Digital Cover: Carving Out Space with Katy O’Brian

In a sea of curated personas and press-polished talking points, Katy O’Brian is refreshingly unfiltered. “I walked into every audition with the arrogance of someone that had already booked it,” she tells NOTION for her digital cover story, laughing but not joking, as she recounts he process of getting the career-changing role of Jackie in 2024’s Love Lies Bleeding. Rocketing onto the silver screen in Rose Glass’ sophomore feature, Katy found her pace and never looked back, ready to throw herself into everything the industry had to offer.

Now coming off 18 months that included fronting one of last year’s most radical queer love stories alongside Kristen Stewart, sharing screen time with Tom Cruise in the final instalment Mission: Impossible and chasing tornados with Glen Powell in Twisters, we catch up with the rising star to find out just how Katy has thrown herself into the deep end. It’s a mix of pure strength and total vulnerability that makes the actress feel like a different kind of leading presence – the kind who can cry over a character’s rubber duck one day, and fight her way through a submarine sequence the next.

A former bodybuilder and AMC employee, now knees deep in the film industry, she’s just as obsessed with the how as the why. “They really treated it almost like a film school,” she says of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. “They wanted you to know how much attention to detail went into every nook and cranny of the whole shoot.” Talking through everything she learnt, Katy recalls how immersive and hands-on the set was, describing how Tom Cruise – the man behind the series’ main character and producer of the franchise – personally explained the design and function of his decompression suit: from how it allowed him to breathe underwater to how it was lit specifically to capture emotion on camera, even in goggles. The team encouraged cast members to explore the set, ask questions, and understand the technical side of filming, including the custom-built gimbal and massive water tanks. 

“[Tom Cruise’s] passion was contagious,” Katy confides, explaining that she didn’t expect to be moved by such a big-budget action film. “I kind of had this chip on my shoulder about blockbusters,” she says, “it felt like people were just trying to make money and not really think about what the movie was about and who was involved in it.” But being on the Mission: Impossible set flipped that, working alongside the film’s protagonist as well as the director Christopher McQuarrie changed her mind: “They not only thought about the cool stuff they wanted to do… but they also thought about the audience, and the past seven films, and paying homage to the fans that have stuck with them the whole time.” That level of care made her excited to be there, more than she had expected. “It kind of put a little spark in me.”

“The second you step on a Mission: Impossible set, Tom Cruise walks up to you, puts his hand out and says, ‘Hey, I’m Tom. I’m really excited that you’re here.’ Like we don’t know who he is!” That introduction, however humble, “really breaks that ice right away and makes you excited to be there as well, and makes you feel like you’re just as part of it as anybody else.” The Hollywood stalwart’s generosity wasn’t just interpersonal, it was also practical. “He understands the value of getting people into the movie theaters. He knows that’s the bread and butter of the film business.” In an industry still trying to recover post-pandemic, Katy saw his efforts as part of a bigger mission. She found that same ethos in co-star Glenn Powell, who carried a similar spirit onto Twisters. “Glenn really led by example… making sure that we all got together to have dinners. We’re in Oklahoma, we’re all away from home, and he wanted to make it feel like a family right away.”

For Katy, the practical filmmaking approach on both those sets echoed the horror films that first sparked her love of cinema: the resourcefulness, the physicality, the creativity born from constraint. Seeing that level of care still alive in big-budget projects felt like a full-circle moment. It’s a love that started early, shaped by a childhood spent obsessing over practical effects and escaping into films whenever she could. Art was always in the background: whether it was playing in bands or working at a movie theatre, expression through arts was her constant. “I didnt drink, I didnt party”, Katy O’Brian explained, when we look back at her upbringing, “but my friends and I would bond over going to this one art cinema in Indianapolis… I just surrounded myself with art and film,” she reminisces, “its always been my passion, its always been the only thing that I wanted to do when I got home you know, besides work out.”

Taking that love and drive with her into her career, Katy entered the vibrant worlds of The Walking Dead, Star Wars’ The Mandalorian, the Marvel universe and more before landing her first major lead role in Love Lies Bleeding. Reaching deeper within herself, the role of Jackie felt kismet: an ambitious bodybuilder chasing her dreams and falling in love – with Kristen Stewart’s Lou – in the process. Upon finding out about the casting call from a Z Nation fan – “Shout out to Morgan, I owe Morgan probably my career” – Katy realised it was the role she’d been waiting for. She pulled together old bodybuilding photos and a resume into a PowerPoint and told her team, half-joking, that if she didn’t get an audition, she’d riot. The moment she read the script, she knew how intense it would be, and how badly she needed it. “I walked into every subsequent audition with the arrogance of someone that had already booked it,” she says. “I have to have this. I have to have this role.”

