Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorWelcome to this week’s “Just for Variety.”Melissa Barrera admits she had some major issues to overcome while shooting her new Netflix series, “Keep Breathing.” The “In the Heights” star plays an attorney who is the only survivor after her small plane crashes into a lake in the frigid wilderness. “Diving into that water was probably one of the scariest things,” Barrera tells me on this week’s “Just for Variety” podcast. “I have this real fear of drowning.
So doing all of that was very therapeutic for me.”Stunt coordinators gave her breathing exercises to do before diving in. “They would always tell me to take as many deep breaths as I needed until I felt ready,” Barrera recalls.
Like her character, Barrera is a city gal at heart: “I’m a person that enjoys having indoor plumbing and a shower and a toilet.
And I don’t like being dirty and I don’t like having to pee in the woods … but I became a lot more outdoorsy because of the show.”I talked with Barrera on Zoom from the set of “Scream 6.” She reprises her role as Sam Carpenter after making her debut in the super-successful franchise reboot earlier this year. “I can’t tell you anything,” Barrera says. “All I can tell you is that we’re having the time of our lives.”Neve Campbell recently announced she wasn’t returning for the sixth “Scream” because she didn’t think the salary offer reflected her true worth. “It was shocking, but also, as a woman, I get it,” Barrera says. “Especially as a woman of color, I deal with that stuff all the time where I feel like they’re not paying me what I know that I’m worth.
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