To say Chloe Farnworth is an actress on the rise is an understatement. Just take a look at her new film 12 Hour Shift.
12 Hour Shift, a dark comedy, is set in 1998 and follows Mandy (Angela Bettis), a nurse at an Arkansas hospital, who is desperate to make it through her double shift without incident while also being involved in a black-market organ-trading scheme. When her hapless but dangerous cousin Regina (Farnworth) messes up a kidney delivery, chaos descends on the hospital as the cousins frantically try to secure a replacement organ through any means necessary. The film also stars David Arquette as Jefferson, a black market organ-trading criminal.
“Regina is Mandy’s cousin and she was brought into this new kind of business of smuggling organs and she’s pretty new to the job and she basically messes up this big handoff right off the top. So she kind of comes into the film and turns everything upside down for Mandy and causes a lot of chaos. I would describe her as this kind of psychopathic tornado of chaos who lives in a bubble and doesn’t seem much outside of her bubble that she lives in. And she just causes everything to go wrong and upside down,” said Chloe.
This film is full of blood and organs but Chloe says that the gore is tasteful and “not over the top.” She did get to work a lot with prop organs, though.
“It was really fun. I mean, the set designer does such a great job. The organs and the kidneys she used for filming were made out of silicone, so they’re kind of heavy and slippery. There’s one scene when I was holding, I think it was a kidney, and it was so slippery, it was kind of slipping out of my hands. The set designer did such a great job with the actual organs used for the film. They felt so lifelike, like they were very squishy and how I would imagine the organ to feel, I haven’t felt one in real life but it’s exactly how I think it would feel… some days, when they were creating all of the organs, they had them all lined up on the hair and makeup tables, and you just walk in and you’d have to do like a second glance, because it looks so real. It was really awesome.”
With blood and guts, it can be no surprise that some of it goes home with the actors and actresses. Chloe had similar experiences.
“So, Regina gets covered in sick, or puke I guess, I think you say puke or vomit over here. I call it sick in England. So yeah, I get covered in vomit quite a lot in the film, and there’ll be times where I’ll go back to the hotel and find bits of soup in my hair or oats, because they put oats in it to kind of make it lumpy, or grits. And I’d literally come back to the hotel and I’d be brushing my hair and this bean sprout would fall out of my head, or a piece of oat would come out. Or I’d wake up in the morning and there’d be blood on my pillow, and it was from the blood in my hair that I hadn’t washed out from the night before. I felt bad for the cleaners in the hotel because they probably went into my room and found bits blood on the pillow and they were probably like ‘what is this girl doing in here?'”
What drew Chloe to Regina is that she is so different than any other character she’s played before.
Hair + Make-up: Alexandria Storm
Styling: Aaron Gomez at Ivan Bitton Style House
“I guess for 12 hour shift I saw the breakdown come out and I saw the part for Regina, I was like this character is so awesome and weird and crazy and I haven’t played a part like this before. So I actually emailed the producers of the film and I was like, ‘hey my name’s Chloe and I really want to audition for Regina,’ and they got back to me and they let me audition. I did two self tapes for the part of Regina and then they offered me the role. I kind of really played on the physicality of Regina. I wanted her to have these kind of weird physical movements, like she had a wonky walk and I gave her this eye twitch and kind of a weird face twitch. And crazy eyes, not full on crazy eyes, just a little bit. So I did all of that for the audition and they loved it and we kept it for the actual film. So, I guess I work on physicality a lot when I’m auditioning and then I look for a character that I’m really drawn to and something I haven’t played before, or some elements I haven’t played before. And with Regina, it was like ‘I have to be this girl”
“She’s from Arkansas, so it was a lot of fun learning the accent because it’s my first time working in a southern Texas accent so that was a really exciting challenge for me. I’ve worked in a standard American accent before but [southern Texas accent] is a really fun one to do and I worked with my accent coach for about three weeks leading up to the film. And I watched a lot of Thelma and Louise. I watched it, oh gosh probably about 30 times and I think I know it word for word now or thereabouts, and Dolly Parton. So I kind of like immersed myself into the accent on TV and films and radio and I would go to sleep listening to it. It’s really fun because it’s literally a full transformation… and I love challenges and it was a challenge to do in a short period of time.”
12 Hour Shift hits theaters and VOD this Friday October 2. You can also catch Chloe in Peacock’s Departure which is streaming now.
“Everyone should go see [12 Hour Shift], it’s a roller coaster of a ride. But it’s a fun one. I think it will kind of take you away from everything that’s going on in the world right now, and it would be a nice break for people to watch.”
You can follow Chloe Farnworth on social media with her handle @chloefarnworth.
