Charles Melton Better Understands the ‘Saddest Person in the World’ After Becoming a Dad | Interview
Acclaimed director Nicolas Winding Refn returns to theaters with Her Private Hell this week starring Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton. ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Refn and Melton about the film’s unique look, how Melton played “the saddest person in the world,” and more. Neon will release the movie in theaters on July 24, 2026.
“When a mysterious mist engulfs a futuristic metropolis, unleashing a deadly and elusive entity, a troubled young woman searches for her father. Her quest collides with an American GI on a harrowing odyssey to rescue his daughter from Hell,” says the official synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Nicolas, Her Private Hell is just visually stunning. It’s such a unique blend, and there’s nothing that quite looks like it. What were your primary inspirations for the aesthetic of the film?
Nicolas Winding Refn: I think I wanted to make an opera, and obviously that’s all about heightened reality. Then I wanted to build the entire film on a stage. I wanted to create an artificial world that I could control.
From that perspective, it became like my own little dollhouse where I could move actors and furniture around as I pleased, which was obviously very satisfying.
Charles, your character is described by another character as “the saddest person in the world.” How did you find that mysterious, brooding quality that Private K has without it seeming over the top? I thought it all felt very human ultimately.
Charles Melton: Thanks, man. I think it’s just part of the work and the collaboration with Nic. Now, being a father to a daughter, I think there’s more of an understanding of Private K and the lengths he went, literally to hell, to find his daughter.
The saddest man in the world is something that maybe anybody in humanity can relate to in some way. You do all the work to really inhabit that and tap into it, and then you trust Nic. Then you live for three months in this world as Private K, and things are constantly revealed to you.
Tyler Treese: Nicolas, there’s sort of a movie-within-a-movie segment where you give your own twist on Star Trek, which is really fun and cool. How was it getting to express this sci-fi side of yourself?
Nicolas Winding Refn: I wanted to make everything. I wanted the film to be horror, action, sci-fi, melodramatic, and camp. It could also be funny and have a lot of sex, violence, mayhem, color, symbolism, music, and themes that were very close to me, which were variations on the father-daughter narrative.
It was an amalgamation of many things in me that needed one outlet. It was like my own private television.
Thanks to Nicolas Winding Refn and Charles Melton for taking the time to talk about Her Private Hell.
Source: Comingsoon.net