Jessica Garza Blows Madmen (and Audiences) Away In ‘Your Lucky Day’

Jessica Garza joins LATV’s landmark entertainment news show The Big Deal on an upcoming episode where she gives us the scoop on her new film Your Lucky Day, out this Friday in theatres. A native Texan who currently resides in New York, Jessica is best known in her role as ‘Josephina Vega’ in Showtime’s star-studded series Penny Dreadful. Previously, she starred in the television adaptation of the hugely successful feature franchise, The Purge, for USA Network.

The logline for Your Lucky Day says it all: After a dispute over a winning lottery ticket turns into a deadly hostage situation, the witnesses must decide exactly how far they’ll go—and how much blood they’re willing to spill—for a cut of the $156 million.

The seed for Your Lucky Day was planted from a one-panel comic from writer/director Daniel Brown’s one-a-day calendar. The macabre humor of a coroner holding a lottery ticket over a dead body and pronouncing “lucky stiff” sparked an idea about what could have happened before. In Los Angeles, Daniel set up shop at his close friend and the film’s editor, Nick Pezzillo’s house in Torrance. “Nick had built a little edit suite in his backyard, and this was my home/office for the duration of the shoot– except when Nick was editing for someone else. Which he was until we officially started production in December,” Daniel says. He took his Zoom calls with all the cast and star Angus Cloud of Euphoria on Nick’s back porch.

“I was so excited about what I had seen in Euphoria, but also it was a bit unknown. This was before season 2– Angus Cloud had just a few lines and scenes in season 1 I could watch, and Sterling was a big part– I knew a little of Angus’s backstory at the time; I love street casting, I’ve employed it on several music videos. But having this amount of dialogue was a question, I think for both of us. As written, Sterling was a fast-talking motor-mouth, but Angus has such a soulful, simmering quality that I wanted to tap into. So we discussed how we could do more with less in a few moments and instead just rely on Angus’s eyes to tell the story,” says Daniel. (Sadly, Angus passed away at the age of 25, earlier this year.)

“Every day was so exciting, as one incredible actor after the next had read and responded to the script. Jessica Garza sent in a self-tape that just blew me away.”

Check out what Jessica had to say about this provocative and daring new film, Your Lucky Day, in this sneak peek to an upcoming episode of The Big Deal.