On September 26, Shudder will premiere the new anthology series Creepshow. At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, we got a chance to talk about the series with some of the creators and cast, including showrunner Greg Nicotero, and stars Giancarlo Esposito, Tricia Helfer & DJ Qualls. Star Adrienne Barbeau was feeling under the weather, so they tried to have her dial in, putting the cell phone in the middle of the table, but it wasn’t easy to hear her. This was the only press room I covered that didn’t allow video. In some ways, this led to a little more relaxing and engaging conversation. Below you can read or listen to their responses. The series sounds great and I can’t wait to check it out.
Giancarlo Esposito (“Gray Matter”)
Can you tell us about your character?
Giancarlo Esposito: I play a doctor in the town. And … this show is set in sort of this nebulous town, and you meet a couple of characters in the beginning. Of course, we’re meeting them in a circumstance that is traumatic. So I play a doctor who has been in this town forever, who’s retired, who’s a buddy of the sheriff, who then has to go out on, basically, a house call, and then everything gets disturbed, because nothing is what it seems in this particular show. So … a fun role to do in a very, very interesting construct that was put together by Greg Nicotero, and of course, Stephen King.
What draws fans to horror?
Giancarlo Esposito: Well, Greg called me to do this, I was like, I’ve never done this genre. I know what draws me to horror. So I think it might be the same for many fans. There’s an energy about fear and fright that changes your consciousness. So whether you’re in a good or a bad mood, you become immediately present. Because it puts you in sort of a flight or fight mode, if you weren’t in a movie. So you realize you’re going to see something but then that the excitement of something spontaneous happening that you don’t expect, is why people, I think, are really drawn to horror.
Were you a fan of the original Creepshow movie?
Giancarlo Esposito: I love George Romero. I was a fan of the original movie. I was really excited to hear that we had a cast member who was in the original film, in an Adrienne Barbeau. And even more excited that Stephen King wrote the novella for ours. And so then I had to go back and do my research and find out what was the connection between Stephen King and George Romero—they were tight from a long time ago and worked together seamlessly and had always wanted to work together. So now it really puts in my consciousness the understanding of the roots of Stephen King. He is such a really prolific and wonderful writer, I’ve worked with him in a film called Maximum Overdrive years ago, the only film he ever directed, he acquitted himself beautifully. I had a small part in it, and I’ll never forget. I was at the pinball machine, and he wanted me to shake so hard, you know? And I just was like, How can I do this to make this guy happy?
It’s interesting when you blend creative arts with really incredible writing. Normally, novelists don’t make great screenplay writers… And Stephen King has broken that mold. But it’s his intellect that has always intrigued me. He is so very smart about so many things, not only his own craft, but he has an opinion about the world and politics. And so I really respect him as a human being. And so I was just so excited when Greg called me and said, Let’s go do this. And I said Yes immediately because I wanted to explore that. I had no idea what I was getting into. Because the feeling on a set, I would imagine, on The Walking Dead is one thing, and I know Greg has directed so many of those so eloquently and brilliantly. But what I do in the show I’m on, Better Call Saul, and on another show I’m working on in New York called Godfather of Harlem, we do it in a different way. So I was infused when I realized, okay, we have to as actors fill in some blanks, really connect to what we’ve been given as to what our character is, because an anthology show, so you’re given—it’s written well—but there’s room to play. And I realized when we were shooting it, it felt the same way as it was sort of put together, it leaves you room. So then I went, Oh, wait a minute, dude, you, let’s go back to your sense of what guerrilla filmmaking is, you know, you’re going to grab this shot, grab this shot. So every moment you have to be present, every moment, you have to be in a certain reality, to make it realistic, I had so much fun. I had so much fun, partly the reason was Tobin Bell, you know, Tobin came down, and when you get another really strong and really good actor, who’s not just there to do their five day guest spot stint, and pick up, you know, two quarters, because this is not a really big budget show. You gotta be there for other reasons—and that’s either you love the genre, you love what you do. So Tobin and I realized immediately, what was missing was our relationship, and that we had to create that. So I was joking with my daughters today that Tobin and I were like face-to-face every single day, talking about scenes, rewriting stuff that we knew we weren’t going to say. We rewrote it just because we wanted to talk that particular dialogue out to inform what we had to do without words. And I basically said to the my girls, and then we held hands for, you know, we will walk up and down the street holding hands, because these guys were buddies—the sheriff and the doc are buddies, they finish each other’s sentences, they rib each other, they joke with each other. And I didn’t know Tobin, and so in 24 hours, we got to know each other really, really well. Because we wanted to create these characters and bring it to life in a real way.
