Stephanie Beatriz Can’t Keep Quiet

There’s something so comforting about a post-apocalypse.

Maybe it’s the hopeful depiction of humans persevering in the face of the end of the world, or maybe it’s just seeing a world that’s undeniably worse off than our own, but it’s something we keep coming back to, especially recently. We’ve seen a whole new apocalyptic renaissance, from The Last of Us and Station Eleven to Fallout and Silo, and we’re getting every version of the end of the world.

That includes the goofy, no-holds-barred version. Twisted Metal, Peacock’s adaptation of the demolition derby video game of the same name, shows a skewed vision of a wasteland full of psychopathic clowns and cars with rockets. But even the most lighthearted of series needs a human side, and that’s exactly the role Stephanie Beatriz serves as Quiet, the lone wanderer who proves how important connection and family are, even in an uncaring world.

Unlike the character that thrust her into the spotlight, Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s gruff cop Rosa Diaz, Beatriz exudes a palpable vibe that can only be described as sunshiney. Whether as the misfit Mirabel in Encanto or the beleaguered retirement community director Didi in A Man on the Inside, Beatriz always brings warmth and heart to her roles that shine through even the most hardened shells, bouncing from deadpan punchlines to tear-jerking monologues and back again. She’s the rare example of an actor who can take on anything — whether it’s singing to Shakespeare or speaking in a lower octave for seven years — and never lose herself along the way.

In Twisted Metal, that means brightening up even the most brutal apocalyptic showdowns, showing how the end of the world forces everyone — and especially Quiet — to define themselves.

“It feels like adolescence to me,” Beatriz tells Inverse. “When you’re discovering yourself and you’re testing out saying bad words, and testing out your humor, and testing out what you like as a person.”

Quiet’s journey began, aptly, silently. But now, she’s finding her voice. In the series, Anthony Mackie plays John Doe, a Milkman — freelance delivery driver — looking for a better life when he meets Quiet, an escaped servant grieving the loss of her brother. Together, the two tried to gain entry into the idyllic city of New San Francisco (and fell for each other along the way), but only John was allowed in.

In Season 2, Quiet has joined forces with Dollface (Tiana Okoye) and has evolved into a full member of her porcelain-masked gang. When John reenters her life looking to compete in a tournament the mysterious Calypso (Anthony Carrigan) is putting on with the prize of a granted wish, both John and Quiet set out to take on drivers — and their enhanced rides — in a massive demolition derby.

“It feels like adolescence to me, when you’re discovering yourself and you’re testing out saying bad words, and testing out your humor, and testing out what you like as a person.”

In the period between seasons, Quiet has really come into her own, including romantic liaisons with some of the other women in Dollface’s group, another development Beatriz was involved in. She revealed that her idea of Quiet’s bisexuality actually started in Season 1. “There’s a scene in Season 1 ... you’d have to really pay attention,” Beatriz says. “But I think us queer people are always paying attention, scooping up the crumbs to make a beautiful gay cake pop.”

Like Beatriz in real life, Quiet is a lot less quiet about her sexuality. After the actress came out as bisexual in a 2018 essay in GQ, the minds behind Brooklyn Nine-Nine were inspired to give her character a coming-out story of her own. Quiet’s story was equally inspired by Beatriz, but there are some key differences: In the post-apocalypse, monogamy isn’t the only option. “I don’t think Quiet has ever been the kind of person who’s tied herself down to necessarily one person,” Beatriz says.

Ahead of the July 31 release of Twisted Metal Season 2, we met with Beatriz in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and daughter, and had a walking photo shoot where her personality was on full display. In our follow-up interview, Beatriz brought her own unique perspective to her characters and what her roles mean to her: If the world must end, she’s the one who will always be looking on the bright side.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

What is your history with video games as a whole? Have you been interested in them more now that you’ve played Quiet for two seasons?

Yeah. I definitely am more interested, and I have an affinity and a respect for people who play these games and get really into the world. The fans of these games are so incredibly passionate about them, and I have so much respect for that … as somebody who also creates art.

One of the coolest things about being in Twisted Metal is hearing the stories from people who grew up playing the games. They just have these really nostalgic and incredibly sincere adolescent memories of playing those games, whether it was in their living room or in someone’s basement with a bunch of friends gathered around. Having access to a PlayStation was a really big deal, so these games have become kind of community-building.

Now, we have the internet, and so you are community building with people that play games all over the world, but back in the day, before the internet was accessible literally at the touch of your finger, the community building was sitting around on somebody’s couch and taking turns playing the games.

I think that’s what our show really captures: It taps into this feeling of, We’re all on this team, and at first in Season 1, the team is John and Quiet, and then the team starts to shift and change at the end of Season 1. And then at the beginning of Season 2, you are left with this feeling of, Well, what’s going to happen to the team? What happens to John and Quiet now that they’ve been separated? And when they get back together, what happens then? And who’s in charge? Who’s in the driver’s seat? Who’s in the passenger seat? Do we switch off? Are we in separate cars?

