“I used to watch Lifetime as a kid,” revealed Bethenny Frankel, best known for her reality TV work on The Real Housewives of New York City and The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, during a press conference for her debut film, Danger in the Dorm, premiering Sunday, June 16th, at 8/7c. Bethenny plays Joanne, a mother whose daughter goes off to college only to find that a killer is preying on girls. Bethenny was surprised when the offer came her way. “I said yes because it seemed so outlandish, the request, and then when I realized how big the role was, it kept getting deeper and deeper.”
(Lifetime)
Playing Joanne’s daughter is Clara Alexandrova in her biggest role to date. “I have a very strong connection to Kathleen and her persistence,” Clara explained. Inspired by a true story, depicted in Ann Rule’s novel upon which this film is based, Clara’s character lost her best friend as a child to a serial killer, so her mother is understandably nervous sending her off to college. “I think that the root of their relationship was they saw a lot of themselves in each other. Joanne just really wanted to protect Kathleen from everything she had gone through that shaped her into the person that she was and the bad stuff that came along with that. Kathleen had resistance to that, but at the end of the day, there were definitely some scenes in that movie where, as the actor, I found that the root of what my work was, where it was all coming from, was admiration for my mother.”
Playing the mother of a college student trying to stop a serial killer sounds like a big acting challenge for a first-time actor. “I thought I actually was pretty good at it,” Bethenny Frankel shared. “I would look at Clara and be like, ‘I think this is good. Like, I think I just did that thing in the one take that matters.’ It was just an experience and a journey, and I enjoyed it. I have such respect for actors, the process and the memorization and the work that people don't see, and the crew. It was a really unique adventure and experience.”
“When I read this script, I fell in love immediately because it's important,” Clara Alexandrova added. “It's deep, and it's dark, and it's real. There's a huge amount of respect that I have for stories of this nature, so of course, there was a thought that went through my head that was like, ‘Oh, damn, pressure's on.’ But I quickly shook that off because this is art, at the end of the day, and there has to be good energy around it. So I surrendered and just tried to put my head down and put myself in it.”
(Lifetime)
“It's a lot of work, and it's intense, and there's a lot of pressure; You don't want to make a fool out of yourself or anybody else,” Bethenny Frankel concluded about her acting debut. While she’s not ruling out the possibility of future acting work, the hurry-up-and-wait aspect of filming felt counterintuitive to the entrepreneur. “I, frankly, couldn't understand Lifetime making such a courageous decision with no reason to know that I could do it.” Bethenny Frankel surprised herself in the moment, delivering a performance she felt proud of oppsite Clara Alexandrova, and having seen the trailer, she’s looking forward to seeing the finished film. “I'm the first one to say if I think it was not good, but my daughter watched, and she's like, ‘Mama, you were good.’ I'm like, “Really?’ And the people that work with me were like, ‘You were good.’ So we're excited… I'm really grateful to everyone for spoon-feeding it to me along the way.”
Danger in the Dorm premiers Sunday, June 16th, at 8/7c on Lifetime.