Close-Up with Vincent Muller

Close-Up is Stardust’s short-form digital cover series spotlighting talent through what feels most revealing: current obsessions, routines, creative process, and the details that bring their personality into focus.

At 21, Vincent Muller is already showing an ability to make a role linger beyond the boundaries of the screen. His breakout performance as Rust Vance in Clown in a Cornfield offers an early example, with Muller taking a character initially defined by reserve and uncertainty and turning him into one of the film’s most memorable and affecting presences.

Blending satire, slasher horror, and coming-of-age tension, the film brings Quinn Maybrook to Kettle Springs, a struggling town where generational resentment turns deadly when Frendo, the smiling mascot of a shuttered corn-syrup factory, begins hunting a group of teenagers. Amid the chaos, Rust’s experience outdoors makes him unusually equipped for what follows, while his guarded nature and familiarity with the area leave enough uncertainty around his intentions to keep him under suspicion.

Muller allows the nuances beneath that first impression to emerge at their own pace. Rust can be "awkward" and solitary, but his dry humor and vigilance are increasingly joined by a genuine concern for the people around him, creating warmth without losing the distance that makes him intriguing in the first place. As the violence escalates, that shift feels earned rather than simply revealed.

His history with Cole deepens that connection further, eventually uncovering a romance deliberately kept outside the frame and adding emotional complexity to what first resembles a conventional love triangle. Muller lets their bond genuinely register without overstating it, lending greater weight to Rust’s willingness to put himself in danger and, ultimately, his return to save Cole. By the finale, their relationship feels as important to who Rust is as the instincts and reserve that first distinguish him within the group.

Just over a year later, Muller is moving into markedly different territory with Crew Girl, Netflix’s eight-episode coming-of-age sports drama premiering September 10. The YA series centers on gifted rower Teagan Tao, whose arrival at Easton Prep leads her to become coxswain of its dysfunctional boys’ varsity crew, pulling her into the school’s entrenched rivalries and charged social world.

Here, Muller enters the fray as Damon Quaid, the team’s resident troublemaker, whose reputation points toward a more disruptive energy than audiences encountered in Rust. Where much of Rust’s appeal developed through control and gradual discovery, Damon gives Muller room to channel that screen presence into something more confrontational, leaning into the friction of someone built to unsettle an already volatile team dynamic. That contrast feels like a promising shift after a performance that showed how much he can communicate beneath the surface, making Crew Girl an intriguing next step for a performer already demonstrating a sharp instinct for what makes a role resonate.

Stardust: What genre do you find yourself naturally gravitating toward as a viewer, and what does it give you that other kinds of storytelling cannot?

Vincent Muller: I love all genres, but I guess I’ve naturally gravitated towards dramas and specifically historical dramas, both in movies and novels. I guess most stories can be considered historical, but I think one of the best ways to develop an understanding of the world today is to look at the past. It also helps give perspective on how many thousands of generations of people have loved and suffered just like people do today, and that our problems aren’t all that unique or unfixable.

Stardust: What is your favorite comfort movie or show, and what keeps bringing you back to it?

Vincent Muller: I try to constantly watch new things; I have a few favorite movies I go back to, but most of them are pretty dark, so it’s hard for me to call them comfort movies. I guess The Princess Bride was one of the first movies I ever watched, and I probably watched it 100 times when I was younger, when we still had the DVD, so I’m sure if I watched it again now, it would bring me a lot of comfort.

Stardust: What is one quality you admire in other people and try to cultivate in yourself?

Vincent Muller: I admire people who are authentically themselves. I guess that’s a pretty standard answer, but I find the people I admire the most don’t necessarily have to be the funniest or smartest people; they are just truly themselves whether you like it or not. I suppose people like that run the risk of not everyone liking them, but I guess it’s worth it.

Stardust: What is something you felt shy or self-conscious about growing up that you have since learned to recognize as a strength?

Vincent Muller: I used to hate having curly hair. Now it seems like all the rage, so that’s pretty dope.

Stardust: What are some things that help you feel most grounded or like yourself?

