Into the Dark: Delivered's Tina Majorino explains Jenny's fake childbirth: 'It's based on her past trauma'
Spoilers for 'Into the Dark: Delivered'
Into the Dark's 2019 Mothers' Day installment saw a desperate mother cloning humans to keep her murderous son's serial killer instincts satiated. This year, the Hulu anthology horror's tribute to mothers - 'Delivered' sees a whole other kind maternal instinct, where a tortured woman, unable to have kids of her own, becomes a serial killer targeting pregnant women for their unborn babies.
At the core of the plot is this twisted, somewhat compassionate and extremely disturbed villain Jenny - played by Tina Majorino who channels every ounce of menace into the character. At first glance, Jenny is your regular sociopath stalker, meticulously following, lying and manipulating her targets before luring them in with dinners and then keeping them hostage. But the deeper you dive into Jenny's psyche, the darker it gets as we see her inducing fake labor pains and doing the very same thing to other women that her parents did to her. Luckily, Majorino explains it all in an exclusive with MEA WorldWide (MEAWW).
Armed with soporific, shears, axes and chains to keep her hostages shackled in her 20-acre property far, far away from civilization, Jenny's morbid obsession with becoming a mother sees her lying in bed screaming her guts out the way a first-time mom would during labor as she practices what can be labeled as fake childbirth. At the end of what can be assumed a periodic or at least semi-regular ritual, Jenny pulls out a tiny baby doll from between her legs and cradles it as if she's just given birth. It looks like she is trying to experience what childbirth is like through labor pain-inducing simulators, but Majorino will have you believe it's way more twisted.
"In that particular scene, Jenny's actually not using anything to give her the pains of giving birth. She's just going through the motions of it because she can't have children of her own," Majorino explains her sadistic character's inherent masochism. There are scars on Jenny's stomach that reflect the composed rage burning in her eyes. While she doesn't exactly go through the pain of giving birth, Jenny likes to simulate the scenario as some form of latent satisfaction. To pull off that whole labyrinth of morbidity, Majorino prepared well in advance. "I watched a lot of birth videos," she laughs, also adding how she talked to her best friend and others who've experienced childbirth. "I just tried to do the best that I could, not having had that experience myself in real life," she admits.
That said, there's also a faint contradiction in Jenny's arc, where she claims she is nothing like her parents but does the same thing to her victims that they did to her. When Jenny kidnaps Valerie (Natalie Paul) - her latest victim who unravels her, it is revealed that at the core of her torturous behavior is an abusive past where her parents had torn out an unborn baby from her womb and left her to die in the same ranch where she slaughters her victims. Jenny had then proceeded to kill her parents and was arrested, but we don't see how she got out. That's not important, what's important is when Valerie accuses her of the hypocrisy in her agenda, Jenny insists she is not her parents and Majorino explained that saying it's all a villain's psyche.
"A villain never sees themselves as the villain," Majorino explained, "That's why they're awful because they don't consider the outside world. They feel very confident in their perspective. So it was very important to us how Jenny is interpreting what's happening right now based on her past trauma."
Noting how 'Delivered' is a commentary on what separates a mother from a monster, Majorino also distinguished between Jenny - a woman who murders to have a baby, and Valerie - who's pregnant, but doesn't quite seem okay with having a baby. Who's in the right, and who's in the wrong? Who's more fit to be a mom?
When the unsuspecting, innocent and naive Valerie complains of being pregnant, the torturous murderer Jenny counters saying there are worse things to be. Majorino explained this saying: "Valerie is just a young woman who's confused and scared about life, which is very normal. I don't know any of my friends who have gotten pregnant with their first kids and haven't felt that. So it's not coming from a place of vindictiveness. It's not coming from a place of mal intention. It really is just her being a very normal woman who has anxieties about her future and has made mistakes and you know, just doesn't know how things are gonna pan out. She doesn't know if she knows how to be a mother."
When asked what are the things she's looking forward to, for Valerie, it's mostly about not being pregnant anymore, while Jenny can't stop thinking about reading to her child and enjoying all the little moments. Odd as it might seem, Majorino reflects "Jenny is trying to fulfill something that can never be fulfilled. She doesn't have the ability to see how far gone she is. She's really, unfortunately, lost it. And I think that the baby thing is just a fixation on a fresh start. Like somehow that's gonna fix everything and she's not going to be in pain anymore. She is so hyperfocused on that end goal that she doesn't give a shit how she's affecting other people to get there. It's the difference between normal anxieties and someone being quiet crazy and grasping at straws to find joy in her joyless life with no care or regard for who gets hurt."
'Into the Dark: Delivered' will be available on Hulu on Friday, May 8, from midnight.