HAZARDOUS

Billy Zane Wants ‘Emotional Stunt Pay’ for Playing Cult Leader Larry Ray

“The guy was an Adderall addict,” Zane explained in a new interview. “He was running from his own demons, and his mother.”

Actor Billy Zane got extremely real with Entertainment Weekly this week on the subject of portraying sinister conman Larry Ray in the forthcoming Lifetime movie Devil on Campus: The Larry Ray Story. Ray was convicted in 2022 of sex trafficking, extortion and money laundering after being found to have sexually, physically, and psychologically abused students he met at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Ray moved into his daughter’s dorm in 2010, and began a slow psychological takeover of her roommates. “I was absolutely fascinated by the rationalization of how he arrived at these decisions. I don’t think [he got] a maniacal satisfaction from it,” Zane told EW. “You couple this rationalization with chemistry—the guy was an Adderall addict. He was running from his own demons, and his mother.” Despite the rich challenge of portraying such a villainous character, Zane, the father of two girls, was disturbed. Certain scenes called for his character to hit students with hammers. “Actors should get emotional stunt pay,” Zane said. “The secondary experience encroaches on the primary. It really does. You’re recreating [so] much weird trauma. We’re putting coursing adrenaline through our bodies and depleting serotonin and dopamine and freaking ourselves out and the body registers it. In this case, we created a space after cut where everyone can just laugh and check in and go, ‘Whoo, that was weird.’”