Vincent Muller: Going out in the woods is a huge one for me; also reading. And maybe seeing my friends and family. I find if I’m feeling extra crappy, it’s usually because I haven’t been doing enough of one of those three things.

Stardust: What kind of personality do you tend to gravitate toward?

Vincent Muller: People who don’t take themselves too seriously. Especially in an industry as silly as acting. I think it’s vital to take your work and the things you care about very seriously, but if you can’t laugh at yourself, it’s just kind of lame.

Stardust: Clown in a Cornfield has received a lot of love from horror fans, with Rust emerging as a fan favorite. What about the response to the film—and to Rust specifically—has meant the most to you?

Vincent Muller: I was really hoping to do justice to Rust from the books. I guess I had a fear that the fans of the character from the books wouldn’t appreciate my version of him. I’m relieved that the response seemed to be really positive. I was a huge fan of Rust after reading the books, so I tried my best to embody his essence and bring it to the movie.

Stardust: Rust reveals himself gradually, with his humor, loyalty, vulnerability, and resourcefulness emerging over time. Looking back, which aspect of him did you connect with first, and which only became clear through playing him?

Vincent Muller: When I read the book and the script, I found Rust to be a character with a very solid sense of right and wrong and who lives very honestly. Focusing on that really helped me find his, for lack of a better word, “awkwardness”, which I think was vital to him coming across as a red herring in the movie. I find that a lot of people who come off as “awkward” in real life are often those who live in complete honesty. If anything, I only really saw him as a red herring once we started shooting through the choices I made in collaboration with Eli Craig and the other actors.

Stardust: What part of Rust came most directly from your own instincts as a performer, rather than from what was already established on the page?

Vincent Muller: His voice and physicality mostly came to me while shooting. I also worked quite a bit before shooting with my amazing acting coach, Sophia Hirt. I made the choice of his deeper voice that seemed to work well with his “redneck” background and his curt manner of speaking. They were all choices that just seemed to work well instinctively while working through the dialogue and character.

Stardust: The ending leaves Rust and Cole with plenty to explore. What part of Rust—or of their relationship—are you most excited to examine next?

Vincent Muller: I mean, the most exciting part will be just having the privilege of returning to a character that I’ve previously worked on. It would be incredibly fulfilling to explore how he will have changed since the first film in his physicality, confidence, and especially in his relationship with other characters, especially Cole’s.

Stardust: In Crew Girl, you play Damon Quaid, who is introduced as the team’s resident troublemaker. What does that label get right about him, and what does it overlook?

Vincent Muller: Quaid is definitely a troublemaker, but he also has a strong sense of right and wrong. Most of his “troublemaking” comes as retribution for some “wrong” that has been done to himself or someone else. His strategies may not be seen as conventional or even smart, but I tried to find the elements of him that I really connected with, and I believed audiences would connect with as well. Quaid is someone willing to fight dirty against that which he finds unjust. It’s a YA show, so the stakes are obviously more lighthearted, but I still think the world could use more people willing to punch back against injustice rather than just complain about it.

Stardust: It’s been said that the cast completed intensive rowing preparation and sometimes spent entire filming days on the water. What challenged you most during that process, and did learning to move in rhythm with the other actors change the group’s chemistry at all?

Vincent Muller: You can’t help but become connected with the rowers in your crew. I think we already had a strong chemistry upon meeting each other, but rowing definitely helped solidify that. I also just gained a huge amount of respect for rowers. It’s a bloody hard sport.

Stardust: What is one memory from filming Crew Girl that captures what the experience was like for you?

Vincent Muller: It’s hard to pick one, but on the set, I have fond memories of shooting the group scenes in [episode six]. By that time, we’d already shot most of the show together, and we had some great scenes, so we were able to improv some fun comedic beats and capitalize on the chemistry we had developed together over the shoot. It was definitely hard to get some of those scenes done, though; we kept making each other laugh. Off the set, we hung out nearly every day, getting coffee, hitting restaurants, exploring Victoria; it feels wrong of me to call shooting this show a job. It was just so much fun.