You mentioned a community being brought back together by a game. Is that something you can relate to from your past?

I definitely spent a lot of time at the library, a lot of time in my imagination, but I was lucky enough to have a lot of friends who were really creative, and some of them were neurodivergent and because maybe there was no space to label that or name it, they came up with their own ways of making the world work for them.

There was a lot of role-playing in my friend group. There was a lot of making movies. There was a lot of theater. I wasn’t part of it, but they did a lot of D&D stuff, and they still do. So I had both. I was super, super into my book reading and that world. And then I also had friends who were using their creative minds. I think a lot of people would call them dorky, but the dorks are the ones who come up with all the cool stuff, so I don’t mind being included in that group.

Has playing Quiet made you a better driver?

I definitely think it’s made me a faster driver. There were times on set where I was asked to be the one that was driving because it was a necessity for either the shot or what we needed, and in those times, I took the responsibility really, really seriously.

The other professional drivers we had on set were people who are some of the best stunt drivers in the world, some of them who were our retired NASCAR racing drivers. Some of them are just the greatest stunt people ever. So when I was asked to do a small, simple thing, I absolutely took it really, really, really f*cking seriously.

But I have certainly acquired a taste for going fast. I didn’t learn to drive until I was much older because, directly from school, I went and lived in New York for a while, and so I didn’t need a car. So I really learned to drive in my late 20s when I was moving to the West Coast.

I think most of us are taught to be defensive drivers, and rightly so. However, in the world of Twisted Metal, you have to be an off-ensive driver and an oh-ffensive driver, and there’s certainly a lot of fun going fast. It’s really fun.

“Sometimes you argue and sometimes you don’t get along, just like a real family.”

How has Quiet changed since we left her in Season 1?

I mean, I think she’s definitely had sex with a lot of other people. Well, for the audience, maybe something that might be new is that she isn’t exactly straight. That’s not something that was new for me playing her. I always kind of knew that.

I think something else that has changed is that she believes in the idea of a team, and that is something that she and John learned together. John absolutely learned to depend only on himself. Quiet knew how to depend on her brother, but when she lost her brother, her story became one of revenge, and when the revenge part of her story kind of resolved itself and fell away, what she started to look around for was a purpose and a reason to keep going. John became a real teammate to her.

When each of them lost the other one at the end of Season 1, I think that was really tough for both of them, and they’re both trying to figure out their new place in the world. John’s struggling to adapt and assimilate to what he thought was his dream and Quiet, as we see once the season starts, she’s kind figured out a new team to be a part of — maybe not by choice exactly in the beginning, but as you see, she’s really made it a bit of a home for herself within the Dolls.

That’s something that I took away, I think, is that Season 1 was about not being alone and Season 2 is about family, both found and biological. Do you have experience with a found family?

I mean, one of them was really on Twisted Metal. The first season was shot in New Orleans. The second season was shot in Toronto, Canada, and we were really far away from our families. And there’s a much bigger ensemble cast in Season 2, and we became a bit of a found family. Saylor Bell Curda, Tiana Okoye, Patty Guggenheim, Lisa Gilroy, and I all got to be good friends.

I just listed all the women, sorry, dudes. But Richard Clark, Mike Mitchell, Samoa Joe — he’s just a delight and a dream. Getting to spend more time with everybody in a weird summer camp bubble was a bit of a found family.

There was one night when we all went out for drinks, and I think we stayed out until four in the morning. We ended up at this weird dance club, and there was a guy onstage with a fiddle. They were serving ale. The whole thing was absolutely bananas, and I think there’s a video somewhere of Patty and me jigging to the music. We were just kind of hammered and having a great time, and it really became this group of people that I really, really care about dearly.

But also before Twisted Metal, I’ve had lots of found families. I spent a lot of my career doing theater, and those are always a family situation. Sometimes you argue and sometimes you don’t get along, just like a real family. And then also being a member of the queer community as somebody who’s bi, I’m really lucky in that I have a lot of friends in the queer community as well, and they’re really special to me in our bond together, especially my bi friends. We just really recognize and see each other, and we all understand the weird little challenges that can come with being bisexual. So yeah, I have a lot of found families. A lot.

You’ve talked a lot about your roles and bisexual representation, and I feel like when you bring yourself to a role, I think that’s part of it. You said that you already knew that Quiet had this about her, but did you have any input on how it was portrayed on screen?

Yeah, there’s a scene in Season 1, and if you pay attention — you’d have to really pay attention. But I think us queer people are always paying attention, scooping up the crumbs to make a beautiful gay cake pop.

In Season 1, there’s the scene where John and Quiet are talking in the ball pit, and Quiet is talking about an ex, I believe the ex’s name is [Adrian], and Quiet never specifies the gender of this ex. Just says they were not so great at maybe going down on her, but I remember talking to MJ about that scene and saying, “Let’s try to avoid using [pronouns] because [Adrian] could be a girl’s name, could be a guy’s name, could be a they/them name. We don’t know.” So that was something that I was like, “Let’s just sprinkle it in here and then see what happens next season.” And you can very clearly see in the beginning of Season 2 that Quiet has had a sexual relationship with one of the Dolls, and maybe more than one. We don’t know because it’s been quite a while.

