Alice Englert On the Perils of Charming Snakes

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If Alice Englert were to be persuaded into religiosity, extremism would be the approach. So it’s fitting that she plays a practicing snake handler in Them That Follow, the beautifully co-directed new film by Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage. A real-life practice in the United States’s Appalachian region (though outlawed in all states but West Virginia), serpent-handling hinges on the belief that when you pick up a venomous snake, if you are worthy, it won’t bite you: the ultimate test of faith. “I’m not religious, but fuck…maybe this would be the way,” Englert laughs. She explains that the religion portrayed in the movie comes from an “extremely literal” interpretation of a passage from Mark in the King James version of the Bible. Taken by a clergyman from Tennessee named George Hensley, he introduced it to sects of Christian Methodists in the South in the early 1900s. “It’s so visceral,” Englert says. “I can see that being attractive to people.” But then, “snakes definitely do bite and kill you, so big ol’ warning there.” Case in point: George Hensley himself died of a snake bite in 1955. The snakes handled by the cast on set, though, were not actually poisonous.

While Them That Follow is a story about snake handling, it’s also about faith—and the experience of losing it (Poulton, who grew up in a Mormon family, was inspired by her own experience). Englert plays the film’s lead Mara, daughter to the pastor and a committed follower of her father’s beliefs. The story begins just before Mara’s discovery that she’s pregnant with the child of a non-believer named Augie, played by Thomas Mann. (The film also stars Booksmart’s Kaitlyn Dever and Augie’s mother is played by the inimitable Olivia Colman, whom Englert aptly describes as “the real deal.”) What follows is an elegant depiction of the contradictory nature of blind faith, the way it brings people together but simultaneously can push them apart, and what Englert calls “the perfect problem.” Elaborating, she says, “If it’s all about belief then if you do get bitten, no matter how much you felt it, there was a part of you that didn’t believe it. How do you fight against that?” But her decision to do the film came from the way it reminded her of fairy tales before Disney existed, “when they were actually scary.” After reading the script, “I felt like there was something kind of deep and wild and poetic about Mara,” she explains. “She was really committed to her religion and lost it anyway. That’s what I liked about her.” In preparation for her role, she read Dennis Covington’s nonfiction Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia and credits it as being “ridiculously interesting.”

The Australian-born Englert is calling from Italy, where she is vacationing but also working because that’s how she likes it. The 24-year-old actor is also a writer, director, and musician. Daughter of the brilliant award-winning director Jane Campion, Englert acted in one of her mother’s productions at the age of twelve and went on to pursue her own career in film with roles alongside Elle Fanning in Sally Potter’s 2008 coming-of-age drama Ginger and Rosa and in the teen fantasy Beautiful Creatures as well as the second season of Campion’s series Top of the Lake, in which she plays Elisabeth Moss’s character’s seventeen-year-old natural daughter, Mary. Englert shares a special kind of relationship with her mother. Being able to watch Campion work from a young age helped shape that. Since storytelling is “how my mom sort of best communicates herself,” the actor explains, observing her on set, “it was like, ‘Oh I get this.’” She says they work well together. “I really love and like her,” she adds.

Englert also recently wrote and directed “The Boyfriend Game,” a short that features a song written and performed by Englert herself, low-voiced and a capella. She “adores” music, naming an eclectic group of musicians who inspire her from Nick Cave to Carly Simon to Junglepussy—the connecting thread being lyrics that mean something and artists who are “committed.” She describes her own songwriting as “depressing pop lullabies.” At this point, she’s unsure whether or not it’s something she can employ as a viable skill down the road, at least in terms of making money, but “I’m keen to keep making it and keep exploring it regardless,” she says. “It’s a really big deal for me.”

Englert is thoughtful, critical, and respectful all at once. It shows in her careful analyses of everything she discusses. She is also very funny. On the phone, she’s well-spoken but claims she can express herself far better through her work. “When I’m in conversation,” she says, “there are like five things I want to say at the same time that almost might even slightly contradict each other. When you work or write or do music, you can be happy and sad all at the same time. There’s so much more potential for your language and for your expression.” Fantasy novels, which she thinks are very creative when done well, “tickle me,” she says. “I’m a big fan. It can make you look at your world in a way that doesn’t feel so fucking personal.” That, and she loves a good mythology podcast because of how “very dramatic and weird” mythology is; they are also the key to dealing with occasional bouts of insomnia.

Born in Australia, Englert spent much of her childhood in New Zealand. As an adult, she stayed in New York for some time. “It left a big impression on me,” she says. She’s been based out of Los Angeles for several months now, and she says that she likes the “hubris” of the city. As a white Australian native, Englert’s relationship to her home country and its treatment of Aboriginals is complicated, not unlike the current American experience. She’s been reading a lot about it lately, which has only introduced more complexity. “The more I learn about how fucked up Australia is—the more I realize that what I was feeling was a symptom of my country—the more I felt like, ‘Ok maybe this [emotion] makes sense,’” she says thoughtfully. “I feel like I [have to understand] it, even if it’s painful, so there are possibilities to actually do something.” She describes her current state as “uncomfortable.” To fellow Australians—and everyone else alike—she recommends Stan Grant’s Talking to My Country along with Nayuka Gorrie’s work as reading material. All in all, she just wants to keep learning.

Though Englert says religion is still not for her, working on Them That Follow was “a real pleasure,” thanks in large part to the snakes. “I love that people are obsessed with snakes,” she says. She mentions a friend of hers who had a pet snake and told her “she loved them because ‘they’re so innocent.’ I think that’s sort of what’s special about [snakes] in stories, why they are so iconic in religion—they’re seen as the opposite of innocent,” she muses. “There is something about snakes that we’re obsessed with. No one really knows exactly how they move and of course, they terrify us, but we imbue them with stuff.” As for religion, “I think when it helps people…there’s nothing wrong with it helping people,” she says. “But snakes I’m definitely for. That’s my verdict.”

Them That Follow is out today.