The upcoming Blumhouse horror film from Universal Pictures, The Woman in the Yard, explores themes of doubt, grief, and psychological horror. Director Jaume Collet-Serra describes it as a layered story that delves into confronting one’s own demons.
With a trailer that hyped fans, the March 28, 2025, release date cannot come fast enough. Black Girl Nerds had the opportunity to attend the set visit for the film and interview actress Danielle Deadwyler, who plays our protagonist Ramona.
Born in Atlanta, Deadwyler is very connected to the very land she was shooting on that day during our set visit. This was also the first production on this particular film studio located in Athens, Georgia.
This is the second time Deadwyler is playing a character who has dealt with the traumatizing loss of a family member due to a car accident. In the 2024 movie Parallel, which Deadwyler both produced and starred in, she played a mother who lost her child tragically that way. In The Woman in the Yard, her husband David (Russell Hornsby) suffers the same fate. When asked about the parallels between these two characters (pun intended), here’s what she had to say:
“People in their lives like to think of things differently when a child dies, that particular experience, a lover dies, or an elder or something different, different gradations of grief. Ramona is in something different. She’s dealing with a history that is not yet revealed. I think people will come to figure that out. But she’s dealing with that, in conjunction with her children, in conjunction with the grief, and so they’re just in two different worlds, a farm and the forest — they’re not the same.”
It certainly is not the same. For Deadwyler, one of the most talented actors of our day who has delivered riveting performances and knows how to carry the emotional weight of a character. We saw it firsthand in her performance as Emmett Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley in Till. And she did it again as Berniece in The Piano Lesson. How does she get into the head space of a character? Especially playing someone like Ramona who is dealing with this kind of trauma as a woman dealing with the loss of a spouse, becoming paralyzed, and raising two children on her own?
“Ramona is dealing with the overwhelming nature of it all. At the end of the day, it’s a different kind of motherhood story, a different kind of family story. Those are things that I think we inherently know. Those are things that I assuredly know. As you know I have a child who’s a teenager, the same age as Taylor in the film played by Peyton Jackson. I think you can freak a thing out in all kinds of ways. And so this is another shading of what it means to deal in motherhood. This person is not the pedestalized version of that,” Deadwyler says.
Deadwyler has her personal mark on this film as well. A little known fact about the actor is that she’s a visual artist. And her artwork is featured in rooms of the family residence where this story takes place.
Deadwyler says, “I have a long history, about 10 years’ worth of performance and visual artwork, and I just had a couple of shows last fall. When we were going through the script, talking about developmental shifts and changes, artists came up about who she was as a defining characterization. And I was like, oh, yeah, I do work like this. And then we’re like, let’s see. And we kind of just flowed with it. The thematic interest that I have as a personal artist, delving into motherhood, for that matter, and a particular time, the types of transformative practices are influential in my work. This kind of digging into the darkness of life, as a character in the things that I explore personally, just kind of weaved well into the work of Ramona. I was our Taboola.”
As far as how audiences should be prepared emotionally when seated in the theater for this movie? Deadwyler says, “I think you’re gonna have fun. I think you get the full gamut of the emotional experience.”
With The Woman in the Yard, Danielle Deadwyler continues to solidify her reputation as a powerhouse performer, bringing depth and intensity to her role as a grieving mother facing an unexplainable horror. With a talented supporting cast, an eerie premise, and Blumhouse’s signature psychological tension, the film promises to be a chilling experience. Horror fans can anticipate a suspenseful and thought-provoking addition to the genre.
The Woman in the Yard premieres in theaters March 28, 2025.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
