’F Marry Kill’s Lucy Hale on Avoiding Mixing True Crime With Dating – Charm

[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for F Marry Kill.]

Summary

In ‘F Marry Kill,’ true crime junkie Eva navigates dating apps while suspecting one of her dates to be a serial killer.
The film cleverly merges comedy and thriller elements without trivializing murder.
Lucy Hale praises the twist ending, highlighting the impact of the killer reveal.

In the comedy thriller F Marry Kill, true crime junkie Eva (Lucy Hale) gets so caught up with the latest serial killer case on her favorite podcast that she becomes convinced that one of the three men she’s dating could be the Swipe Right Killer. On her 30th birthday, Eva’s best friends convince her to venture into the world of dating apps, but that proves to be much scarier than she ever could have imagined. As she gets to know the guys she’s dating, it goes beyond figuring out whether someone is an f-boy or marriage material, and into wondering whether they might actually kill her before the date is over.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Hale talked about making a true crime rom-com, leaning into the campiness while never making fun of the deaths, the fun of playing a character who’s a little unhinged, that you should avoid hunting down a serial killer on your own, finding the chemistry in each of Eva’s relationships, what she thought of the killer reveal, and the most memorable moments to shoot. She also discussed shooting the upcoming psychological sci-fi flick White Mars, and her experience on The CW series Privileged and how its cancellation led to Pretty Little Liars.

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F Marry Kill (2025) Official Trailer – Lucy Hale, Virginia Gardner, Brooke Nevin

When true-crime junkie Eva Vaugh (Lucy Hale) is shoved into the dating app world by her besties on her 30th birthday, she suddenly finds herself at the center of a real-life murder case.

Collider: When you first read this script, what was your reaction to it? Was there a scene or a couple of scenes that stood out to you?

LUCY HALE: I just loved the idea. At this point in my career, I wanna do things that make people go, “What?!” I’m drawn to more outlandish ideas. But everyone is obsessed with true crime and everyone is obsessed with rom-coms. I was like, “This is just crazy enough to potentially work.” The script was just very funny. When it’s written well, it’ll work. If it’s on the page, it’s gonna work. And then, we had a really great director, Laura Murphy, who’s big in the comedy world, so I knew she would take really good care of us. She also had this great idea to visually shoot it like a thriller, and to lean more into that and less of the rom-com. She wanted to really lean into the groundedness of how crazy this is. This is a movie. If a girl found out there’s a serial killer on the loose, odds are that she’s deleting the apps. She’s not trying to be the woman who figures it all out. When I heard the idea, I actually wasn’t like, “That’s insane.” I was like, “Oh, I think this could actually work.” We had so much fun. It’s so silly. It was a great time.

Obviously, true crime and true crime podcasts are so popular, but we don’t get too many crime stories that are also comedies because it’s not particularly easy to make murder funny.

HALE: Because it’s not funny.

Lucy Hale Plays Up the Silliness of ‘F Marry Kill’ Without Ever Making Fun

“We leaned into the campiness of it all.”

What was it like to find the tone? Was that tone always obvious in the script, or did you guys play around with just how funny you could be, as you were doing it?

HALE: I think why it works is because we’re not making fun of the deaths. We’re not making fun of the killers. It’s just the characters that are funny. Eva is just unhinged. She’s goofy and silly. I think it works because we’re poking fun at people on the internet who want to solve crimes. That’s such a thing right now. People want to be a part of the mystery, and I’m guilty of that, too. I love having an opinion about things that are going on. Finding the tone was always about keeping the murders and the serial killer serious and very grounded. Eva is a little left of center, and that’s where the comedy comes into play. The comedy comes into play with their personalities. We owe the tone to Laura, the director. Because she’s really big with directing comedy, there was also physical comedy. So, the credit goes to her for the tone. We leaned into the campiness of it all. The ending between myself and the killer had to lean into that. Comedy only works if it’s grounded and real to the characters. It’s the same with a horror movie. Horror only works if you lean into it more, so that’s what we did. We just owned what we were doing and hoped that it would come together.

What your character does in this, by becoming a serial dater to find a serial killer, seems like it would be ill-advised in real life. If you had a friend come to you with an idea like this, what would you say? Are you someone who is an encourage, or do you try to be the voice of reason?

HALE: I feel like my life is so peaceful right now that I’d be really excited about the drama that would ensue from this. The little devil on my shoulder would be like, “Yeah, let’s go!” I’d be the getaway car. I’d make sure we had an out plan. But no, that’s the worst advice ever. If there’s a serial killer, delete the apps and don’t leave your house. Although I feel like, nowadays, there aren’t serial killers because you can’t get away with anything.

Lucy Hale as Eva holding her hands up in F Marry Kill.

‘F Marry Kill’ Review: Lucy Hale Swipes Right on a Killer

Rosé, size 10 shoes and scarred fingerprints make for perfect first dates and murderers.

In order to go back and forth between who you would want to marry, who you would want to have sex with, and who the killer is, that obviously has to involve three guys for her to date. What was that like? How did you find the experience of develops three relationships for this movie and figuring out what those very different dynamics would be, with those three actors?

