'Happy Face' star Annaleigh Ashford on society being 'desensitized' to true crime

As the Paramount+ series Happy Face continues, Episode 4 packs a particularly hard punch in terms of the impact the story. Starring Annaleigh Ashford, Dennis Quaid and Canadian Khiyla Aynne, the eight-episode season is inspired by the real-life story of Melissa G. Moore, who at 15 discovered that her father was a serial killer, called Happy Face.

In the series Melissa, played by Ashford, reconnects with her incarcerated father Keith, or the Happy Face serial killer (Quaid), as she tries to figure out the circumstances of her father's never-revealed ninth victim. And she doesn't have much time, because there's a man on death row set to be executed for her father's crime. Aynne plays Melissa's daughter, Hazel, a teen who has to navigate high school while also finding our that her grandfather is a rapist and serial killer.



Spoilers for Episode 4 of Happy Face included beyond this point While Melissa has had contact with her father throughout the show so far, nothing has been like their conversations in Episode 4 of Happy Face . Meeting Melissa's brother Shane (Philip Ettinger), we've gotten a glimpse into how both of them has processed the reality of who their father is in different ways. Melissa stopped talking to their father, but as now gone public about the connection, while Shane had been in regular contact with Keith.

But they both share similar feelings as they wonder if there was anything they could have done to stop him. In this episode we also dive into Melissa having an abortion, after she was raped as a teen, with a flashback to her telling her dad, who responds by saying, "So you're a killer. Just like me.

You deserve to be right there in a cell right next to mine." Moving into the present day, Melissa yet again having a conversation with her incarcerated father about her abortion, but slamming his previous comments. "You want to know why I had an abortion dad, because I was raped.

What you did to those women you killed, how to beat them, you raped them, you terrified them. That happened to me too. I’m not like you at all.

I’m like them," she says. He responds by saying, "I hate that someone hurt you. I should have been there.

" 'Crime and violence and trauma is a family event' Looking back at this episode in particular, Ashford said that it's one of her favourites. "It's not only about the trauma that Melissa experienced with men in her life, outside of the relationship of her father, it's where we discovered that she was abused by men in the same way that her father abused women," Ashford told Yahoo Canada . "Talk about trauma with capital T.

" "And it also shows that crime and violence and trauma is a family event, and when one of these violent acts occurs, it is a stain in the family history ...

the victim's families and the perpetrators families, and everybody who was close to a person who committed a crime like this. All of them feel guilt and shame in equal measure. They feel a responsibility for a crime that they did not commit.

And so what does that feel like? What does that look like? And I hope it makes makes viewers question what they would do." A favourite visual queue for the character Melissa is the attention to her lipstick application. It's her amour that she's able to put on as she walks through life with this impact of her father's crimes.

"When you're hiding you have to hide behind something, and so for her, she was hiding behind the mask that she had made," Ashford said. "And as the series goes on, as the show continues week to week, you see the facade begin to crumble." "As her secret comes out, her true self begins to break through.

And it's another one of those reminders that you can't run from your secrets. They will find you, ..

. they will always find the light." While scenes between Ashford and Quaid can be uncomfortable to watch, there's a real chemistry between the two actors, which is necessary in the navigation of the complexity in this relationship.

"We so often talk about the chemistry that you need to have in a scene with an actor that you are playing a romantic scene with, but it is equally, if not more important, to have chemistry with somebody that you're playing family with," Ashford said. "And especially this relationship, we are really lucky that we just had a really natural, easy father-daughter relationship that was complicated and uncomfortable." "And what I think is most unique about his performance is, yes, he's disgusting and terrifying and manipulative, but he's also charming, and he's vulnerable and he loves his daughter.

And that's what's really uncomfortable and complicated, not just for my character, but for the audience. So we had a wonderful time acting together. When we would do our scenes, we would just do a couple takes, because we were so present with each other, and also the writing was so good, and I think most of all, we did just have a natural, easy chemistry that it just clicked.

" Being 'desensitized' to true crime There's a particular kinship between Moore and the character Hazel on Happy Face , with Moore being a teenager when she found out her dad's identity as a serial killer, a similar experience Hazel has to her grandfather on the show. "Hazel found out at 15 that her grandfather was the Happy Face killer, and Melissa Moore found out at 15 that her dad was the Happy Face killer, so I thought that was a really interesting piece of my character," Aynne said. "Hazel is just very layered and complex, and as she goes through the series, she experiences bullying and hard relationships with her peers at school, and with her family.

And she definitely learns a lot, especially near the end of the series. And she really finds her identity." But Moore was a core part of this series, not just in sharing her personal story, but in navigating how to have respect for the victims in this type of crime.

"One of the amazing things about working on this project was not only getting to spend time with the real Melissa Moore, but it was learning from her about the machine of true crime," Ashford highlighted. "Not only has our culture become desensitized to true crime, but we've also forgotten that it's about real people, and there are real victims." "Anytime these stories are fictionalized, or there are documentaries or there are podcasts, there is a great potential for these families, both of the victims and of the perpetrators, that they are re-traumatized.

So she taught us about how to navigate that gracefully. And also, ..

. I was really inspired by the act of service that she is offering to families who've been touched by the trauma of crime." A happy set to tell a dark story With a series like Happy Face the content gets quite dark, and even terrifying, but there was a commitment to make the set a comfortable place for everyone working on the show.

"We had some really heavy material and we wanted to be absolutely respectful of the content, and any of the real people that were involved in this story," Ashford said. And then, because it was so heavy, I wanted to make sure that it was a happy place to work. " "Because Happy Face is dark, that doesn't mean that our set can't be an actual happy place to work.

And so we had a lot of laughs. I like to let the air out of the room in between takes. And it genuinely was one of the the really happiest places I've ever had on set.

" "We had an amazing crew and set just filled with wonderful people, and they were all super supportive, very collaborative," Aynne added. "And it was definitely nice to have that, to be able to go to those places and film those more heavy scenes on those days, for sure.".