Mikey Madison embraced the challenge of playing a character with "emotional restraint" in The Social Reckoning.
The Oscar-winning actress portrays Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen in Aaron Sorkin's sequel to The Social Network and enjoyed playing an "unorthodox" part.
In an interview with IndieWire, Madison said: "It was a character that I found to be quite unorthodox. When I read it, I was like, this almost seems like a role that a man would play.
"It's a character with a lot of emotional restraint, a lot. This is not an outwardly emotional character. She's very nuanced, very specific. She's very pragmatic. She is not emotional."
The Scream star continued: "I've played a lot of characters, which I love, who are very bombastic and emotionally volatile. This was something so refined and restrained in a way where I was like, I think it would be a challenge for me as an actress to play with restraint in that way.
"I wonder if people will understand it, but I also feel like it's something I need to just try and do."
The Social Reckoning is Madison's first big role since winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 2024 movie Anora and she admits that choosing her follow-up project was a decision that was "stressing" her out.
The 27-year-old star said: "I was thinking about that a lot: 'What do I want to do next?' It was stressing me out a bit.
"Mostly, I just want to do work that has a lot of heart. I want to work with interesting people. I want to tell the story with a lot of integrity. I want to do something very different from anything I've ever done before. That could only be healthy for me as an actress."
She added: "Ultimately, my biggest goal in life and my biggest dream is to just continue working forever.
"I look at Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert, and I'm deeply moved by the careers and the filmography that they've created over multiple decades. That's my dream.
"So I wasn't focused on, what's the next thing going to be and what's it going to say? It was more just, what do I feel compelled to do? And this just happened to be the next one."
Madison explained that Haugen's "deep moral integrity" in disclosing thousands of internal Facebook documents made the role even more appealing.
She said: "I think it's just incredibly rare in this day and age – and also very comforting – to know that there is someone who is willing to go on the line for the greater good of people that she doesn't even know. She sacrificed so much for a beautiful cause.
"I've gotten into this pocket of playing these very much morally grey characters, which I also really love and those are some of my favourite characters to play, but I had never played someone quite like this.
"There was something very pure and compelling about her deep moral integrity. There wasn't anything self-serving about it.
"My character is based off of the real Frances Haugen, and these are all real things that the real Frances did. And I was like, wow, that's interesting, I've never done anything like that before."