I also don’t think that Quiet has ever been the kind of person that’s tied herself down to necessarily one person. That wasn’t an important thing to her until she met somebody like John, who’s really special, really charismatic, really brave, really loving.

I was always playing her a lot like me, which is someone who is bisexual and, if she does partner up, partnering is different than just dating or seeing someone or sleeping with someone. It’s got to be somebody really amazing. And I do think in our series, John Doe is an amazing, amazing person.

And being with John does not make her any less queer.

Just like me being married and having a baby doesn’t make me any less queer.

Do you think you would’ve played Quiet differently if you didn’t have a daughter?

I don’t think so.

Well, actually, that’s a really good question because I think for me, a lot of things changed when my kid came into my life. I feel an incredible amount of responsibility, and not only about the normal things — keeping her safe, keeping her happy — but other things, too. I want her to see me enjoying what I do, and I strive to create an atmosphere around her that shows her that it is possible to work hard as an artist and have fun and still come back to your family.

One of the things I really try to say in my household is “I’m going to work now.” I get to go to work. Not, “I’m sorry, I can’t. I have to go to work,” because I want her to see that work is a joy for me. Work is something that I really enjoy doing. It’s special to me. It is something that takes me away from her. It just does. It takes away my time, but I always want to frame it in a way that I’m choosing to go do this because I really enjoy it. And if I ever were to stop enjoying it, I wouldn’t go do it. There’s something really interesting that happens in Season 2 with Quiet and the character Mayhem. It’s less of a mother-daughter relationship and more of a big sister, little sister relationship. I think that that’s really difficult for Quiet in a lot of ways because if you’ve lost someone close to you, it’s really, really, really hard to care about people in the same kind of way, or at least because Quiet lost someone really close to her, her brother.

It’s been really difficult for her to care about people and risk losing them, but that’s what life is, right? We risk the possibility of loss because the love is so good and fun and joyful and wonderful. We risk losing, we risk it. And I just think Saylor’s so funny. She’s so daring. She was up for anything in those cars, sometimes perhaps to her detriment, but she really just threw herself at everything. And I just loved working with her. She’s just such a consummate professional, and I really think she shines in the season. It’s really fun to see her.

She’s the newbie. She doesn’t have a car, but she’s scrappy as f*ck and she’s really, really smart. And so you start to see how she navigates the world. Calypso is saying that if you win, your wildest dream comes true, but can we team up? How does this work? Is it one-on-one? Where are the logistics, right? And if you’re daring enough to risk entering the contest, what happens when you might be competing against some of the people that you care about the most? Is it worth it to win? And that becomes the question of the second season.

You have played so many different roles, but what’s the difference between playing a found family role like this and a biological family role like in Encanto?

Well, the relationships are different. This relationship is much more along the lines of peers, so fellow competitors in the game. And then in terms of how we function, it is really people who are not necessarily the same age, but peer competitors. As opposed to in Encanto, so much of it is wanting approval from family, and as anybody with a family knows, when you’re seeking that outside approval from family, it can feel so raw. It’s a very raw, raw, raw emotion, which I think is why Encanto landed so well with so many different kinds of people, because we all understand that feeling of really desiring this love and acceptance from our family that feels totally unconditional, but how do we make that happen? It feels insurmountable. It feels like such a challenge.

That’s why that scene where Isabela and Maribel finally come together and are hugging in that beautiful river surrounded by these gorgeous butterflies feels so satisfying, because all you want in the world is for your family to say, “I’m so sorry that I didn’t see you. You are the miracle,” and then hug you, and butterflies fly up around. That’s the dream.

“I think I’ve been really given a gift.”

Shows like this are such Trojan horses because they balance badassery and heart, and it’s about cars, but it’s also about family and sexuality and all these other topics. How do you balance the heart and the badassery of Quiet?

Oh, well, I mean, I don’t think that’s necessarily something I’m doing. I think I’ve been really given a gift by Michael Jonathan Smith and the rest of our writers. They’ve done such an incredible job, especially MJ. He cares about this show so deeply, and he really, really understands where it’s landing for all of these characters. He understands them inside and out.

He’s so funny, dude. I could just spend hours and hours just riffing with him, talking sh*t about whatever. And in a lot of ways, he reminds me of my friends from high school. I think there’s something that he’s tapped into with this show and the way that it’s shaped and the way that these characters are written. It feels like adolescence to me, when you’re discovering yourself and you’re testing out saying bad words, and testing out your humor, and testing out what you like as a person. Who are you in the world and what are your f*cking values? I don’t know. I’m 17. I don’t know. I’m trying it all on. And he’s really captured that, but channeled it into all these characters in different ways. So each of them has their own journey that feels really real and honest.