Liberating the Screen: Mark Duplass on the Liberating Power of Full-Frontal Nudity in The Creep Tapes

Mark Duplass’s Unbridled Nudity in "The Creep Tapes" Stuns Fantastic Fest Audience

Fantastic Fest 2024

At this year’s Fantastic Fest, a packed audience at the secret screening of Shudder’s upcoming horror series, The Creep Tapes, was left stunned by Mark Duplass’s unbridled nudity. The indie filmmaker and horror buff, who stars in the series and is also behind the two movies that began the franchise, showed no qualms about shedding his inhibitions – and his clothes – in the three episodes previewed at the festival.

During the Q&A session following the screening, an audience member asked whether Duplass had demanded to appear naked on the show. The actor laughed and replied, "I have a very strong opinion about male nudity, and on male nudity in horror films. And my feeling is, the kind of nudity you want to see is not ‘Oh my God, everybody wants to see this person naked, and they don’t want to be naked. How do we convince them to be naked so we can please the audience?’ That’s the worst kind of nudity there can be. The best kind of nudity is ‘Nobody wants to see this person, and they’re gonna do it anyway.’ That way, there is zero exploitation – except for Patrick, who I’m totally comfortable exploiting."

A Liberating Character

For Duplass, playing the serial killer protagonist of The Creep Tapes is a liberating experience. "This is a very liberating character for me to play, for a number of reasons," he said. "A lot of the work I’ve done before are nuanced dramedies where I’m making sure I don’t push too hard, making sure it’s credible and natural. And this is just ‘Take everything off and do whatever the fuck we want to do.’ It is so liberating. I go and do a show like The Morning Show that’s got a crew of 300 people, and everything’s so measured. And I love that world, I really appreciate it. But [The Creep Tapes] is never more than, like, five or six of us on set, and we stay in these houses that we shoot in, and we shoot in sequential order, and we come up with new scenes at night, and we eat our meals together. The magic of that is just very important to the other things I do."

The Creep Tapes premieres on Shudder and AMC+ on November 15, with the first two episodes dropping simultaneously, followed by weekly releases.