Ali Larter’s Got A Full Plate & She Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way

If we’re being honest, summer kind of feels like a fever dream for parents. Even the tee-off to the actual season, Maycember, is a blur — a chaotic sprint to the school-year finish line. It’s immediately followed by June, full of ambitious “summer bucket lists” and the lawlessness of late bedtimes and even later mornings. Now we’re in July, the middle-to-homestretch of summer, where we’re trying desperately to squeeze in every last memory while fighting off end-of-season boredom. In short? It’s a bit of a terror. And if anyone knows terror, it’s Ali Larter.

From Final Destination to Resident Evil, she’s cemented her place in our collective consciousness as a horror icon. So, it’s kind of perfect that her latest role (no, not Angela in Landman… we’ll get to that!) combines her knack for unnerving audiences with the months-long jump scare that is summer break. She stars in DoorDash’s Summer Scaries short film, part of their Summer of DashPass deals event featuring up to 25-50% off on meals, groceries, electronics, summer essentials, and more. The spoof is campy, it’s creepy, and it unites two horror movie favorites for millennial fans: Larter and none other than Freddie Prinze Jr. It’s the kind of marketing you wish all marketing would be.

Scary Mommy caught up with Larter to talk about her affinity for foodie characters (plus, being a real-life foodie), surviving the chaos of summer with kids Vivienne and Teddy, and why being a woman in your 40s is one thing none of us has to fear.

Scary Mommy: Is it too early to start petitioning for you and Freddie Prinze Jr. to star in a feature-length film together? It would be the stuff millennial dreams are made of.

AL: Anything is possible these days!

I'm this busy working mom. I have two kids. When they brought the concept to me, I had just had a day where I had taken the kids out to lunch, and Vivienne, my 10-year-old, got an acai bowl, which was $18. My son got tacos; he was still hungry, so he had a second round ... I was so overwhelmed with the thought of the three months when you have the kids home and how you deal with that. And I just thought it was a really funny way to show what all the parents can relate to.

SM: Convenience is king when you are a working mom, for sure.

AL: 100%. Time is precious. I think that's the reality of it. Do I wish I had the luxury of being with them all the time? There are two sides to it. Because I love what I do for a living, but it definitely makes my time with the children much more precious.

SM: Absolutely. What other hacks do you have as a busy mom of two for keeping your kids entertained so that they're not just ravaging your pantry like locusts?

AL: We are a big gaming family. Not video games; we love to do gin rummy tournaments. We love playing Rummikub. We love playing Scrabble. My husband's amazing about getting the kids into nature, taking them camping. In our backyard, there's a mini golf set up, and there’s horseshoes and cornhole. It's pulling them off the screens and getting them into these games, and getting competitive and fun, that helps us deal with summer. Or else it's this constant push and pull, because it's so easy for them to just want to go and watch a movie or play on their iPad.

I have not gotten my kids to do a puzzle with me yet. That's a little bit too slow for them ... in our family, everyone's going and firing; there's too much going on. But maybe one day we shall puzzle.

SM: You know what I think the puzzle hack is? Beach vacations. That's the only time my kids will do puzzles. Well, this definitely isn’t the first time food has been central to your work. You’ve got the infamous whipped cream bikini scene, of course, and your Landman character, Angela, uses food to bring her family together. Now this. How much of a foodie are you in real life?

AL: I am definitely a foodie in real life. I grew up in New Jersey, and from as young as I can remember, my mom was in the kitchen, cooking. My grandfather would show up with bushels of corn from his garden, and these big, beautiful Jersey tomatoes. Everything that felt special to me about family was always around the kitchen table.

So, when I went off on my own and started living in New York and traveling, food was always my connection with people. From that to publishing my cookbook, Kitchen Revelry... Honestly, I love food. I think it transports you. I think it's comforting. I think it's exciting. My favorite thing to look forward to is what I'm having for dinner.

I think that Taylor Sheridan, for [Landman] and in our first season, it started out one way with this character, and then he started really leaning into the food once they had cast me. It's amazing how you watch this character, see how she shows her love, and that's through taking care of her family and through thick family suppers.

SM: Unlike food, one theme in your work apparently does not carry through in real life: the scary stuff. Is it true that you don’t actually watch horror despite being an icon in the genre?

AL: That is true; I'm not a fan of horror movies. My son begs me to watch them, stay up with them, and I refuse to do it, because I will not sleep and I'll be jumping out of my skin.

I think people who are highly sensitive are almost made to star in these movies because it's so easy, the reaction, and how easily I feel it in my body to make it an organic expression of what the character's going through. In real life, I can't handle it. It's too much for me. But when I'm playing it, it's so organic and real because I honestly feel that way.

