Meagan Good Once Gave Her Co-Star Dennis Quaid a Safe Word in ‘The Intruder’

Actor Dennis Quaid co-starred alongside Cousin Skeeter star Meagan Good in the 2019 horror thriller The Intruder . Given how intense and intimate the movie was, Good asserted that scenes could be a bit extreme between herself and her onscreen partner — so much so that she joked that she needed to establish a safe word.

What Meagan Good thought about working with Dennis Quaid in ‘The Intruder’

The Intruder was a callback to older thrillers. Good starred in the 2019 feature alongside Michael Ealy as a young couple being stalked and harassed by their house’s previous homeowner. Good had already worked with Ealy before. But Intruder marked the first time the actor teamed up with Dennis Quaid, whom she was a huge fan of growing up.

“With Dennis, it’s something a little different because I grew up watching him, and he’s absolutely incredible,” Good once told Brief Take . “When I get into scenes with him, there’s something about movie stars from the ’80s, ’90s, there’s not a lot of movie stars, so the way that you approach a scene and you’d be willing to try anything, no matter how crazy it was, because that’s where the magic was – that was very inspiring to me. Also, he would say to me, ‘Yeah, let’s go find the magic. Let’s just go there and see what happens.'”

Quaid played the obsessive villain in the thriller, which required him and the Shazam star to go to some potentially dark places while filming. Although Quaid was cautious when collaborating with Good, she reassured Quaid that he could push her to her limits. And if he went too far, she’d let him know.

“There’s some pretty intense scenes, and I was like, ‘Just go for it. I’ll give you a safe word,'” Good said in a resurfaced interview with 5 On Your Side .

Dennis Quaid insisted that Meagan Good spit on him during one ‘Intruder’ scene

The Intruder filmmaker Deon Taylor wanted Good and Quaid to watch past thrillers that inspired the film. One frame of reference Taylor used was Fatal Attraction .

“Deon brought up early on that he wanted us to watch the scene from Fatal Attraction where Glenn Close and Michael Douglas had this love scene where she had her hand in the sink, and then she started wiping the water on their faces while they were making out,” Good once told The Young Folks .” Deon wanted us to have that creativity and freedom and see whatever happens because that’s when the magic happens.”

Quaid took Taylor’s advice to heart and insisted he and Good improvise this critical scene in the movie.

“So as Dennis and I are doing our scene, he whispers to me, ‘Spit on me.’ I was like, ‘I’m going to act like he didn’t say that,'” Good recalled. “So as we kept doing the scene, he said it again, with a little more voice. I’m just like, ‘Oh my God, what is happening?'”

But Good eventually acquiesced after Taylor agreed with Quaid’s idea.

“Now just imagine Deon in the room watching the camera yelling, ‘Spit on him!’ So I just end up doing something light, but Dennis is like, ‘No, get a good one!’ So I did it, and it was cool because that type of freedom allowed us to see what worked and how to make it as creepy as possible,” Good said.

Meagan Good once shared what made doing horror movies different from other genres

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Good was always a fan of horror films and even starred in a few scary movies herself, like Venom and The Unborn. The Intruder also fell into this category; it just took a more grounded approach to the genre. What Good enjoyed about starring opposite Quaid was that she could tap into emotions she couldn’t in other film genres.

“People go, ‘Oh, horror movies are just … you know.’ And I’m like, ‘No. In every other movie, you go through experiencing whatever the character is going through,” she said in an interview with Roger Ebert . “But in this genre, you go through experiencing, ‘How do I survive? How do I live? At what point does this kick in? At what point do I feel like I’m not going to make it? At what point do I decide that it doesn’t matter if it’s life or death?'”

This allowed Good to truly put herself in the position of her character in horror flicks.

“To even be on set and to go there, it just reminds you that you’re living life,” she continued. “And it just makes you think whether you’re in that situation, and the you start asking yourself, ‘What would I do?'”