Did use any classic horror as influences when preparing for this role?
Giancarlo: I went off the cuff and I winged it, I had to start thinking about the early George Romero film. I had to start thinking about the first Night of the Living Dead. I had to start thinking about… because there’s variables here. So I’m telling you all about my relationship with Tobin Bell, but then I had to have a relationship with the monster. Like, that’s a whole other thing. This thing, if I can say it, doing this, shooting, this scared the shit out… because it was all good until I saw the monster. And then I was like, Ohhh, Ohhh, literally my stomach to the flip flop. This was so frickin gross. And I’m like, and I play bad-ass characters, you know, so for me to get a little rattled, all that you see on the screen, when you see it, it is real. Nicotero creates this world, and so if you’re an insecure actor walking into that situation, you know—and all of us are a little insecure—partly in my brain is Oh, this is all about the monster, fuck the monster. This is all about the monster, it’s not about my work, not about my acting. And I realized, wait, the monster represents the whole reason we’re here. This is the unexpected that happens. And so we’re all connected. And the more reaction I have to this incredibly gross thing I’m looking at, who’s about to eat me, maybe, the more it’s going to sell for the audience. So we had a really beautiful setup. And it reminded me that sometimes when things are so pat, and they go a certain way, then it all looks very pat and cookie cutter. On this, Greg is like, come over here, we’re going to shoot this, come on, we’re going to shoot this now, we’re going to do, [dadadadada], any questions, we asked questions, we talked about it. It’s the different urgency, it’s informed by a different feeling. So I didn’t go back and look at many older movies and older creepy kind of shows, because I felt like, partly for me, as an actor, as I don’t want to look at anything that’s gonna influence my performance. … I want to try to find that emotion on my own and give it and have it be different than anything I’ve ever done it before. Again, I mentioned and reiterate, I’ve never done a show like this. So it’s really kind of fun, puts you in a vulnerable position, especially when you’re looking at huge, nasty, scary thing that I can’t even tell you what it really is.
Adrienne Barbeau (“Gray Matter”)
What cemented the love of terror in you?
Adrienne Barbeau: There is no love of terror in me. I mean, there is a love affair in me as an actor. I love doing them, but I don’t watch ’em, I don’t like ’em. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked to be a judge at some horror film festival that I’ve backed out on. No thank you, I don’t like being scared. I don’t mind action/adventure, espionage… I don’t even mind blood if there’s a reason for it, but I don’t like to be scared. It’s sad, when they offered me Creepshow, I was gonna turn it down. I thought it was terrible—gross and gory, and I didn’t understand it at all. And it wasn’t until I talked to Tom … [who] explained that it was going to be a comic-book style build, and that I better do it. And at the time, I was married to John Carpenter, and he said “Are you kidding me? You’re going to turn down an offer to bring you to work with George? You’ve got to be crazy.” I don’t watch them … but I’m glad I did it.
How do you reconcile being a Scream Queen with not liking horror?
Adrienne Barbeau: I just happen to end up in some wonderful horror films. … It’s all acting. One of the reasons I like to do these kinds of things is because it gives me opportunity to, you know, to act. I mean to really act. So, I don’t know, I know that I’ve always has a fast rate for a high jump reaction. Somebody walks into a room and I don’t know they’re there, and they say Hi, I mean, I’m outta my chair. So I think that might have made it easier for me. You find the reality of it. The interesting thing about finding the reality with Billie in Creepshow was that you have to get an understanding of why she is the way she is. … once I decided what that was, then everything else fell into place. In the anthology, the character I play is pretty straight forward.
Can you talk about your character?
Adrienne Barbeau: Yes, the other film is based on a Stephen King story from his collection of short stories called Night Shift. My character actually was created for this story, she isn’t specifically in Stephen’s original short story. Sort of a compilation of one or two other characters. She’s just a lady in a very small town, runs a grocery store. The town is practically abandoned. A boy comes in asking for help for his father, and Tobin Bell, he’s called Vito, goes to check on him, because something is wrong. And that’s all I can tell you from my point of view.
Greg Nicotero (Producer, Director, Special Effects Makeup Artist)
How do you balance pleasing both newer horror fans and fans of the classic film?
