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There may have been a long 29-year wait for Bill & Ted Face The Music, the third outing for Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter’s loveable dimwits, but you do get a lot of Bill and Ted for your buck. There’s the original Bill & Ted, future Bill and Teds, elderly Bill and Teds and inter-dimensional Bill and Teds of all shapes, sizes and dispositions.
Alongside the rabble of Reeveses and Winterses, the film introduces the first female Bill and Teds – that’s Wilhelmina ‘Billie’ Logan (Brigette Lundy-Paine), who is Ted and Elizabeth’s daughter, and Theadora ‘Thea’ Preston (Samara Weaving), who is Bill and Joanna’s daughter (yep, Bill and Ted are still married to the princesses).
It’s easy to imagine we’ll see the scene-stealing pair in further Bill & Ted adventures of their own, but who are the two relative newcomers?
Samara Weaving: from Summer Bay sweetheart to anti-‘scream queen’
Weaving’s relentless assault on the screen suggests she has the tenacity of Grace Le Domas, the character she plays in surprise-hit 2019 survival horror Ready Or Not. She’s established herself as the antithesis to the ‘scream queen’ trope, playing ass-kicking, wise-cracking women who refuse to become a victim in smart action film Mayhem and the doomed bride who refuses to go quietly in the aforementioned Ready Or Not. Made for $6m and grossing over $57m, it’s no wonder weaving has become Hollywood’s butt-kicker de jour: her next role is as Scarlett – originally a GI Joe action figure – in the movie Snake Eyes.
Weaving’s face is all over Netflix right now as her latest movie, The Babysitter: Killer Queen, rides high in the charts. It sees her reprise the role of Bee, the Satan worshipping girl-next-door in 2017’s The Babysitter, whose wry humour makes her a strangely likeable psychopath.
Born in Adelaide, Australia in 1992, Weaving’s route to Hollywood was via the sandy shores of Home & Away’s Summer Bay, the Aussie soap that also gave us Chris Hemsworth, Isla Fisher, Guy Pearce and Naomi Watts. Must be something in the water. Weaving played brooding teen Indi Walker from 2009 to 2013 in Home & Away; her next role was in meta Evil Dead horror-comedy spin-off series Ash Vs Evil Dead in which she played hiker Heather. “I like scary movies with comedy,” Weaving told Marie Claire. “You have the adrenaline rush and the jump scares, and then you have that relief as well.”
Brigette Lundy-Paine: the Atypical actor with a Talking Heads-like side-hustle
You’ll recognise Bridget Lundy-Paine for their role in the hit Netflix show Atypical, in which they play Casey Gardner, sister of the show’s autistic protagonist Sam Gardner (Keir Gilchrist). Their short film CV also includes roles in ‘honey, I shrunk the humans’ movie Downsizing and the film Bombshell, about a sexual harassment scandal at Fox News.
Bridget Lundy-Paine is also the co-founder of Subtle Pride, a surrealist New York City vocal group whose music traces back to the early 2000s anti-folk movement. See them in action below.
Bill & Ted Face the Music is in cinemas now. Find cinema tickets here. ©ORION RELEASING LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.