Michelle Randolph is screaming her way to the top

Before the Zoom page can finish loading, Michelle Randolph has jumped into the frame. She’s up and moving, stepping over a half-packed suitcase, bound for upstate New York. She pulls the curtains of her Brooklyn hotel room closed, a 10am glare blaring through the window. Haloed in backlight, her tight blonde bun accentuates her impossible cheekbones and a midsummer glow, despite the negative temperatures in New York. “It’s miserably cold,” the Scream 7 star tells me. “Thankfully, the movie I’m filming upstate is meant to take place during winter, so I get to wear coats, but it’s not going to keep me warm enough.” The 28-year-old is referring to her upcoming holiday feature, set to premiere on Amazon this December, in which she stars alongside The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Christopher Briney. “I’m so excited about this project,” Randolph gushes, before adding with a laugh: “Even if I am going to need to stick heating pads to every part of my body.” 

It’s a tribulation the Northern Californian never foresaw in her future (despite being an admittedly adamant planner). “I didn’t know having an unconventional career was an option,” she tells me. “Not one person in my life was in the industry.” In the actor’s adolescent years, a family relocation to Huntington Beach dropped Randolph in the lap of the creative community. “Suddenly, everyone surrounding me was a surfer or musician,” she says. “Creativity was encouraged in the places I found myself in my later teens.” With broadened horizons and a license to explore, Randolph’s limitless world stretched before her — but it evoked more dread than dreams. “I always knew I wanted to go to college,” she recalls. “But at 18, I was like, ‘I have to choose a major? What do I even like?’” Her conclusion? Nothing — at least not on the standard university syllabus. “I hated everything offered,” Randolph says. “I started doing online college, and modelling to pay for school.”

There is a practicality to Randolph’s rising star that becomes clear as the actor recounts her history. It is perhaps the same methodology that has sustained her for the past decade. Though, at the time, her industry aspirations were financially driven as she hustled for tuition fees rather than a brand deal. “I didn’t like [modelling], but I did like participating in a shoot where I felt like I was telling a story, or I was a character,” Randolph tells me. “I was able to sense the energy that the given character I was modelling required. I loved that.” Randolph’s eyes glint as she recalls these early discoveries, before her expression dampens. “But, most of the time, you’re in a warehouse in Downtown LA with cockroaches. You’re wearing 250 pieces a day. You’re so uninspired. It really was just something to help me pay for college.”

Acting was, as is so often the case, the natural evolution for someone comfortable enough in front of the camera and conveniently based in Los Angeles. Though Randolph had her reservations. “My agent suggested I try acting,” she tells me. “I immediately resisted.” The actor laughs bashfully at the irony. “That sounded awful!” Randolph exclaims. “I’m too shy. I found it so embarrassing.” Thankfully, in Randolph’s experience, Mother knows best. Having always envisioned her daughter’s name in lights, Mrs Randolph encouraged her to take a meeting. “She reminded me, ‘You never thought you’d model, either’. I begrudgingly agreed.” Randolph softens as she details her early success. “I booked one of my very first auditions, a small part in a horror movie,” she recalls. “I think I was so green that I couldn’t be anything but natural. I got onto that set and experienced what I felt modelling. I understood what they wanted. It was that ‘aha’ moment of, ‘I can do this!’”

Emboldened, Randolph threw herself headfirst into the industry, digesting as much source material as she could. “I switched my major to film. I did Groundlings. I did UCB,” she rattles off the LA-based theatre troupes. “I worked with private coaches, I took acting classes.” Without discounting her efforts, Randolph ultimately adopted a ‘what will be will be’ philosophy. “I don’t think you ever feel ready as you’re finding success in the industry,” she muses. “But I look back on the jobs I really wanted and didn’t book, and I’m so happy I didn’t get those, because they weren’t for me. I have a lot of peace of mind knowing that.” That isn’t to say, though, that the actor is resting on her laurels. From starring as Elizabeth Strafford in Taylor Sheridan’s 1923 to sharing the screen with Helen Mirren, to introducing her father to Harrison Ford, the actor is ever more ravenous to level up. “I still feel like I’m learning constantly,” she says. “From the outside, I look at people who have been working for years and I think they have it all figured out. Then you get into that position and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, no! I still feel like I’m lucky to be here’.”