Greg Nicotero: Well, it’s easy because the stories are great. I mean, the original picture was was Steve and George’s love letter to EC Comics. So they were just paying tribute to something that they love, something that inspired them. And, of course, Creepshow was something that inspired me. So, I feel like this is—it’s not a reboot, it’s not a rebranding—I always thought Creepshow was way ahead of its time, in terms of the way that George told those stories. So, it will satisfy fans of the original because it’s going to feel like, Oh, well, I just read that issue, now I’m going to read another issue. And I think with with newer audiences, the idea that this anthology, it’s unlike anything else, because we can tell whatever stories we want. Some of them are kind of funny, and some are weird, and some are scary. There’s a story that a guy named Chris Buehlman wrote called “Man in the Suitcase”, and it’s about the stoner dude, that brings a suitcase home from the airport, he opens it and there’s a guy in it. And he’s stuck and he’s like, “Help me out”. And he’s like, “Whoa, what the fuck, man?!”… and when he tries to get him out, like gold coins shoot out of his mouth. And he’s like, “I’m gonna be rich”, like “I can just torture this guy in this suitcase and gold coins shoot out of his mouth”. And it’s the weirdest story. But it’s so funny and it’s so odd, and that’s kind of what was fun about EC Comics stuff. And so I really wanted to embrace the idea that these stories can be outrageous and scary and weird all at the same time. So I really, and rather knowing what a giant nerd I am, like, the Easter eggs and little things that I put in the show for—I do it on Walking Dead all the time and nobody knows it until I talk about it. In the first episode of Walking Dead, there’s like a giant Jaws reference, which nobody on set knew… I knew, my set deck guys know—it’s just being able to give it that kind of fun—this is why I love the genre. And this is why it’s so much fun. So I think people are going to be really pleasantly surprised… the fans of the original.
How do you choose the stories?
Greg Nicotero: That’s a great question. Because, I started reading a lot of short horror fiction, and when you’re producing three TV shows, and you’re directing, … I don’t have a lot of time to read books. I love reading, but I just don’t have time. So I need the appetizer version. Dave Schow wrote a story called “The Finger” that John Carpenter published in one of his comic books, and I loved it. And now I know a lot of great writers and a lot of them are … friends. So the idea that we would start collecting material … Josh Malerman sent like five short stories, and they were all great. Okay, which ones do we make? Because they’re also fucking good. But what was interesting about it was … there was one that we really, really liked and we might make it if we do a season two, but you have to balance that … it … feels a little Twilight Zone-y versus you know, I wanted them to really feel like straight horror, at least in terms of the tone. But that was the fun part, working on Walking Dead and going to bed with stacks of stories to read and scripts to read.
Can you talk about how you went about designing the creatures like the one in Giancarlo’s episode?
Greg Nicotero: I was super grateful to everybody that agreed to come on board. … So as soon as Creepshow was greenlit, I reached out to Steve King and said, Listen, it’s not Creepshow without you, and without a story from you. So he said, “Great”. And so he gave me two stories, but the one that we ended up shooting was Gray Matter. And that was a situation where I kinda picked up my phone and called my friends, “Giancarlo, Hey, you want to come spend three and a half of the longest days of your life shooting with me?”, and he was in, and Tobin was in, and Adrienne was in, … and Stephen King. But for that particular episode, “Gray Matter”, the Stephen King story’s about this guy who turns into this—it’s really a story about alcoholism and codependence in the Stephen King world where his son doesn’t know what to do, because his dad is drinking himself. But in our world, he turns into a creature as opposed to getting help. And yeah, we had we designed a couple of these really crazy creature suits and covered it in slime. And it’s got a little Jordy Verrill vibe to it, in terms of the way the set was built, and that was done intentionally, but we had a creature every episode, we really embraced the practical nature of it, because that’s what … a comic book series would require, practical effects. So my shop was running full, full steam ahead, building all the creatures and stuff for the show.
Can you talk about how horror is used as an analogous was to tell the wider stories?
Greg Nicotero: The episode that Tricia is in is very interesting, because it talks about … women in the workplace and how they treat each other. … And there’s a really fascinating dynamic there. So some of the stories do talk about that. And there’s one called “The House of the Head” that Josh Malerman wrote, that’s about this sort of isolated little girl, played by Cailey Fleming from Walking Dead, and how she sort of projects her loneliness into this dollhouse with these dolls. So there’s a lot there’s a lot of that and I mean, George always was very aware of the social relevance of the stories that he was telling. So there’s there’s definitely a lot of that but that’s what great writing is. Great writing knows how to weave a great tale and put some relevance in there without being preachy.
Are there any other classic franchises you’d like to get your hands on?
