Rebecca Hall on Finding a New Frequency with ‘The Listeners’ and Whether ‘Onslaught’ Is a Stealth ‘The Guest’ Sequels

Skip to main content By Brian Davids Plus Icon Brian Davids Writer PickYourBrian Follow Sign Up View All June 20, 2026 1:03pm Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Rebecca Hall Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text Rebecca Hall has done a staggering amount of work since her miniseries The Listeners first aired overseas at the end of 2024. But once you watch her latest towering performance in director Janicza Bravo’s five-part miniseries that premiered June 12 on Starz, you’ll quickly understand why the English actor didn’t want to let her two-plus-year-old turn fall by the wayside. In Jordan Tannahill’s adaptation of his own novel, Hall plays an English teacher named Claire whose personal and professional life is turned upside down when she suddenly hears a steady humming noise.

She alienates her family, friends and colleagues in her desperate search for answers, and Hall went as far as to wear an earpiece that fed her various types of hums so that she could experience the character’s vulnerable state of mind. Related Stories TV 'The Listeners' Review: Rebecca Hall's Tour de Force Performance Carries Starz's Eerie and Elusive Semi-Thriller Movies 'The End of It' Review: Rebecca Hall, Gael García Bernal and Beanie Feldstein in a Compellingly Quirky, if Overstretched, Sci-Fi Exercise “We had lots of different versions that [director] Janciza [Bravo] would cycle through on the day. There were times where I’d be like, ‘Give me the really aggressive, painful one.

Give me the gentle, low-key one,’” Hall tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Sometimes, it was just impractical because I couldn’t concentrate on anything else, which I guess was the point.” A persistent, low-frequency hum is a real phenomenon that people have attributed to either external or internal sources, and The Listeners follows suit by not providing definitive answers to what afflicts Claire.

Thus, it becomes a piece where you can insert any number of metaphors if you so desire, and Hall certainly has her own either/or interpretation. “I was just reading this article about all the data centers making noise. People are posting these videos of what the data center sounds like two miles down the way from them,” Hall shares.

“So there’s a very real version of it, and then there’s also this, How am I trusting myself and my perception versus what I’m told I’m perceiving?” Hall just had two films premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, The Man I Love and The End of It, but she had to forgo the event due to the filming schedule of her zombie horror movie called Zero Protocol. Mind you, she already shot a psychological horror film earlier this year called A Head Full of Ghosts.

On top of all that, she reunites with one of her oldest friends, Dan Stevens, for writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard’s Onslaught this September. All four previously collaborated on 2024’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. For years, I, and many other journalists, have pressed Wingard, Barrett and Stevens for a sequel to their 2014 cult hit, The Guest, but the brain trust have all put up a unified ambivalence to the idea of revisiting the world of their action-thriller.

However, as soon as A24 released Onslaught’s official trailer, questions swirled as to whether it was a stealth sequel to The Guest. After all, both films center on a secret military experiment that turns soldiers into enhanced killing machines, and Onslaught also shot in New Mexico like The Guest did back in 2013. Hall confirms that she plays Onslaught’s German villain, but she seemingly rules out a potential connection to The Guest.

Or does she? “It’s not really [a Guest sequel], I don’t think. It has elements,” says Hall.

Below, during a conversation with THR, Hall also discusses her exit from the Godzilla x Kong franchise, as well as her guest appearance on The Studio season one. *** It’s a busy time in the world of Rebecca Hall — so busy that you couldn’t go to Cannes for your two movies, The Man I Love and The End of It. Yeah, I was filming another one called Zero Protocol, so I couldn’t go.

It was unusual because you can usually work it out in the schedule to take three days off to go to Cannes. But I was making a movie where the story is in real time. It’s the precise two hours of the film, and it’s an entirely first-person subjective experience from my character’s point of view.

So they literally couldn’t let me out for any amount of time. It was unfortunate, but it’s a champagne problem. Rebecca Hall and Ollie West in The Listeners.

Starz So The Listeners — not to be confused with 2022’