Saturday Morning Massacre: Ashley Rae Spillers Gets a Debut (and Workout)

This is the last in a series of four interviews related to the Austin-shot movie Saturday Morning Massacre (Jette's review), which recently premiered at Los Angeles Film Festival. Don't forget to read about our chats with producer Jonny Mars, screenwriters Aaron Leggett and Jory Balsimo, and director Spencer Parsons.

Austin-based actress Ashley Rae Spillers stars in Saturday Morning Massacre as Nancy, the plucky young leader of a group of amateur ghostbusters working their first paying case... and things don't go quite as planned. This is Spillers' first feature-film role, following her appearance in a few short films, including a segment of Slacker 2011. Slackerwood sat down with Spillers before the film's LAFF premiere. Though this was her first feature film role, she's been busy ever since, working with a long list of Austin filmmakers. 

Slackerwood: How did you get involved with the film?

Spillers: This is the first feature I'd ever done. Maybe a year before, Jason Wehling called me up and had me do some voiceover for an animated feature he was doing. That's how I got to know Jason and I'd see him from time to time, and I met Spencer [Parsons].

A year or so later, I got a call one night and Jason said, "So we're doing this crazy movie and we think you might be good for it, but we're not sure." They said they were maybe considering another actress in town. He said, "Come meet us tonight to talk about it." I was at happy hour when he called and I'd had a few glasses of wine -- and then I got nervous so I had a couple more glasses of wine, and I showed up and was like, "Hey, guys!"

We all met at the house and the writers were there were explaining what it was gonna be. And I was stoked because who doesn't want to be a part of a movie that's Scooby-inspired? And then they called me later and said, "OK, it's yours, let's make a movie!" So I was nervous.

How long after that did you start shooting?

Spillers: I want to say it was about two weeks. We instantly started doing wardrobe and figuring all that out and I had to leave my day job because it about 11 days and I had to be on every day. I was working in a retail store. Iit was fine. I didn't mind leaving it.

Was it grueling to work on? It looked like you probably got a workout.

Spillers: I totally got a workout and I loved it. That stuff was the thing I was most nervous about, but because I'm kind of nuts, I said, "Yeah! Let's do it!" I had never done physical stuff like that, and it was a really short shot we did it in about 11 days, so it was all day and all night running and fighting.

What was a part of the film you really enjoyed filming?

Spillers: I loved all of it, but the fighting sequences I think were my favorite. I just really like doing that. And a lot of the running, but yeah, the scene in the end with Heather [Kafka] ... That was my favorite. All that stuff was kind of challenging, and I think anything that was challenging was my favorite, and I'd never done fight choreography like that, physical things like that, I didn't know if I could, so it was fun to kind of jump in and do it.

What else did you work on before this?

Spillers: Since then, I've done quite a bit. I was just in Oklahoma City for the Dead Center Film Festival for Magpie. It's a short film I did directed by Russell Bush. It premiered at SXSW this year. So I did that, and it's been really great. People seem to like it; it's a weird little movie.

And I worked with Spencer again after this on a feature he's been working on for a few years now. He flew us up to Chicago, and so we shot that. And I just recently worked with Bryan Poyser on The Bounceback. Things have been good. Oh, and Geoff Marslett. We did a feature called Loves Her Gun, and we traveled to New York with that. I play Zoe in that, the drummer.