Julia Fox Explains the Alternate Ending of Him — and Her Character’s Possible Future

The finale of Justin Tipping’s football-horror film Him erupts into visceral violence, a cathartic capstone to the mounting brutality and rivalry that precede it. Marlon Wayans delivers a ferocious turn as eight-time champion quarterback Isaiah White, whose mentorship of injured rising star Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) conceals something far more sinister. Julia Fox plays Elsie, Isaiah’s calculating wife, and she opened up to Polygon about filming that climactic sequence — including an alternate ending she shot, a weather disaster that shut production down, and where Elsie might go from here. Read the full preview.

Ed. note: Major spoilers for Him follow.

Early in the film, an assault leaves Cameron concussed and his future uncertain, but Isaiah ultimately reveals the attack was engineered by his inner circle to set a deadly course: a ritualized fight in which the victor is expected to sign a contract that will make him rich, famous — and effectively owned by the cabal Isaiah represents. Elsie is a willing participant in that apparatus.

When the duel concludes, Cameron defeats Isaiah and walks into an arena where the crowd anticipates a ceremonial transfer of power. Instead of acquiescing, Cam turns on the cultists and slaughters them. Elsie attempts to finish him off herself but is left mortally wounded — a bloody, Grand Guignol finale that Fox says presented enormous production challenges.

Fox recalled the pressure vividly: the stained dress she wore was a one-off custom, and the crew had a single opportunity to capture the sequence. She described the prosthetics and the stakes of getting that final take right as “intense,” noting she hadn’t worked with prosthetics of that scale before and that the scene required total focus under severe time constraints.

Fox said the production shot an alternate version of the ending as well: both versions keep the same blood-soaked dress, but the cast’s emotional responses differ. “We filmed one ending, and then we filmed another so the filmmakers could choose what landed best,” she explained. In one cut, Elsie’s reaction is heartbreak — she’s mourning Isaiah. In the other, she’s colder and more pragmatic: more invested in preserving the system that empowers her than in grieving a husband.

The climactic sequences were filmed on a football field in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sets meant to represent Isaiah and Elsie’s home were built in the stadium wings, which Fox said lent their interiors a raw, brutalist texture that felt authentic and striking on camera.

That authenticity came at a cost. While shooting the finale, the production was forced to halt when a sudden sandstorm swept across the field: the sky turned red, tumbleweeds whipped through the air, visibility dropped to nothing, and crew members couldn’t safely continue. Fox described the scene as otherworldly — “like being on Mars” — and recalled extremes of temperature that made the day especially grueling. Despite the chaos, she says the footage was worth the trouble.

Asked what an alternate future for Elsie might have been in a version where Cam signs the contract and becomes the new champion, Fox imagined her attempting a Faustian bargain: proposing a partnership with Cam to maintain appearances and keep their secrets buried. She also suggested Elsie might remain loyal to the organization that elevated her, functioning as a handler who moves “the chess pieces” and keeps the machine running — either because she needs the power it gives her, or because the group expects it of her.

Him is in theaters now.

Source: Polygon