You always remember your first time, especially when it’s your first time to be hunted by a Predator. Amber Midthunder, star of the Hulu original film Prey ⏤ the latest installment of the Predator franchise ⏤ faces off against one of the fearsome extraterrestrial trophy hunters on screen, but she says that even encountering one behind the scenes was scary enough.
That said, the actor, who stars as a Comanche woman who confronts the Predator in order to protect her tribe, wasn’t intimidated at all, however imposing her on-screen nemesis might have appeared. Midthunder told Gamesradar Total Film what her feelings were when she first stumble across the Predator in the midst of a costume and lighting test on location in Calgary.
“There was a humming, and I saw a big group of people. I walked further, and then I saw [the Predator]. I was lasered in. The first thing I said was: ‘I can take it.’ And then I got in my regular brain, and I was like, ‘That’s terrifying!’ But the first thing that came out of my mouth was: ‘I can take it.’”
— Amber Midthunder
Prey, directed by 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg, takes place in 1719 before the Comanche had been fully encroached upon by European colonizers, roughly 270 years before the events of 1987’s Predator. In addition to the drastic change in setting, Trachtenberg also wants the audience to respond to the newest film in much the way Midthunder felt when she encountered the alien on set. “I wanted it to feel far scarier, way more alien-creature-like, ferocious and feral,” he told Entertainment Weekly
Prey debuts on Hulu Aug. 5.