How Glenn Close’s Experience With A Cult-Like Group Influenced Her Performance In Knives Out 3

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With the year winding down, one of the most anticipated releases still to come on Netflix in 2025 is Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out film. This new mystery features Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc investigating the death of Josh Brolin’s character, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. He’ll be questioning several people, including Martha Delacroix, played by Glenn Close, who was Wicks’ close confidante and a dedicated member of her church. Interestingly, Close drew on personal experience with a cult-like group from her childhood to help her portray this role.

Before the release of Wake Up Dead Man in theaters next year, Variety interviewed the actress about her part in the new Rian Johnson mystery. She found the intense religious extremism shown in the upcoming Knives Out film particularly resonant, as her own parents joined a group called Moral Re-Armament when she was a child. She described the group—founded in 1938 by Frank Buchman—as a “cult” in a recent interview, explaining:

As a child, visiting my Uncle Frank felt like meeting someone incredibly powerful. I believe people don’t usually get involved in groups like that unless they’re searching for something they lack in their own lives – they’re often feeling incomplete or unhappy.

Initiatives of Change, formerly known as Moral Re-Armament, continues its work of fostering trust and understanding globally. Actress Glenn Close’s family was involved with the original movement for 15 years, and though she now views that period critically, she drew upon those experiences when portraying Martha Delacroix – a character devoted to Jefferson Hicks and instrumental in maintaining order within his church. Close explained further:

I understand how Martha has always tried to do the right thing, ever since she was little. She’s sacrificed a lot of her own happiness by constantly caring for Wicks.

You’d expect someone as devoted as Martha Delacroix to be innocent in Wicks’ murder, but this is a Knives Out mystery, so anything is possible. She’s just one of the many interesting characters in Wake Up Dead Man, which stars Glenn Close alongside Josh O’Connor, Mila Kunis, Andrew Scott, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormick, Thomas Haden Church, and Jeffrey Wright. Like the previous Knives Out films, Glass Onion and the first Knives Out, Rian Johnson directed and wrote the screenplay.

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2025-11-21 22:38