e x c l u s i v e SCOOP: How bodybuilder/actress Katy O’Brian ACTUALLY trained for ‘Love Lies Bleeding’

I am a potential future viewer of Love Lies Bleeding, a movie about a gym manager (Kristen Stewart) and gym rat (the jacked Katy O’Brian) being gay and doing crimes. I like to know what I’m looking at when I see a fellow swole woman, so I wanted to talk to Katy O’Brian about her role. But I have always been eternally, cosmically disappointed in the lack of insight and detail in every “here’s how this actor prepared for their physically intense role” article I’ve ever read, because there are virtually no journalists who are learned in the iron tongue. I especially wanted to talk to Katy, to see if I could finally get this right. For myself, for everyone.

Katy is extraordinarily busy, famous, and in-demand. So her PR team assigned me a total of five minutes, from 2:35 to 2:40 p.m. on Tuesday, to get all the details I needed. No problem, I said. No problem no problem no problem. I can do this! I said in the bathroom mirror, hoodie pulled low over my face, vomit on my sweater already (mom’s spaghetti). I can suss out the entire training regimen of a movie star in five minutes! Journalism ain’t dead yet; where there will be only one set of footprints, that will be where I fireman-carried her.

So here we have a historical first for the publication She’s A Beast, nay, all of media: The actual, real-deal, nitty-gritty, honest-to-god details of how a muscle mother trained for her swole role.

How long have you been lifting weights?

I started in high school with my dad. I didn't really know anything about it, so that, you know, kind of leads to bad form and little imbalances and injuries. Once I got to college, I started to work out with some some of my guy friends. It was hilarious, they very stereotypically did not train legs, so it was just all upper body days. I knew that I wanted to get actual strength and good technique, but I felt injured all the time.

I seriously got into it probably 10 years ago. I found a gym, found a trainer who actually first told me what bodybuilding even was, because until then I just never even thought about it. I didn't even consider it before; I didn't want to get super, super huge. But there's so many different categories, and that's kind of what drew me to it, like, oh, I can actually have this really cool, strong physique. But also not have to, like, sacrifice anything.

As, you were saying, you don't have to choose between not being injured and looking good, and being strong. That's great. What is your split, if I may?

Oh my god, I've mixed it up so much. So usually, I started with a like chest Mondays back Tuesday, hamstrings Wednesday, shoulders Thursday, arms Friday and legs Saturday. When I did Ant-Man I switched it up to push-pull so it was like, squats-chest, then deadlifts-upper back. I got to work with the cast trainer there a little bit and his training just kept your heart rate up constantly. I was going more for strength, but burning tons of calories because I was just moving. So there weren’t a lot of rest periods. But it was fewer days in the gym, but I was full-body sore all the time.

Did you prepare for this role physically in any specific way?

For Love Lies Bleeding, I hit every muscle group twice a week.