It’s What’s Inside is no zany Freaky Friday reboot but a hyperreal, existential horror for the Instagram age. Body swaps? Sure, but with a twist that feels closer to Triangle of Sadness or a social media fever dream. Netflix’s latest trip into the uncanny brings The White Lotus's Brittany O’Grady, The 100’s Alycia Debnam-Carey, and The Sex Lives of College Girls’ Gavin Leatherwood into a darkly charged weekend with friends—where a pre-wedding game gone wrong makes everything go to hell in a hurry, and all three actors sit down with Kyle Meredith to talk all about it.
O’Grady, Leatherwood, and Debnam-Carey have a chemistry that’s fierce, frenetic, and fragile. O’Grady leans into her role as Shelby, a reserved character who gets seriously upended once the “game” begins to switch bodies and personalities around like a playlist on shuffle. “You can’t approach this film with ego,” she shares, explaining how the cast traded character traits like they were going out of style. The actors had to rely on each other’s choices, playing versions of characters that other cast members were creating as they went along. That’s not acting; that’s telepathy.
Leatherwood, playing Dennis, pulls from real-life inspirations to build the cocky, influencer-type persona that adds a combustible element to the plot’s fireworks. He absorbed Instagram feeds, creating a version of Dennis that feels all too recognizable—like that guy who never stops flexing, except this time he’s trapped in a scenario that just won’t let him be the main character. Debnam-Carey brings an understated fury as Nikki, an influencer herself who embodies a social media persona with scary accuracy. Greg Jardin, the film’s director, let her run with the influencer archetype, trusting her to deliver on today’s ultra-curated social dynamics. “There’s this idea that we’re ‘presenting’ ourselves all the time,” she notes, and that concept gets gnarly once her character’s self-perception starts warping in real-time.
For the cast, the soundtrack—equal parts haunting and hazy—played its own role. O’Grady found inspiration in Jensen McRae’s music, saying, “It was like hearing a diary read aloud.” The music paired with the moody, classic-inspired score to create an eerie tension that builds like a slow burn before it detonates.
If It’s What’s Inside teaches us anything, it’s that in a body-swap scenario, we’re not just our personalities—we’re our anxieties, our pretensions, and our darkest secrets too. The moral? Be careful what you wish for, especially if it’s a game where you could lose yourself—literally.
Watch the interview above and then check out the trailer below.
