The actress kicks off ET's Bahamas Week and discusses her 'creepy' new Lifetime film, 'Boy in the Walls.'
Ryan Michelle Bathe is enjoying fun in the sun, joining ET's Nischelle Turner to kick off Bahamas Week at the Baha Mar Resort, where she opened up about life with her family, husband Sterling K. Brown and their sons, as well as her upcoming Lifetime movie, Boy in the Walls.
With summer in full swing, Bathe shared insight into what that means for their household -- and sometimes, that means taking vacations without the children for some R&R. She shared that Brown is the one in the household who is the true adventure seeker when it comes to doing more daring activities.
"He will jump off anything. But he is the adventure seeker," Bathe told ET. "I'm the one who's like, 'Why are we not laying on a beach?'"
The couple recently celebrated their anniversary and Bathe reminisced about their big day.
"The best thing about it was the food," the First Wives Club star recalled with a laugh. "Because, you know, OK look, can I just say sometimes you go to weddings and you get the winner-winner chicken dinner and you're like, 'I pay. OK, it's fine.' But I wanted people to remember their experience -- their culinary experience. So I was happy about that. The food was good."
She credited having a partner-in-crime in Brown to take on Hollywood with.
"This is what he loves to do, but he is not of it. He will be the first person to be like, 'Get them sliders. Let's go home,'" she said of the This Is Us star. "But there's a picture of us somewhere where we're huddled in a corner eating sliders on our way home. But you know, he loves it and he loves being around people. But he's also like, he doesn't have to be. He doesn't have FOMO. He's the opposite of FOMO."
Bathe next has Lifetime's Boy in the Walls, directed and executive produced by Constance Zimmer, which tells the story of people who discover there is someone secretly living inside their home.
Bathe plays the recently married Alisa Jensen, who gives up her Manhattan lifestyle for a quiet existence in rural Connecticut but struggling to adjust to her new role as a stepmother. Hoping the move can be a fresh start, she finds herself cracking under the pressure with her husband constantly away at work, limited job prospects and a rebellious stepdaughter to contend with. But when she begins to hear strange noises in the house, she can't shake the feeling that someone is always watching her and she later makes a terrifying discovery of what is truly within the walls.
"When I was reading the script, I caught myself being a big girl. And I was like, 'I'm a grown girl.' I read it at night. I heard a noise," Bathe remembered. "I was knocking on [my walls]. I said, 'Clearly, I'm the person that needs to do this because I am actually afraid.'"
"It's called phrogging," she explained. "I had no idea and in these old homes, they'll put on an addition. They'll do this so they've got all this room and attic space and crawl space and people straight up will live in people's houses and they will have no idea. Isn't that scary?"
The 46-year-old actress assured the phenomenon is "rare," though Boy in the Walls -- which she described as "creepy and juicy" -- is loosely inspired by true events.
"It gets pretty creepy," she said of her film, "because you don't know what's going on. No one actually knows, even us, the actors, we don't know. Is it paranormal? Is it, am I going crazy? You have your regular life, you move into this beautiful house. You're so excited to start this new life with your your new husband and the last thing you think is that somebody is living in your walls. You really do think that something is wrong with you."
Bathe praised Zimmer's directing, calling the UnREAL star "tiny and mighty." "I just felt so taken care of and a woman director, which, 'Woo!'" she said, acknowledging that she'd like to step behind the camera one day.
Boy in the Walls premieres Aug. 5 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Lifetime.
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