Maybe it’s fortune. Maybe it’s fate. Maybe something a bit more mystical. But actress Geena Meszaros still truly believes it was a stroke of unimaginable luck that landed her the breakout role of Lisbeth in Netflix’s newest teen horror-comedy The Body. Mostly because she didn’t realize she was trying out for one of the show’s leads.
Meszaros was given partial scripts during much of the audition process, which kept some of the story’s big twists and turns opaque. “I managed to go through the callback and chemistry reads without knowing how integral [Lisbeth] was to the story,” Meszaros says, laughing on a Zoom from her Calgary home. But the more she found out as the process went along, “I was obsessed.”
Created by Quinn Shephard (Not Okay, Under the Bridge), The Body drops viewers into the dramas of a small-town all-girls Catholic high school sometime around 2004 (you can tell because the cell phones click closed and they’re using AIM). The dance team, queens of the school’s social order, has to fill a single spot on the roster, and captain Anya Butler (Kristina Bogic) and her right hand Elise Zakaria (Sara Boustany) pick the fresh-faced and pious “Saint” Grace Franklin (Sofia Wylie) over the stiff-limbed outcast Lisbeth Anderson, played by Meszaros. But the team initiation ceremony — a tongue-in-cheek sacrament of Ecstasy and a warm bottle of Tanqueray representing the body and blood of Satan — goes awry, ending with Grace unresponsive. In the aftermath, Anya and Lisbeth are bonded by a dark secret about what happened that night, and the town slowly succumbs to a wave of religious hysteria.
“Lisbeth starts as an outsider. She [views] these girls’ friendships as a commodity. She’s a survivalist, in a way,” Meszaros says. “She sees the power Anya has because of the [team’s] group think. And she slowly realizes that she needs it to maintain her safety. She has to get a taste.”
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This isn’t Meszaros’ first time tackling a spiritual conundrum. Fans of Mae Martin’s conversion-camp horror series Wayward might recognize Meszaros, who played the offputting Oatmeal Beth. But The Body puts Meszaros front and center, her character driving much of the action. With Grace in a coma, Anya lets Lisbeth take her place on the dance team. But it’s clear from the jump that she’s the misfit of the group. Meszaros’ pale face and wide-eyed expressions comically clash with the rest of the girls’ perfect blowouts, makeup, and headbands. She’s so disconnected from normal teenager stuff — shopping, flirting, texting — that much of what she says is laugh-out-loud obtuse, lighting some of the horrific elements of the series with dark humor. The series also reveals that Lisbeth’s family moved to the town after the mysterious death of her father — baggage she’s desperate to keep from her new friends.
When Shephard started casting The Body, she tells Rolling Stone, it was imperative that the character of Lisbeth be “unnerving in a way she cannot shake,” no matter how much she imitates and studies the popular girls around her. What surprised her was how Meszaros took what was written to be unsettling and also made it funny, turning Lisbeth into an “adorable maniac.”
“Lisbeth cannot speak the same language they speak, struggles to read social cues, is deeply traumatized by her childhood, and is sheltered enough to misunderstand most pop-culture references. Watching Lisbeth is like watching someone on their first day on Earth,” Shephard says. “There was really no one else who had the level of humor that Geena brought to this. She is so absurdly funny.”
The show manages a blend of high drama and comedy reminiscent of some of the most outrageous episodes of Euphoria — helped along by delightful appearances by Traitors star Gabby Windey as the dance team’s heavily pregnant Coach Miller. (“Every time I came to set and saw her fake belly sitting in its little bucket in the makeup room, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s gonna be a good day.’” Meszaros says, chuckling. “What an icon.”)
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Lisbeth’s attempt to win over the team gets complicated when the girls start seeing visions of Grace, which often compel them to loudly repent their sins. And when people in the town start believing Grace is a real-life saint, a spiritual frenzy spreads through the community, Contagion-style. Amid the chaos, Lisbeth clings more tightly to the secret of her own past trauma, and soon the quiet wallflower cracks open onscreen, revealing a manipulative streak and mysterious religious power. Yet, Lisbeth’s underlying motivation rings achingly familiar: Sure, the town is slowly crumbling under the weight of a witch hunt-esque fever. But wouldn’t it be great if Lisbeth could stay popular?
“When you get to high school, you’re really trying to figure out who you are, sans parents,” Meszaros says. “It’s such an influential time. For me, I’ve always been someone that molds to the people I’m around. Especially as a teenager, you’re going through all these changes, you’re [always] embarrassed, and people are at different stages. Being a teenager is hard, man. It’s hard.”
In addition to obvious nods to films like Jennifer’s Body, The Crucible, The Craft, and But I’m a Cheerleader, the show clearly takes inspiration from the Bible. Anya, Lisbeth, and Grace make a kind of Holy Trinity: Anya as the benevolent father, Lisbeth as a savior rejected by the people she’s come to help, and Grace as the silent but ever-present Holy Spirit. The dynamic underscores the show’s themes about questioning one’s faith. Specifically for Lisbeth, the question stops being about what she believes and rather if she wants to believe at all.
“There’s moments where certain people who are devout are triggering [for Lisbeth], because [that’s] a version of herself that she feels like she lost,” Meszaros says. “She’s questioning her faith. And losing that stability, she sees the world as like a place where you have to have your own back. It’s skewed. It’s extreme. And it’s a huge driving factor for the choices she makes. She’s hypervigilant — and she’s always wary that something could go wrong.”
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Meszaros is careful to leave many of the series’ central mysteries and twists up to audience interpretation. But the one thing she’s clear about is how protective she’s feeling of Lisbeth and the emotions welling up from releasing her first big character into the world.
“If you have to judge her, I understand. She does some questionable things, for sure,” Meszaros says. “But I’m still Team Lisbeth.”