HALE: Oh, that was great. With each of the actors – Jedidiah [Goodacre], Brendan [Morgan] and Samer [Salem] – it was very specific as to who their characters were. What we wanted to do in the movie was, at any given point, have the audience think each of them was a killer. And then, she starts have feelings for all three of them. She also probably flips with all of them. Well, maybe not all of them. We just loved the idea of constantly flipping in her mind between, “I really like you, but you don’t have fingertips. I have feelings for someone who doesn’t have fingertips.” There’s no good explanation for that. Usually, in these movies, you’re creating chemistry with one person. But lucky me, I got to do it with three. They were great. They were so funny. They were exactly perfect for those roles.

The other thing about this that’s fun is her group of friends. What did you do to build that friendship and what did you most enjoy about the scenes when you guys are all together?

HALE: You never know how the chemistry is gonna work in those scenes. We really didn’t get any time to hang out or know each other because we were on a schedule. I owe that to everyone just being really professional and a good actor and we could bounce off of each other. It’s all credit to that. I knew [Virginia Gardner] a little beforehand, but we were all meeting for the first time. Luckily, they were all great and we had great banter.

Lucy Hale Was Surprised by That Killer Reveal in ‘F Marry Kill’

“I personally didn’t see it coming.”

Lucy Hale as Eva holding the phone with her left hand to her right ear in F Marry Kill — Image via Lionsgate

What was your reaction to learning that none of these guys was actually the killer? How did you feel about that reveal?

HALE: I loved that the twist was that it’s a woman getting revenge, and it wasn’t just any woman, but it was my best friend. I personally didn’t see it coming. Ginny absolutely smashed this role. She’s so crazy in that last scene. Her hair is crazy and she’s just really believable. I really believed that she would be the wife that would snap. In the hands of another actress, that might not have worked. You could have been like, “Come on, give me a break.” But Ginny has this maniacal thing about her where I was like, “This feels like someone who’s living in an alternate reality where she believes that what she’s doing is helping mankind.” She was so genuine that it really made it work. It is absolutely batshit, and she just brought something to it that blew us all away. She’s such an incredible actor. She would go from doing that scene, and then they’d yell, ‘Cut!,” and she’d just go back to normal. She could turn that on and off. There was a gleam in her eye. It’s a skill. She really made that work. When I was reading it, I was like, “How is this gonna play out?” But she killed it, pun intended.

That moment made me wonder what it must have been like to watch on set.

HALE: It was crazy. Making movies is crazy, in general, but the whole thing was just nuts, especially the scene when I stabbed her with the kitten heel. Laura, the director, wanted us to improv. As the end, when I’m killing her, I was like, “I hated your spray tan at your wedding. You looked streaky.” That is why the movie worked. We’re in the middle of killing each other, and we’re talking about how we hated each other’s spray tans.

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What was the craziest thing that you found yourself doing in this?

HALE: The funniest thing for me was the puking scene, where Ginny is wasted and she gets sick. I thought that was the funniest, the number of people that had to curate the perfect vomit to make it look realistic. There were more people tending to the fake vomit than the actors in the scene or the lighting. It was very, very funny how much attention it got, but that’s why I love what we do. Those details really do make a difference. Jedidiah gets stabbed in the back, and obviously it’s a plastic knife. So, when they yelled, “Cut!,” he just stood up and busted open a Coca-Cola with a plastic knife hanging out of his back. It was so silly.

Do you know what you’re going to do next?

HALE: I have a movie called White Mars, which is very different. It’s psychological sci-fi, and it’s all set in Antarctica. We didn’t film it in Antarctica, but it all takes place on a research base in Antarctica. We filmed it on green screen stages in Rome. Basically, I play a scientist who protects the base from evil entities. I was excited to do something like that because it’s one of those movies where the stakes are high the entire time. It’s a lot of action. It’s a really badass character. It’s quite a change from the last couple of things I’ve done.

The Cancellation of The CW Series ‘Privileged’ Led to ‘Pretty Little Liars’ for Lucy Hale

“Everything has a reason.”

Lucy Hale as Rose with Ashley Newbrough as sister Sage and JoAnna Garcia Swisher in a promo for Privileged — Image via The CW

The first time I remember seeing you in something was the TV series Privileged, and at that time, that was the longest you’d had spent playing a character. What do you remember about that experience and what you learned from doing a series like that, playing a character for a longer amount of time?

HALE: What’s crazy is that I remember so much from that show. Mainly, I remember how JoAnna Garcia, who was the number one on the call sheet on that show, treated everyone, and how she treated me and Ashley [Newbrough]. She was so good and kind to everyone. She knew everyone’s name. She was such a professional. I remember thinking, “That’s what I wanna be like.” It left such an impression on me. And Ashley is still one of my best friends, to this day. We were roommates. That was where I learned everything. I learned how to hit a mark, where the lights were, and which eye to look at when you’re talking to someone, so the camera gets most of your face. That was my first time really getting to experience a set. I still think that show in a different time would have gone longer. You just never know when things are gonna resonate. Rina [Mimoun] was the showrunner of that show. It was just such a perfect experience. But it was because that show got canceled, or I guess not renewed for a second season, that I got Pretty Little Liars. It was the same producers. So, everything has a reason. There were some great outfits on that show. Aw, I wonder what those characters are doing.