Everybody plays everybody in It’s What’s Inside. In writer-director Greg Jardin’s new comedy/mystery/thriller/science-fiction spectacular, nothing — and no one — is as it seems. What starts as an innocent pre-wedding get-together quickly becomes something a little … freaky. 

“A bunch of friends get together in a house,” Jardin tells Tudum. “One of them brings a body-swapping machine. He suggests they play a game with it where they can all simultaneously swap bodies. And then the night devolves into existential chaos.”

That’s the short story. For the longer version, you’ll have to watch It’s What’s Inside on Netflix. Below, you can learn all about the actors inhabiting the bodies of this body-hopping good time. 

Brittany O’Grady

as Shelby

About the Character

Shelby, played by Brittany O’Grady, is an observant, anxious presence at the It’s What’s Inside party. She’s dating Cyrus but feels insecure and occasionally unwanted in their relationship. 

 

“Shelby is very physically wound up and anxious,” O’Grady told Netflix. “I think she suffers from social anxiety and has a lot of internal dialogue. This is a character that’s very impacted by her everyday relationship with someone else and how it’s impacted the way she views herself.”

 

Fans of The White Lotus will remember actor and singer O’Grady as Sydney Sweeney’s college pal in the HBO show’s first season.

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The White Lotus, Star, Sometimes I Think About Dying, Black Christmas, Little Voice

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Alycia Debnam-Carey

as Nikki

About the Character

Nikki, played by Alycia Debnam-Carey, is a self-interested yet savvy social media influencer who seemingly has it all. 

 

“Nikki’s someone we decided was very savvy and smart and a very well-operating influence,” Debnam-Carey told Netflix. “She knows what she’s doing. She’s on the cusp of kind of breaking through in the entrepreneurial space, but she still has [these] very self-interest and narcissistic motives behind a lot of the things that she’s doing at the same time.”

 

Debnam-Carey starred in the first seven seasons of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead, as survivor Alicia Clark.

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Fear the Walking Dead, The 100, Into the Storm, Friend Request, The Devil’s Hand

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Devon Terrell

as Reuben

About the Character

Reuben, played by Devon Terrell, is the blushing groom-to-be. He’s brought his friends together at his late mother’s house for one last party as a bachelor. Despite his seemingly idyllic life, he isn’t quite satisfied … could he be getting cold feet about his marriage? 

 

“My backstory was that he’s a guy in finance,” Terrell told Netflix about his approach to Reuben as a character. “He’s very rigid, he has a very specific way to move up the ladder of life, but his mom never wanted that for him. So we start seeing his personality showing [more] through the story.”

 

Terrell was one of the first actors to play President Barack Obama in a feature film: 2016’s Barry.

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The Professor, Ophelia, Cursed, Rap Sh!t, Totally Completely Fine

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Gavin Leatherwood

as Dennis

About the Character

Dennis, played by Gavin Leatherwood, is a trust-fund baby with a larger-than-life personality who has some history with Nikki. 

 

“Dennis is so different from who I am, which has been really fun to step into,” Leatherwood told Netflix. “When I first read the script, I was like, ‘Man, this is such a stretch from what I’ve normally done.’ Greg was so receptive and collaborative to who this guy can be, and I was like, ‘I feel like he’s got a lot of tattoos, and he’s been covering up who he is a bit and hiding behind this facade, sort of as a defense mechanism.’ ”

 

Leatherwood previously starred as teen witch Sabrina’s warlock love interest Nick Scratch in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

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The Sex Lives of College Girls, Bad Therapy, When Today Ends, Julius Caesar Live!

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Reina Hardesty

as Brooke

About the Character

Brooke, played by Reina Hardesty, is colorful and eclectic, artistic and unfiltered, and has never met a substance she doesn’t like.

 

“I think there was this idea that she was this larger-than-life, really eclectic, colorful person,” Hardesty told Netflix about creating Brooke. “But it was about finding the reasons why she was like that that made it easier. ‘OK, how do we breathe life into this person and make them a real person and not just a caricature?’ ”

 

Hardesty appeared in Brockmire alongside Hank Azaria and in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow as villain the Weather Witch.

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StartUp, Brockmire, The Flash, What Comes Around, The Secret Art of Human Flight

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Nina Bloomgarden

as Maya

About the Character

Maya, played by Nina Bloomgarden, is a free-spirited, Bohemian old flame of Reuben’s with a heavy penchant for spirituality. 

 

“I tried to think of friends who remind me of Maya, and there’s a lot of Mayas out there,” Bloomgarden told Netflix. “Maya is on a spiritual journey with herself, and she comes into this reunion trying to right some of her wrongs on her path with Buddhism.”

 

Bloomgarden played missing tourist Violet Thompson in Peacock’s The Resort.

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The Resort, Jane, The Idea of You, Sugar Baby, Good Girl Jane

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James Morosini

as Cyrus

About the Character

Shelby’s insensitive boyfriend, Cyrus, played by James Morosini, hasn’t been putting much effort into his relationship. 

 

“They haven’t talked about a lot of their issues,” Morosini told Netflix about the tension between Cyrus and Shelby. “And so many of their issues are just right at the surface. For Cyrus, his problem is he can’t commit to Shelby because he can’t really commit to himself. I think he’s very unsure of who he is, very focused on external validation.”

 

Morosini previously wrote, directed, and starred in 2022’s I Love My Dad, a comedy based on his own life.

