Breathe it in — Her Smell is almost here.
Alex Ross Perry’s music drama, which stars Elisabeth Moss as a ‘90s punk frontwoman on a downward spiral of addiction and destruction, hits theaters in April. The new trailer, released Thursday morning, invites viewers into the chaotic world of Moss’ Becky Something, a frustrating, fascinating, sometimes frightening character that Perry describes as “titanically complex and huge, and [requiring] an unfathomable amount of endurance on the part of a performer.”
Though Moss had to sing and play the guitar and the piano as Becky, the challenge that piqued her interest most was the addiction aspect of her story. “I’ve never played an addict before, and I just [was interested to] figure out who that person was,” the actress says. “Having to take it through that entire [five-act] arc and the different stages of her addiction — I’ve never played somebody like that.”
“We don’t have a whole lot of concern for making a pleasing character or a likable character,” Moss told EW about herself and Perry, who wrote the character for her and with whom she’s now worked three times. “We like the risk a little bit.”
Inspired by this moment in music history and the promise of Moss as his leading lady (on their third collaboration), Perry wrote the script “about an inch or two away from actual people, and from actual history” rather than as a biopic about a single real musician. “As a woman in rock, as a woman in punk, as a woman in alternative rock in the ‘90s, [Becky] represents a lot, and there’s many, many very important women who inspired that.”
“My ambition was to take the character and really just treat her and the movie with the utmost respect,” Perry says. “To kind of elevate something that I love and take very seriously — meaning this type of music and this era — and create something with it that’s heightened to the point of high tragedy.”
Check out the trailer above. Her Smell hits theaters in April.
