Julia Doyle Reveals She Has NO Idea She Was Auditioning For FROM
Julia Doyle joins the cast of FROM in its fourth season in a sinister new role. Initially introduced as an innocent pastor’s daughter named Sophia, the premiere reveals that she is actually The Man In Yellow in disguise. In a conversation with Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado, Doyle opened up about stepping into the series and the secrecy surrounding her character.
Doyle revealed that she had no idea she was auditioning for FROM. “To prepare for the role, I literally didn't know what I was auditioning for. It was under a name called No Exit,” she told me. “Normally when you get auditions, you get a bunch of information about the project, where it's shooting, the story line, and then the breakdown of your character. I got the breakdown of my character that was like, ‘Pastor's daughter with a wounded bird energy but hiding a secret.”
She added that key details were intentionally obscured. “I got no story line so I didn't know what the show was about and all my scenes took place in the clinic. Instead of my line saying, ‘So the monsters, they come out at night?’ they changed it to, ‘So the monsters, they live inside the walls?’” said Doyle. “I had no idea that I was auditioning for this show. But one thing they said in the breakdown, which was nice, is, ‘We don't want to see any inkling of her evil side when she's innocent, so don't do that.’”
Joining a cast of an established series came with its own nerves. “I was nervous going into it,” she explained. “Of course, I've already looked up all the cast on Instagram and I'm like, ‘Okay, I probably shouldn't follow them. I should wait for them to follow me back so they don't think I'm a fan or whatever. I don't know. I want to be cool.’”
That anxiety quickly faded thanks to a warm welcome from her co-stars. “On the morning of my flight, I check my DMs and I have a DM request from Hannah [Cheramy] and she's being like, ‘Hey, I saw you got cast. I was so excited to meet you. Please let me know when you land. Let's go out for dinner as soon as you land. I'm so excited to finally have someone my age on the show. I'm so excited to meet you,’” Doyle enthused. “I later found out that she was lying about that and she went out of her way to hunt me down and find out my name, which was really, really nice. I'm so glad she did that. But in general, everyone was so, so, so, so welcoming.”
Doyle broke down the key to playing two characters in one performance. “I think it was just fully inhabiting each character and not worrying about [it]. [I’m] just letting things come through naturally and not trying to play two characters at once ‘cause that's not what my character is thinking,” she said. “My character is not thinking, ‘Oh, I got to play Man in Yellow and Sophia.’ They're just thinking, ‘I just want to play Sophia. I'm Sophia. I'm just a little girl.’ So, yeah, just keeping in that head space.”
Sophia presents as someone deeply rooted in religion, but has this darkness underneath as The Man In Yellow. There’s something haunting about this evil disguising itself through faith. “Well, a lot of people tend to hide behind their faith,” she explained. “That's exactly what she wanted. She wanted people to view her in a certain light so that it's so impossible to even fathom her acting in a different one. [Or] my weirdness or my unsettlingness could be interpreted for […] she's just sheltered. She just grew up in a sheltered family and super Catholic or whatever, so that's why she's acting a little bit strange.”
New episodes of FROM season 4 air Sundays on MGM+.
