'Happy Face' stars Annaleigh Ashford, Khiyla Aynne on real-life serial killer story: 'Crime and violence and trauma is a family event'

Yahoo

04-04-2025

Starring Annaleigh Ashford, Dennis Quaid and Canadian Khiyla Aynne, the Paramount+ show Happy Face is inspired by the real-life story of Melissa G. Moore, who at 15 discovered that her father was a serial killer, called Happy Face. In the series Melissa, played by Ashford, reconnects with her incarcerated father Keith, or the Happy Face serial killer (Quaid), as she tries to figure out the circumstances of her father's never-revealed ninth victim.
Speaking to Yahoo Canada from Toronto, Ashford and Aynne discussed commitment to execute this show with best interests of the victim's families and the perpetrators families in mind, and some of the most impactful moments of the series. The actor also spoke about how the Happy Face set was a safe space to explore the dark themes of the story.
What do you know about the happy face killer?
Perhaps we should just explain why you're here.
Because he's my father.
I'd love to know, you know, it's not particularly typical that there's a real life case like this that's taken on in a series and the people involved or the person involved is so, um, kind of core to the creating of it.
Um, and maybe just start with you.
Um, was it nice to have Melissa kind of be so a part of the process.
One of the amazing things about working on this project was not only getting to spend time with the real Melissa Moore, um, but it was learning from her about the machine of true crime and how Not only has our culture become desensitized to true crime, but we've also forgotten that it's about real people and there are real victims, and anytime these stories are um fictionalized or there are documentaries or there are podcasts, there is a great potential for these families, um, both of the victims and of the perpetrators, um, that they are re-traumatized.
So.
Um, she, uh, taught us about how to navigate that gracefully and also I've just, uh, you know, right when I read the script and started, um, discovering more about her story, I was really inspired by The act of service, um, that she is offering to families who've been touched by the trauma of crime.yler for you, I think, you know, your character is so interesting because I think that there's like this whole side piece of like a grandchild trying to like understand what's happening and she's kind of far removed because it wasn't her childhood.
Um, was it interesting to be able to What kind of like the generational impact that something like this could have.
Yeah, I was definitely interested in um exploring that especially because Hazel found out at 15 that her grandfather was the happy face killer and Melissa Moore found out at 15 that her dad was the happy face killer so I thought that was a really interesting piece of my character and.
Hazel is just very layered and complex, and as she goes through the series she experiences bullying and hard relationships with her peers at school and with her family, and she definitely learns a lot, especially near the end of the series, and she really finds her identity, which I think is really nice.
One of the elements that I really loved was um everything about Melissa's lipstick and what that kind of means in so many different things, you know, from the beginning when her daughter comes, it's like, let me take this off and let me put this one on you, and she kind of throw when she's about to go on TV is like putting it on like it's kind of like her armor that she's putting on this lipstick.
I love that you called her, her lipstick her armor.
We used to call it that all the time.
We used to say.
You know when you're hiding, you have to hide behind something.
And so for her she was hiding behind the mask that she had made and as the series goes on as the show continues, um, week to week, you see the facade begin to crumble you know as as her secret comes out, she um her true self begins to break through.
um, and it's another one of those reminders that you can't run from your secrets.
They will they will find you that they will always find the light.
I think one of the most interesting kind of elements is episode 4, because I think I'm talking about the trauma that Melissa went through.
What was it like for you to just have to go to that place where you really have to live out the kind of um impact of that trauma that she that she felt even in her adult life.
Episode 4 is actually one of my favorite episodes because it's not only about The trauma that Melissa experienced with men in her life, um.
Outside of the relationship of her father, you know, um.
It's, it's where we discovered that she was abused by men in the same way that her father abused women.
Um, talk about trauma with a capital T, and it also shows That crime and violence and um trauma is a family event.
And when one of these violent acts occurs, it is a stain in the family history of both the victims' families and the perpetrators' families.
Um.
And and and everybody who was, you know, close to a person who committed a crime like this, all of them feel guilt and shame in equal measure.
They feel a responsibility for a crime that they did not commit.
And so what does that feel like?
What does that look like?
And I hope it makes makes viewers um question what they would do.
I imagine that being able to kind of execute some of those scenes so beautifully also required you to be.
on set to kind of go there and feel like you had the space to really kind of explore that.
Did you feel like the set was particularly conducive to you, kind of being able to go to some of those harder places for the character?
Yeah, you know, we had some really heavy material and we wanted to be absolutely respectful of the content and any of the real um people that were involved in this story.
And then because it was so heavy, I wanted to make sure that it was a happy place to work.
You know, because happy face is dark, that doesn't mean that our, our, our set can can't be an actual happy place to work.
And so we had a lot of laughs.
I like to let the air out of the room in between takes and it genuinely was one of the the um the really happiest places I've ever had on on set.
Um, I loved our I loved our crew.
I loved our cast and.
Jen Casiso, our wonderful showrunner, and Liz Gs, our producer, they really set the tone for a um for a wonderful place to work.
There's definitely more emotional scenes than others, of course, especially in episode two, but we had an amazing crew and set just filled with wonderful people, and they were all super supportive, very collaborative, and It was definitely nice to have that to be able to go to those places and film those more heavy scenes on those days for sure.