Simone Ashley has been building her career over the past decade with leading roles in buzzy Netflix series like Sex Education and Bridgerton; she also has a supporting role in The Devil Wears Prada 2, one of the summer’s biggest movies. But a smaller project has given the actor her first starring role in a feature film: This Tempting Madness, a new thriller that debuted in theaters and on premium VOD simultaneously on June 12.
In This Tempting Madness, Ashley plays Mia, a woman who wakes up from a coma with significant physical injuries to accompany her fractured memory. She apparently took a major fall, and her husband Jake (Austin Stowell) was the only one with her at the time. Jake is taken into police custody, but what actually happened to push Mia over the literal edge? She can’t quite remember, and her reality continues to blur as she attempts to figure out the truth.
It’s an outlandish thriller premise, and, as such, not the kind of thing that screams “true story.” But in a sense, This Tempting Madness was inspired by reality, even though many of the details are fully fictional.
The True Story Behind This Tempting Madness:
Though the premise sounds a bit like the classic neo-noir mystery Memento, writer-director Jennifer E. Montgomery told Screen Daily that she was inspired to write the film by a friend who suffered a serious accident. “I would call my friend every morning and speak to her for an hour and then again in the evening and speak to her for an hour,” she told the publication. Because her friend could not form new short-term memories, their twice-daily conversation would essentially be repeated the second time. Eventually, as her friend’s mind healed, she was better able to recall the contents of their talks, ultimately becoming able to remember the full hour from earlier in the day.
Montgomery’s friend also kept a journal; reading it over again after her memory made a full recovery proved an unusual experience, which in turn helped to inspire Montgomery’s more heightened take on a young woman with memory problems.
The actual events of This Tempting Madness were presumably not inspired by Montgomery’s friend. (We hope she was safe and sound as she recovered from her accident, rather than tasked with solving a mystery!) But Mia’s memory problems, discomfort, and disorientation have roots in a very real condition. On a broad level, it is based on, or at least inspired by, a true story.
This Tempting Madness is currently available to rent ($6.99) or buy ($14.99) on Amazon. The film is also available to purchase on Apple TV and Fandango At Home.