And boy did she get the role. Digging into themes of queerness, rage and the lengths people go to for love and belonging, it felt just as radical to watch a part it did to be a part of. “I was surprised that a movie like that even got financed, backed, written, made – any of that,” Katy muses. “I tend to feel a little jaded oftentimes about what the industry is willing to do, but I think being a part of this inspired me. I like to think it inspired a lot of other people to write more stories like this, or stories that are perhaps a little bit of a reach. My hope is that they put more queer stories on screen and show characters that are not afraid of coming out, that that’s not their big struggle plot-wise. They’re just there, they exist, and their queerness was never even part of the conflict.”

It’s why, we agree, representation is so hugely important: “90% of the queer movies that I watched growing up were all about how someone has difficulty with them being gay. I’m like, ‘Is there anything where people just get to be gay and, like, it’s fine?!’ I love that Love Lies Bleeding – despite it’s dark themes – did that and I love that people responded to it, people of all social groups, people who aren’t even a part of the community. Even my 98-year-old great aunt went to go see it and loved it, she wanted to go again!”

If there’s one thing Katy O’Brian believes in, it’s the collective power of the movies, of a packed theatre and an IRL, community cinematic experience. “A lot of films now are created with what they call second device compatibility, which really breaks my soul, where you can look at something else while you’re watching the movie.” She pauses, equal parts amused and frustrated: “I don’t know if people know that they’re being manipulated like that.” It’s why, working on a major theatrical release like Mission: Impossible with a staunch-cinema lover like Tom Cruise felt so groundbreaking. “You’ve gotta be watching. It makes you want to put your phone down, partially because it just goes from bad to worse – every step of the movie something terrible is happening. Poor Tom, I don’t think he really got to rest once,” she laughs. “And also because it was shot for IMAX. There are moments in the film that you’re just not going to experience on a normal television. It’s literally shot, built and pieced together for it, so you will visually see the differences when you’re watching it on an IMAX screen. This is a big movie, it requires a big screen.”

Though she admits there was a time she felt disconnected from the industry – “I felt so uninspired. I went to the movies and I was just like, so bored” – she’s found hope in what’s rising from the margins: studios like A24 and Neon, auteurs getting the budgets they deserve, and surprise cultural moments like Barbie and Oppenheimer. “I think people are seeing there’s a hunger for fresh voices, new voices, unique stories,” she says, feeling motivated by the changing tides.

After a year of back-to-back projects, from underground indies to franchise heavyweights, you’d think Katy O’Brian would want to pause, but her momentum is only building. Right now, she’s just wrapped production on a Sydney Sweeney-starring Christie Martin biopic (the trailblazing boxer whose life was as dramatic outside the ring as in it), as well as Edgar Wright’s highly anticipated The Running Man due out in November. There’s also a romantic comedy, Maintenance Required, in the works and queer horror comedy Queens of the Dead, which recently premiered at Tribeca.

“That one’s wild,” she says of Queens, an indie film by Tina Romero, daughter of George Romero aka the father of the zombie film: “She wanted to honour and pay homage to her dad, but in her own voice.” Though initially hesitant to do “another zombie project”, the script won her over, “dammit, it’s just so good,” she laughs. “And then I found out it was going to be pretty much all LGBTQ+ cast and crew, apart from this one token straight guy, and I was like, ‘oh my God, I have to do this project’.” As with Love Lies Bleeding, what drew Katy O’Brian in wasn’t just the script, it was the energy of the people making it. “It was a really cool experience to be in such a queer community-led project and see how they were able to put it all together with a shoestring budget. And they made a lot of cool stuff happen. I’m really proud of it.”

In between the premieres, physical training and set calls, she’s also writing a book – another outlet for a voice that’s always been driven by curiosity, purpose, and a refusal to stay in just one lane. Whether it’s telling unapologetically queer stories, diving into the technical depths of a blockbuster set, or pushing herself emotionally and physically in every role, her work carries a quiet intensity, driven by a hunger to share stories that matter on her own terms. Carving out space not just for herself, but for stories that are stranger, sharper, more honest, and often overlooked, if the past year is any indication, Katy O’Brian is building a fresh path all on her own.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in cinemas now.