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The road to fame can lead you to many unexpected places. Lurker, written and directed by Alex Russell (Beef, The Bear), is a psychological thriller that follows an introverted 20-something retail clerk, Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), who encounters Oliver (Archie Madekwe), a popular and charismatic musician. When Matthew begins to form an obsession with Oliver, he takes the unique opportunity to edge his way into the star’s entourage, blurring the line between friend and fan, along with navigating the murky desires of proximity to fame and the attention that comes with it.
Lurker originally premiered at Sundance in 2025 and has since been acquired by Mubi. In addition to that, the film received a nomination for Best Feature at the 2025 Gotham Awards, alongside four nominations at the 2026 Independent Spirit Awards that include Best First Feature and Best Screenplay, and a 2026 DGA nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Theatrical Feature Film. Below, Deadline spoke to Russell about the fun, creative challenges of bringing his debut feature to life.
DEADLINE: Where did this idea for Lurker come from? Did you plan on telling a cautionary tale about fandoms and celebrity?
ALEX RUSSELL: It started with a feeling, more specifically, about this feeling I had about groups of boys. And it was probably germinated from a feeling I observed in middle school. It wasn’t until I reached adulthood that I realized some of these same things are still happening. People are still organizing themselves in hierarchies in an unspoken, boyish way. And I hadn’t seen too much of that [covered in TV or Film], but I felt a lot of my work has to do with the economy of attention and who’s getting it and who’s getting it from who and who wants it from who. It’s an invisible currency because attention doesn’t exist in a concrete way that you can see. You can only see everyone’s reaction to it. So much of Lurker is about glances and who’s being looked at and who’s trying not to be seen. It started off as a very low-stakes idea, maybe something I found funny and that made me a little sick. So, I explored it through the process of writing a screenplay and then let people articulate their interpretations afterwards.
Regarding the last part of your question, I think it’s very dangerous to start out with a big theme because that’s a top-down approach instead of a character-out approach. It can often seem didactic, too, if you start with a theme and try to write to it rather than to a feeling and a character. The theme should come out of that [approach].
DEADLINE: Between working on Dave, Beef and The Bear, you’ve been in this industry for a bit now. How do you process meeting famous people all the time and being surrounded by celebrity culture?
RUSSELL: That’s a great question. I don’t think I’ve ever had to really answer this before, but I’ll try to answer as honestly as I can. My experience in Hollywood has been just enough to handle at once. I’m behind the scenes as a writer, so I’m not in everyone’s face. But oftentimes, there are situations where you do have to consider how you’re behaving while you’re also trying to put yourself out there so that you can have more work in the industry that you’re in. And I’m sure you’re used to that by now, too, being a journalist. I think journalists in particular really understand this movie because there’s a relatability to what Matthew is going for. At the very core of him, it’s someone who is trying to put themselves out there, but then his reaction to that can get extreme. But everyone can relate to, “Oh, I’m going to be around so-and-so today. So, I need to think about how I’m coming off.” And that’s so much of what the beginning of this movie is. It’s calculating how to be, and he’s overthinking it and overdoing it.
But in my case, in Hollywood, it’s been slow and steady enough. I’m thinking about these Heated Rivalry guys, and what it’s like to have that type of exposure all at once. It seems terrifying. I also often think about child stars. How do they adapt to their adult life when they’re already so used to this sort of relationship between themselves and the whole world as an audience?
DEADLINE: What are your current pop culture obsessions or things that you return to?
RUSSELL: I’ve actually tuned out a bit over the past few months just because I’ve been trying to write new stuff. There’s a point with pop culture in general where you get exhausted by it, especially if you consume it through social media. The better the algorithm gets at feeding you whatever information is appealing to you, the more it can really start to wear on your soul. I got to a point where I just needed to get back into my own world a little bit. But I think also something true about this movie is you’re never more ravenous about finding new music and being obsessed with things and being obsessed with your favorite whatever, like movies, than when you’re in your teens and in your early 20s because you’re still figuring out what you love and you have all the time in the world to hone both your taste and identity.
I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found myself less ravenous about finding new music or movies. I usually only take it in if all my friends are saying, “Oh, you need to watch this,” or “You need to listen to this.” And I’ve developed such a great group of friends with great taste who, I know, if they tell me something, I have to check it out, but maybe I’m just oversaturated in general. It’s certainly a balance of pulling the plug for a while so that when you plug it back in, you’ll feel something again.
DEADLINE: Was this movie always supposed to take place in the world of music?
