Donnabella Mortel Appears in Feature Film Freshwater with Zoë Bell and Joe Lando
A creature-feature thriller set on the lakes of summer — and a standout supporting turn from Donnabella as Jamie Castell.
Donnabella Mortel returns to screens everywhere alongside Zoë Bell and Joe Lando in the horror-suspense feature Freshwater, a creature thriller from writer-director Brandy Berry.
The remote island of Lake Charles is the kind of place you go to disappear for a weekend — sun, dock chairs, summer rentals, the hush of open water at dusk. In Freshwater, that quiet is the setup. As the locals welcome a new influx of visitors for the season, a giant man-eating alligator begins carving its way through the community, and a long weekend at the lake house turns into a fight for survival.
Donnabella appears as Jamie Castell, one of the central twenty-somethings whose holiday escape gets pulled out from under them piece by piece. It is the kind of role that asks an actor to play warmth and panic in the same breath — to be believable as the friend you’d actually go to the lake with, and then to carry the audience through the genre turn when the water stops being friendly.
The Cast
Freshwater assembles a deep genre bench. The ensemble is led by stunt-icon-turned-leading-lady Zoë Bell (Death Proof, Kill Bill, Raze) as Brenda Gray, with Joe Lando (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) as Sheriff Jones anchoring the local side of the story.
The lake-house ensemble surrounding Donnabella includes John Bobek as Matt Hanton, Tom O’Connell as Sam Colton, Alison Haislip as Claudia Mosley, and Amy Paffrath as Kim Whitley — a tightly cast group of friends whose chemistry has to land in the first act for the back half of the picture to hit.
Film At A Glance
| Title | Freshwater |
| Writer / Director | Brandy Berry |
| Genre | Thriller · Creature Feature |
| Donnabella’s Role | Jamie Castell |
| Co-Starring | Zoë Bell, Joe Lando, John Bobek |
| Setting | Lake Charles (remote island) |
Why This Role Mattered
Creature features live or die on whether you actually care about the people in the water. The shark, the gator, the thing in the trees — none of it works if the cast doesn’t sell you on who they are before the danger lands. That’s the assignment a role like Jamie Castell hands an actor: build a person fast, make her feel lived-in, then earn every reaction the rest of the film asks for.
It’s also a film that put Donnabella on screen with a generation of genre talent. Sharing scenes with Zoë Bell — one of the most respected physical performers working in action film — and with veteran leads like Joe Lando, is the kind of room that sharpens a craft. Freshwater sits alongside Donnabella’s other film and television credits as a piece of work she’s proud to have on the reel.
Watch The Scene
An exclusive scene from Freshwater featuring Donnabella as Jamie Castell is available on her official channel. The clip is a window into the lake-house dynamic — the kind of small, character-driven beat that gives the film’s bigger sequences something to break.
About Donnabella Mortel
Donnabella Mortel is an Audie Award–winning audiobook narrator and an actress whose film and television credits include Freshwater, Savages, House, NCIS, How to Get Away with Murder, and Atypical. She works across drama, comedy, and genre — and brings the same instinct for character into the booth, where she has voiced more than 100 audiobooks across romance, literary fiction, thriller, and memoir.