It's the impact. It's the super-sensitive ones who can feel everything that, when you put them in those environments, you believe and go on that journey with them.

SM: That actually makes a ton of sense! OK, so you’ve got a tween and a young teen now. How do you think summer feels different at these ages than it did when they were little?

AL: I actually love this age. I really do ... We're able to relate to them in a different way; there's just a different kind of connection you can have with them. There are different conversations you can have with them. And I think there's a different appreciation that they feel when we're all together.

It's really important for a family to really have quality time together where we are present. As much as it drives them crazy, they understand the meaning of why we're doing it now. I just love that.

It's changed, too, that our kids have more independence. Our 14 1/2-year-old is out for the day. He's gone off with his friends, and he can stay out at night. I'm excited for him to have that autonomy, and I think he's ready for it.

Of course it's scary, but I think giving them a little bit of freedom and putting them in environments where you know it's safe to do that is a big part of letting these kids grow up in a way that they're supposed to.

SM: Do you also feel that you and Hayes [MacArthur, Ali’s husband] deciding to move your family from Hollywood to Idaho has amplified all this?

AL: Absolutely. For us, it was the right decision. I don't think that we knew what we were doing. There was not any master plan. We were just following the green lights, and things that we saw were important to us in raising our children. Now that we've been there for almost five years, it's something that me and Hayes are so grateful for, being able to live in a place that we love that is so much about the ethos of nature and family. That's something that we really cherish.

For the kids, it's really a bounce pad. I feel like one of them is going to run to a city and never leave, and the other one may be on a farm for the rest of their life. I'm not sure where it will take them. But it's our decision where they get to go at this stage, and that's something that we take responsibility in — meaning that it's OK if you don't always like this place or that place, but you can relax and know that Mom and Dad are making the best decisions for you that they think they can. I think there's something about that that’s really great.

SM: It’s very cool to frame it that way for them. We have to talk about Landman before we run out of time... and MA’AM, the body is bodying. As a woman over 40, I have such secondhand pride seeing you out there repping us “women of a certain age” as people who are hot and still sexual and also complex. Has the feedback from other women surprised you, or was it what you were expecting?

AL: What probably surprised me the most is the support from all the women. You kind of assumed guys would be into it. We have a male showrunner in Taylor Sheridan; he's writing for what he likes. But the amount of women who have come up to me and love the fact that we have a woman in her prime who takes care of her body and still loves to be intimate with her husband and loves to dress and doesn't really care what other people think about her has been very inspiring.

That's what I have so many people come up to me about: that it makes them want to find their inner Angela. I love that so much. And I love being able to play a character who is that provocative, but who is also incredibly grounded in the way she is trying to take care of her family and repair her marriage and come back to the man she loves. So, you have one side of it, and then you have the other side.

I'm just so surprised that, at my age, I'm getting to do this stuff. I think that's really important to be able to see on screen, too. Why should we expire? Why should the roles stop getting written for us because you're at a certain age? That's one thing that I love about the show, that we’re able to continue to explore that.

SM: 100%.

AL: Girl, let me tell you something, though. It's not fun getting up at 5 A.M. every day and doing the workouts and doing the clean diet. But it's so much for the character that I'm able to do it. Literally when I wrap, I will be diving into a bowl of pasta. I will be eating my pizza. I will dive into a bottle of red wine. And then I'll pull it back together.

SM: I bet! The relationship and Angela and Tommy is interesting, because they’re obviously not perfect. Far from it. But in a world where women are all too often told we’re too much, it’s refreshing to see a man respond to a woman who objectively *is* too much at times, and just sort of meet her where she’s at. Can you speak to that dynamic?

AL: You get these scripts and you see what's on the page, and then you have to let it go through your body and figure out, as the character, how you're going to express that. With Billy [Bob Thornton] and me, we just really put in the time to make sure that it didn't become silly — that the relationship, the things that she's feeling, are really real. Sometimes they're overdramatic, and sometimes she's putting on a show, but he loves all those sides of her. That is really the key to their dynamic, and that she loves him for who he is.

As much as he won't give her the credit she wants, as much as he's late for dinner and he doesn't appreciate the things she does sometimes, he loves her for who she is. I think that’s the core of the relationship and why people love seeing them together, because that's the truth of a true romance, of a real love.

SM: Is there anything you can tease about what fans can expect from Angela in Season 2?

AL: Just a lot of her. (laughs) I've been working so much this year. We're in our final stretch right now.

It's a really emotional season. There's a lot of family drama going on. I think people will be surprised and excited by it. There are a lot of moments that really tug at your heart. There are things that keep you on the edge of your seat. And we just have an incredible, incredible cast. I'm excited to bring it to you guys this fall.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.