Her gratitude for being a mainstay of the industry is evident. Before landing her role in 1923, Randolph’s former side-hustles include: one-time Instagram influencer, student, model, and cat charity founder, balanced atop ceaseless auditions. “I had all of these different things going on because I ultimately didn’t know if acting was going to work out,” Randolph reveals. “Everything in my life was positioned to support what would be my acting career, but you have to be delusional to a point. 1923 is when I was able to begin acting full-time.” And once she was in, her skills were only compounded by her more seasoned co-stars. Between credits on Landman (2024-2026) and 1923 (2022), Randolph portrays the daughter of Billy Bob Thornton and Ali Larter, and the future daughter-in-law of Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford, respectively. She had no choice but to rise to the occasion. “You get so spoiled on these sets,” the actor says. “You learn to expect greatness, because that’s what you’re being shown in every direction. Then, you realise this isn’t normal.” Randolph isn’t only talking about the talent of her co-stars, but their temperaments, too. “To have a scene partner that encourages you to be better is not a part of the industry,” she says. “It has inspired me to want to be a generous actor myself.”

That isn’t to say, though, that anything less than excellence was ever an option. “It took me a long time to get to this place,” Randolph says. “Everyone is always remarking about overnight success, that is, in reality, ten years in the making.” It’s the downside to one’s star rising rapidly after putting in the groundwork behind the scenes. “I’ve been doing this since I was 18,” she says. “It’s not as if all of a sudden I decided, ‘Oh, I want to be an actress’, and booked 1923. I think that is what people believe.” While Randolph doesn’t often share screentime with her Landman co-star, Demi Moore, the actor tells me the two have gotten close, and have often bonded over their rebuttal of Hollywood’s oppressive female stereotypes. “Booking 1923 and being thrown into the deep end is very rare,” Randolph admits “Your first big job being opposite Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford doesn’t happen. In that sense, I can see why it feels very new and random for me to be here.” She shrugs. “Then, there’s also a part of me that wonders how else anyone expects it to start.” 

The antidote to any potential imposter syndrome? “I over-prepare,” Randolph insists. “The process is important, so that, when I get on to the set, I feel like I can throw it all away.” For Landman, for example, that meant working with a movement and dialect coach. Though still enchanted by her craft, ultimately, Randolph owes her success to treating acting exactly as it is: a profession.  However, that certainly doesn’t diminish her creativity. Randolph’s diligence liberates her to immerse herself entirely in filming without fretting the semantics. “I try to lift things off the page and find the things that you wouldn’t read — to bring someone to life in the best way that I can,” Randolph explains. And the hard work is necessary. According to the actor, her craft is the least natural thing in the world. “Acting innately is inauthentic,” she says. “You’re sitting in a room with one hundred people and five cameras pointing at you, trying to act like none of that exists around you.” But that’s where the fun lies for Randolph. “It’s very rare that you get to have the excuse of being someone else, so it’s fun to rewire the way your brain thinks.”

No genre is perhaps as unnatural for an actor as horror. Stepping from streaming services to the silver screen, Randolph is starring in the seventh instalment of the Scream franchise, which hits cinemas on 27 February. The onus of booking the role wasn’t lost on her. “My first thought in booking Scream was, ‘What a huge responsibility to please the audience, working on something that is so beloved and has this cult following’. The first came out in 1996!” Randolph fawns over the original film, but admits, ‘I’m so scared of horror movies!’” So, when I ask her what it was like to be in one, her response is flecked with sarcasm: “It was so fun…” The actor pauses. “It was a pretty brutal shoot. You think these movies are so fun and beloved, which they are. But, in the scene you are still running and screaming for your life. Putting myself in that headspace was not necessarily fun. But, that’s what filming a horror movie is.”

Running for her life or otherwise, gratitude does not escape Randolph for a moment of our conversation. Her points are punctuated by a fervent self-awareness — an appreciation of where talent collides with circumstance. “I got lucky. Yes, I worked hard, but I also got very lucky.” she says. “You have to have both.” Randolph takes a breath, before musing carefully. “I love my life. I’m so lucky that I get to do what I love, so no complaints.” Though Randolph’s circumstances might sometimes be “less than ideal” — spending her life on aeroplanes and living out of suitcases — the actor has made peace with the dichotomy of her dreams. “I know how quickly that can change,” she concludes. “I’m acutely aware that the moment I don’t have an upcoming job and I’m sitting at home, I’ll lose my mind. I don’t want this to ever go away.”