RUSSELL: Yeah, it was always set in the music world. Most of my friends now still are music or music-adjacent people, managers, producers and artists. So, this was just a world I completely understood. I understood what would ring as authentic and not, and I knew I could pull favors and get people to help me make the music [in the film] and stuff like that. But, as I mentioned earlier, this film could fit anywhere, like middle school, Hollywood or even a biology lab. [Laughs]. But this is where the idea settled, and I didn’t have to do too much research because I’ve been into music my whole life, and I’ve been around people in their 20s trying to make it or fighting over opportunities.
DEADLINE: The cringe factor is really great and anxiety-inducing. You never really know what Matthew will do next. How did you manage to create this dynamic for his unsettling character?
RUSSELL: Matthew takes social interactions extremely seriously and can be devastated by saying the wrong thing. And it’s important to him to say the right thing in the right moment and be liked in that moment. So, he’s living and dying in these little moments that to everyone else is just small talk, but to him, it’s so important. The stakes are so high. That’s why it’s so cringe because we are in his shoes. We know that it’s going to be so painful for him because he’s so calculating. We could tell in his face that he’s thinking about, “Oh, should I say this? Should I say that? Should I do this or that? Should I act cool? Should I look over there?”
Even in the first scene of the film [where Matthew and Oliver meet in the clothing store], the way Matthew is moving his neck to the side, he’s kind of like, “Oh, I can’t be seen looking directly at Oliver. When I catch Oliver’s gaze, it’s like I need to be looking at something else.” So that was kind of the idea. And I think the subjectivity of the film in the first half is about getting you in his shoes, so that you feel like this invisible friend next to him, and you’re like, “Oh, now I’m feeling the stakes of this too because I know he’s about to embarrass us.”
DEADLINE: When I was watching this, I kind of got vibes of Saltburn and Phantom Thread in the sense that the partnership between the two of them is a bit convoluted, but also it’s that thing of a strange co-dependency. In the end, Oliver decides not to throw away the evidence Matthew has stored on his hard drive, and they seem to have worked out their problems enough to release the documentary. How are we supposed to perceive this ending?
RUSSELL: I hear you. I think all of those things you’re saying are what I want people to be thinking about. What does it mean that both characters get what they want in the end? What does Oliver’s little smile when he’s watching that video mean? What does it mean that Oliver’s watching a video of himself through the eyes of Matthew? And what does it mean that they’re still together? And I think all those questions that it makes you ask are what I’m hoping people will think about.
DEADLINE: I was scared for Oliver at the end of this movie. Like, someone, please, get them both into therapy.
RUSSELL: Yeah. I mean, and I think that’s the difference between this and the expectation of a movie like this is often everyone just dies in the end, or either Matthew would get killed, or he would kill all of them or whatever. But I think what happens instead is what I was really hoping this movie would get across.
DEADLINE: What was the most challenging? Was there ever a scene that you thought at first wasn’t going to work, but then, upon watching it, you realized it was going to work just fine?
RUSSELL: Honestly, I mean, my mind is blown that any of this works. I’m so happy this movie turned out to be what I was trying to make. I am so lucky because it could have gone so sideways. I could have miscast it or shot it in a way that didn’t make sense. I could have written it in a way that didn’t work. This movie really had the opportunity just to be wrong, and it does feel exactly as wrong as I was hoping it would. The only time I got emotional while shooting was on the first day, when we shot the scene where the two characters meet. I was watching the monitor as that scene played out, and I was like, “Oh, wow, this works.” The tone of this and the chemistry between the two actors, it just works, and I believe it. Now, I could rest knowing that the rest of the movie will make sense because so much of it is just about these two people and their faces and the subtleties of their performances. I am pleasantly surprised that it worked out as I hoped, but really even better than I hoped.
DEADLINE: I mean, you got nominated at the DGA awards this year. That’s substantial, I would say.
RUSSELL: Right? It’s like, what? I’m just a random guy. You have no idea. It’s crazy still trying to process that. I got a call from Christopher Nolan, and I was like, “What?” You should have seen the room that I wrote this movie in. It was just the Covid era, with just me in it [isolated]. But I am so happy that some people like it, and it’s great to get that kind of acknowledgement because then it means you get to do another [movie], hopefully. And everything that’s happened since getting to make this has been a pleasant surprise. I was willing to do it, knowing that it could be a complete failure, but I’m happy that people are watching it on the plane. [Laughs].
DEADLINE: Lurker is available on the plane? Talk about anxiety.
RUSSELL: For whatever reason, even if a film gets a theatrical release, I feel it’s not solidified as a real movie until you see someone watching it on a plane months later. I remember the day Lurker became available on Delta flights. I happened to be on a Delta flight sometime after, and I got up to use the bathroom, and I saw someone watching it. And it was so surreal because the movie was almost over. So, when I got out of the bathroom, the guy was done watching the movie, and I was like, “What did you think?” And he loved it; it was great. I didn’t even have to tell him I was involved to get a real answer. [Laughs].
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]
English (US) ·