful. It felt like we were in the ’70s or something, but it felt so authentic and had a DIY quality to it as well.

(Center L to R) Havana Rose Liu and Sophie Thatcher in ‘Her Private Hell’. Photo: Neon.

MF: How did the production design, costumes and makeup help shape and inform your performance?

ST: I mean, immediately it felt transformative. I think because me and Nic draw a lot of the same references and have a lot of the same taste, it started off with us just sending each other music. I was referencing Brian Eno and Roxy Music, and a lot of glam rock ’70s stuff. So thinking about that music and both of us having an understanding of that music and then putting on the costumes created this sometimes androgynous, sometimes flamboyancy. It immediately took me into this larger than life world, putting on these costumes and some of them were uncomfortable, like that leather jacket, but as soon as I put on that leather jacket, I felt a sense of seriousness. Costumes are the easiest way to transport. But it also felt like me if I was in another era. It felt very ’70s, which I love that we stuck to that.

MF: Sophie, was there one scene in particular that was difficult to execute and how did you overcome that challenge?

ST: I feel like all of them were pretty challenging. I mean, just setting the tone and not knowing if what I was doing was going to work. I think the last scene where I’m having a bit of that confrontation with Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), there’s so much bottled up and you have to believe that she’s reached this point where she’s just about to crack. So I was nervous about that and the buildup to that because things were changing quite a lot. This was the scene in my head that I was like, “She’s been full of so much oppression that she has to let it out and this is the big moment.” So there were nerves going into that, but it felt so justified because as an actor there was a lot of shoving down emotions, which is what Elle was going through. So to be able to let it all out, it ended up being the most gratifying, but definitely the most stressful scene to sell.

Sophie Thatcher in ‘Her Private Hell’. Photo: Neon.

MF: Finally, Nicholas, can you talk about your visual style as a director and creating the specific look of this film?

NWR: Well, I mean, film is a visual medium, so it has to look interesting because it’s what we see. What we experience and what we feel is very much based on what we see and how we see it. So, I always say everything is equally important on a movie. Much as the actor, as the camera, as the sound, as the production design, as the makeup, costumes, it’s all part of the operatic sense of the otherworldly. So for this film, I think that the fairytale aspect was a way in. It started as a fairytale, but then I decided I wanted to make an opera, but those two things actually speaks very well to each other. So it was constant evolution. Because I shoot everything I make in chronological order, I always start with not really knowing, which means that every day, like Charles is saying, is a new day. The first thing you ask the actor is, “What would you like to do today?” And then we take it from there.

Charles Melton in ‘Her Private Hell’. Photo: Neon.

What is the plot of ‘Her Private Hell’?

When a mysterious mist engulfs a futuristic metropolis, unleashing a deadly and elusive entity, a troubled young woman (Sophie Thatcher) searches for her father (Dougray Scott). Her quest collides with an American GI (Charles Melton) on a harrowing odyssey to rescue his daughter from Hell.