Agnes: How Starring in a Movie About Demonic Possession Brought Molly C. Quinn Catharsis

Molly C. Quinn found catharsis from her ultra-religious upbringing by starring in the new Tribeca film Agnes — a movie about demonically possessed nuns.

In Mickey Reece’s film, Quinn stars as Sister Mary, the closest friend of a young nun named Sister Agnes who appears to suffer from a bad case of demonic possession. Mary isn’t the reason the Mother Superior calls for help from the diocese, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t possessed too… or is she?

“Possession, I think, takes many forms,” Quinn told MovieMaker. “For me, it was the idea of running from yourself and not dealing with your shit, which I think everyone can kind of relate to. We all know those things, like, ‘Oh we just won’t touch that,’ or ‘Oh, we’ll deal with that later.’ And I feel like with [Mary], whether they’re hell demons or personal demons, they catch up with her, and I wanted to fully embrace that.”

Quinn says that making the film, on which she also serves an executive producer alongside Reece and her fiancé Elan Gale, was “completely cathartic” because of her experience growing up as a Seventh Day Adventist in Texarkana, Texas.

Also Read: Mickey Reece’s Agnes Teaser: Not Your Average Exorcism (Exclusive Video)

“Oh, horribly religious,” Quinn joked of her childhood.

Now, she identifies as agnostic.

“It didn’t help going to church on Saturdays and Sundays. It was a lot,” she said. “When you’re at a young age, you don’t even understand what the guilt is and you’re associating it with things that are completely out of your control.”

Just like her character Mary, Quinn was able to face her own internal demons through the making of Agnes.

“That was cathartic, to go back almost to childhood memories and work some shit out that I had been running from,” she said. “Full circle.”

Agnes is set to premiere at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday. You can stream the movie for $15 via the festival’s website here.

Main Image: Molly Quinn as Sister Mary in Agnes.