The path from teen drama heroine to scream queen is well-trodden. Think Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl, The Roommate), Michelle Williams (Dawson’s Creek, Species) and Neve Campbell (Party of Five, Scream). Even Madelaine Petsch’s predecessor, Liv Tyler, did her fair share of coming-of-age drama before starring in The Strangers. Petsch, who rose to fame as Cheryl Blossom on the TV phenomenon Riverdale, and now leads the reboot of the aforementioned horror franchise, is in very good company then.

Following a couple who are terrorised by three psychotic masked strangers in a remote cabin in the woods, Petsch reprises her role as Maya Lucas, the sole survivor from the two previous instalments, in The Strangers: Chapter 3 this month. Reflecting on how the traumatic events of the first two movies have affected her protagonist, she says, “She is a completely different person walking into the third film. In the first film, she is a normal girl going to a job interview. In the second, it’s about learning to survive and how far she can be pushed. In this third film, it’s mostly about resilience, her walking into her power and choosing to fight back.”

All three movies in the rebooted The Strangers trilogy were shot back-to-back during a gruelling 52 days in Bratislava, Slovakia — an experience director Renny Harlin described as “the challenge of a lifetime”. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, he added: “On a Monday morning, I could be shooting the second chapter, and Monday afternoon I could be shooting the first chapter, and Tuesday morning I could be shooting the third chapter.”

And, while working on a series like Riverdale, with its famously outlandish and more than occasionally convoluted plotlines, undoubtedly gave Petsch experience dealing with the demands of continuity, she explains that the production process on The Strangers was almost the complete opposite.

“With Riverdale, I would shoot a scene and not even have the full script for that episode yet. Here, I had the script for all three movies, so I was able to build a really finely tuned arc for this character. I spent weeks preparing before I even got to Slovakia, and then an additional two weeks in pre-production making sure I was incredibly well-versed so that, when I walked onto the set, I knew where she was coming from at any given moment.”

With its action sequences and rigorous schedule, filming was a physically demanding task for Petsch, who eventually had to have her back taped up by a personal trainer every day. It also proved challenging psychologically, with sleep deprivation from long days and night shoots combining with insomnia induced by the adrenaline of being in “fight-or-flight mode all day”.

Speaking about the challenges of night shoots, Petsch explains, “Your body isn’t meant to be up all night. You lose the light for the circadian rhythm, so often you hit delirium around 5am. That is the hardest thing to battle, the level of insanity that your body feels when you’re transitioning over to night shoots; I’m also having to be in a state of fear while experiencing loopiness.”

While often overlooked for its more commercial nature, from Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs or Kathy Bates in Misery, stepping into the world of horror has led to some of the most iconic performances in cinematic history. “I think it’s the least risk-averse genre in film right now,” says Petsch of what drew her to the reboot. “That allows for you, as an actor, to go 100 per cent in any direction. Also, audience-wise, they walk into horrors ready to buy into the rules of the world that we’ve set up for them. In any other genre, you have to convince the audience that this isn’t the real world.”

So, having established herself in Hollywood, and with The Strangers trilogy drawing to a close, what’s next for Petch? Unsurprisingly for an actress on the rise, she has ambitions to challenge herself with rich and fulfilling roles across a variety of genres.

“I just want to do everything. I want to try everything. Variety is the spice of life, especially for an artist,” she says. “I’ve said this a million times but I’m going to keep saying it, my dream is to be Poison Ivy [from Batman], so we will see if that happens.”

Having served as executive producer on The Strangers, among other film projects, Petsch’s ambitions behind the camera have seen her collaborate with content studio Creator+ and launch her own production company, with two further films going into production later this year.

“I have been a producer on my projects for a while now; it comes naturally to me. I have that kind of brain,” says Petsch. “It was a natural evolution to start my own production company because of the films I love and the films I want to see on screen. [There] was a separation between that and the films that are being made so I do my best to create some sort of unity.”

The Strangers - Chapter 3 is in cinemas now.

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