Previously In

I Love My Dad, The Sex Lives of College Girls, Loosely Exactly Nicole, American Horror Story

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David Thompson

as Forbes

About the Character

Forbes, played by David Thompson, has been on the outside of this friend group since college after leaving the group on bad terms. He surprises everyone by showing up to the house with a mysterious suitcase that allows people to swap bodies. 

 

“Forbes is fun, kind of a goofball, a nerdy kind of guy, and he is reconnecting with all of his old friends from college,” Thompson told Netflix. “Forbes used to have these fun little soirées, and I think he is looking forward to an evening of catching up with old friends and reminiscing about old memories and maybe making some new ones too.”

 

Thompson memorably played the first killer in the opening sequence of Fear Street Part 1: 1994.

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Who swaps into whom in It’s What’s Inside?

Now that you’ve met the cast of It’s What’s Inside in their original bodies, let’s get things mixed up. The suitcase Forbes brings along to the party contains a mysterious device that allows the group to swap bodies with one another, opening the door for all kinds of shenanigans. The swap can only be triggered manually by the device’s operator, and there’s no time limit. After a brief test round, the group agrees to play a Mafia-style party game, where the different players have to guess who’s in whose body. Of course, things don’t go as planned — soon, someone is dead and the game is out of control.

The game is divided into a few rounds; follow along as we guide you through the tangled web of It’s What’s Inside. 

round 1

Shelby: Shelby swaps into Brooke’s body. Since Brooke is high, Shelby gets high. 

Cyrus: Cyrus swaps into Reuben’s body, but the group mislabels him as Forbes. He takes advantage of the confusion by making a move on Nikki, whom he’s had a longtime crush on.

Maya: Maya swaps into Nikki’s body, and as Nikki briefly reignites things with the corporeal form of her old flame Reuben (who’s actually Cyrus).

Nikki: Nikki swaps into Maya’s body.

Brooke: Brooke swaps into Shelby’s body. 

Dennis: Dennis swaps into Forbes’ body and tries to fit the word perfunctory into a sentence. Between rounds, he also tries to apologize to Forbes for his college fling with Forbes’ troubled sister Beatrice (Madison Davenport), the inciting incident that nearly destroyed their friend group.

Reuben: Reuben swaps into Cyrus’ body; he gives himself away by stopping Cyrus-in-Reuben from disrobing in front of everyone. 

Forbes: Forbes swaps into Dennis’ body, but pretends to be Cyrus instead. 

round 2

Shelby: Shelby swaps into Nikki, which initially seems like a dream come true. She knows about Cyrus’ crush on Nikki and thinks this is the perfect opportunity for some role-playing.

Cyrus: Cyrus swaps into Forbes’ body, but his prearranged signal for Shelby is met with silence at all turns.

Maya: Maya swaps into Shelby’s body. She thinks it’s way more fun not knowing who everyone is.

Nikki: Nikki swaps into Brooke’s body and can’t keep her eyes off the mirror.

Brooke: Brooke swaps into Maya’s body — which will soon become a problem.

Dennis: Dennis swaps into Cyrus’ body. As Nikki-in-Brooke says, he’s obviously Dennis because he’s being an asshole.

Reuben: Reuben swaps into Dennis’ body and, on the eve of his wedding, seizes the opportunity to have one last fling with his ex Maya — or at least, her body. But when they accidentally fall off the roof mid-coitus, all bets are off.

Forbes: Forbes swaps into Reuben’s body and muses, to no one in particular, “Do you think you’re a good person?”

After Reuben-in-Dennis and Brooke-in-Maya fall to their deaths, the night flies fully off the rails. After a heated argument with Cyrus-in-Forbes, Dennis-in-Cyrus calls the police and confesses (in Cyrus’ voice) to killing Dennis and Maya. With Cyrus framed for their deaths, the six remaining players are desperate to work out who will wind up in whose bodies when they swap back — especially because Dennis-in-Cyrus and Maya-in-Shelby don’t have living bodies to go back to. Reuben and Brooke’s consciousnesses functionally no longer exist, and Dennis and Maya are nomads in search of a body.

Coda

Shelby: Shelby swaps back into her own body, after first baiting Cyrus into agreeing to a plot where they’ll hijack Reuben and Nikki’s bodies and go on living in them. Fully aware that Cyrus would rather be with Nikki, she finally realizes she can’t waste her life trying to please someone who would prefer her in someone else’s skin. 

Cyrus: Cyrus is swapped back into his own body as well and is clapped in irons for the murders of Dennis and Maya. Shelby refuses to help her boyfriend; from her perspective, he got what he deserved.

Maya: Maya, who doesn’t have her own body to go back to anymore, swaps into Brooke’s body. She thinks she got reincarnated.

Nikki: Nikki swaps into Reuben’s body. She’s not happy.

Brooke: RIP

Dennis: Dennis, whose body also died in Round 2, thinks he’ll be swapping into Reuben’s body, but in the chaos he’s swapped into Forbes instead — and attacked by a surprising wedding guest.

Reuben: RIP

Forbes: Forbes swaps into Nikki’s body — why would he do that? At the aborted wedding party, Dennis (in Forbes’ body) learns the messy truth. Beatrice, Forbes’ mentally ill sister, arrives and reveals that she is actually Forbes. After Forbes visited Beatrice at her mental institution and swapped bodies with her in a half-baked therapeutic activity, Beatrice stole Forbes’ body and headed to the party to sow chaos. Now, having transferred Dennis’ trust fund into her own bank account, she’s hijacked Nikki’s body and is on the run with the machine, free to swap into whoever’s body she chooses. All’s well that ends well?

It’s What’s Inside is now streaming on Netflix.