The following contains minor spoilers for Day Shift, streaming now on Netflix.
Day Shift follows San Fernando Valley blue-collar worker Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx), whose pool cleaning service fronts his real money-making profession: hunting vampires. After slaying the fiends, he extracts their pointy teeth to sell on the black market for a tidy sum. That extra dough helps support Bud's young daughter, Paige (Zion Broadnax), who lives with his ex-wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good). Unaware of Bud's special skillset, the two plan on moving to Florida for a better life unless Bud can come up with 10 grand in a short period of time. When Bud gets the drop on a grandma vampire, her family comes looking for blood. If Bud can't save his own family from the undead, Jocelyn and Paige will soon end up as collateral damage.
Good recently spoke with CBR about the allure of vampires, stretching her action muscles, and refusing to become the damsel in distress.
CBR: During your career, you have faced off against giant monsters and malevolent entities in The Unborn, One Missed Call, 2005's Venom, and Monster Hunter. What is the endless appeal of vampires?
Meagan Good: I am a straight-up '90s kid. I grew up with Interview with the Vampire, Lost Boys, Blade, and all those movies. I always knew I wanted to be in a vampire movie, whether being some type of vampire slayer, someone who got a chance to kick their ass, or someone who was a vampire.
I think the appeal is different for everybody. It's interesting because it's a hard question to answer. I don't want to be like, "It's because they are so powerful, or they are undead, or they live forever." Vampires go through a lot of things, too. Something is appealing about them, and that's why they have been around for this long. For me, I just wanted to get in. This was a bucket list. I couldn't wait to do it and got to get in on a little bit of the action side. Director J.J. Perry had fresh ideas on how to shoot this, brought together his stunt team, and created physical movements that you had never seen in this space before.
Introduce us to Jocelyn and the predicament she finds herself in.
Jocelyn is Bud's wife. She is very no-nonsense. She is tough as nails, but she is also incredibly nurturing. She very much loves her husband, who is now her ex-husband. A bit of the issue that they've had is that she feels he is constantly lying and being dishonest. She doesn't quite know about what. Throughout the duration of the film, she finds out about what, and it gets very interesting for the family.
Jocelyn and Paige get captured by vampires. How thrilled were you that Jocelyn didn't simply dissolve into your typical damsel in distress?
That was important to me, finding a thin line of definitely not wanting to dissolve into a damsel in distress. I think we are in a different day and age. I also didn't want her to be overly tough. I wanted her to be real and definitely a little bit afraid and definitely trying to protect her child and definitely hurt from the things that have happened in the marriage that she doesn't quite understand, but also tough and brave and willing to be courageous even when she's scared. It was just finding that balance of how do I make her real without teeter-tottering to any side.
Jocelyn gets thrown around quite a bit, and she has her own moments of defiance. How surprised were you by the physicality of this role?
It was one of the things I was most excited about. My friend is a stuntman, and I am always like, "I am just going to do all my own stunts." He's like, "Let them do some of it. We have to get paid." As much as I can do... I'm like, "Throw me down the stairs. I will put on some pads. Kick me across the room." I have definitely had a few injuries here and there, where I landed too hard or someone hit me too hard. I'm just like, "Yeah. Let's do it again." The physicality was one of the parts, for me personally, that I was like, "I can't wait to do that."
What is it like having Jamie Foxx as a husband?
Fun. Fun. He's such a ball of energy and light, someone who loves what they do and someone who loves to bring other people joy. I feel like he comes to set every day with, "How do I make this fun for everybody?" and being present in the moment... I am big on that. I am big on, "Hey, even if I am going to work, this is a day in my life I don't get back." So, it's important to me to have quality of life every single day, intentionally and thoughtfully. When you work around people that desire the same thing, you now create a space that is a moment that lives in your history. For you, it's an experience in life that you can always look at fondly and be like, "That was awesome."
Now that Jocelyn is in the "know" about Bud's vampire-hunting shenanigans, if there is a sequel, do you hope she will participate in those missions?
I mean, if there was one, abso-frigging-lutely. We'll see.
Stream Day Shift now on Netflix.