It was a viral moment seen ’round the world: A beautifully creepy AI doll dressed like a Victorian schoolgirl sashays down a hallway with a blade in her hand, ready to butcher her next victim — but not before she does a TikTok-ready twirl or two. It’s the kind of hilarious tonal dissonance that turned M3GAN into a campy horror sensation, and turned dancer-turned-actress Amie Donald into the biggest horror star no one would recognize. That’s because Donald is the body behind M3GAN, the physical performer who, along with Jenna Davis as M3GAN’s voice, brings the evil doll to life.
But M3GAN isn’t very evil this time around. In fact, she’s basically reformed in the newly released sequel M3GAN 2.0, which takes its cues from Terminator 2: Judgment Day to pit a reprogrammed M3GAN against a bigger, badder, deadlier robot (Ivanna Sakhno). It’s a wild, unexpected journey for M3GAN, not to mention for M3GAN’s body double. When Donald, who mostly worked as a professional dancer before being cast in M3GAN and Netflix’s Sweet Tooth, first portrayed M3GAN back in 2021, she “had no idea” that the movie would take off the way it did, much less that she would be back in the schoolgirl dress for a sequel.