Greg Nicotero: I always love Prince of Darkness, [the] John Carpenter movie. And I’ve been talking to people about remaking that … it has that sort of Italian horror movie feels like Seven Doors of Death… the priest committed suicide and now the doors are open. I love that shit. … I always loved that sort of thin veil between what we believe is this reality and what isn’t. I’ve always had a lot of fun with that. So we’ve been talking about that for a little bit. But for Creepshow, the crazy thing is, that was the first movie set I ever visited. When I was 16 years old, my uncle was an actor in Pittsburgh, and he was in The Crazies. So I happen to run into George Romero—we were on a family vacation—and I went, “Hey, you know, my uncle Sam was in The Crazies“, and was like, “Oh, Hi”. And I was 15 at the time. And they were starting to shoot Creepshow and he invited me to come visit. And it was a half hour from my house. So I literally drove my car, and I pull up in the parking lot, and there’s a gymnasium and an old school, an abandoned school. And I was like, this doesn’t look like a movie. I imagined what a movie would look like, but I walked into the gymnasium and there was all these flats, you know, like movie flats, and wood struts, guys banging and hammers and stuff. And I remember, I didn’t know where to go, … I was just a kid, and I turned a corner and I walked in, and I was on the University set from “The Crate” with the steps where the creature was under. And I’ll never forget the feeling of going from one world to another. I walked onto the set, and I turned around, and I was transported. And I was like, Holy fuck, you can get a job and do that. Like, you can build sets, and you can. And it was such a fascinating experience that I visited a lot. And George and his wife at the time, were like, “Hey, do you want a job?” And I’m like, “But I’m only a kid, I don’t know”. So I turned down a job on Creepshow as a production assistant because, how the fuck did I know. My dad was also like, “Well, you’re the smart one in the family, you’re going to be the doctor”. And I’m like “Okay”. And then Day of the Dead comes up and George is like, “Hey, do you want a job?” And I’m like, “Yes”. And that’s how it happened because we developed that friendship on the set of Creepshow because I would go visit. And the idea that—Tom Savini talks about it a lot—that he found Hollywood in his backyard, he didn’t have to move to Los Angeles to become part of this filmmaking community because George had this community around him. And I feel like I’m paying it forward, because I hired Tom Savini, and I hired John Harrison, who wrote the music—John Harrison was the First AD on Creepshow, and I hired him to write and direct. And I hired Rick Catizone who did the animation, and I feel just like George who had this group of people that he used on all of his movies—I feel like now that’s my opportunity. So in terms of it being as authentic as it can be. I feel like I have an obligation to George, and his daughter Tina came and visited the set and she was like “Your dad would be so proud of you right now”. … There was a lot of times when I felt I felt him and his presence and like I turn around, “Look and there’s Tom Savini and John Harrison, you guys were there when they did this for real and now we’re here again”, so that makes me super proud. Really proud.
DJ Qualls (“The Finger”)
Can you talk about your role?
DJ Qualls: I am the lead of The Finger. I am the only person, actually, in The Finger. Well, no, there’s a man at my door that has one line. That was part of what drew me to this project. Because it’s basically 39 pages of solo dialogue delivered mostly to camera. And they offered it to me three days before it shot. And I was supposed to be flying and fitting. So I had very little time [to] prep. … My initial thing was turning it down. And then I was like, Why? It’s really well written. … I got the schedule sent to me and sat down with it. And I was like, if I can memorize 12 pages before I go to bed tonight, I’ll take it. And I did. And it was easy to memorize. It’s really well written. It was so fun, and it was a great challenge, and Greg is—I don’t know if I can even say this—but he’s [a] special effects master. It was pretty fucking cool.
How do you memorize all that dialogue?
DJ Qualls: Well, usually when you when you get a lot of dialogue to memorize, there’s somebody else doing it with you, you have both those cues… “How are you?” “I’m fine.” … like it makes sort of sense. And they always lie, when there’s something hard to memorize, like, you know, “we’re going to work with you, it’s going to be fine”. You get there and you don’t know your lines and you’re an asshole, like you’re not professional. And they’re like, “God, this guy was he drinking?”, that kind of stuff. So I knew if I didn’t know it, it was gonna be hard. But also, Hollywood tends to be kind of content in a way that when things get canceled, people have glee about it, you know what I mean? People sort of delight other people’s failures. But it’s my biggest nightmare to show up on your set and let you down, because people don’t realize that it took two years to get this show greenlit. And this is somebody’s dream, and this is a director who’s away from his family, and like 100 crew people. So I feel a lot of pressure when I’m working. There’s also people—everybody wants to feel proud of what they do, and what I do is a representation of what they’re doing, and so … I want to be good. And so I try not to take things that I feel I can’t rise to. And I’ve only taken one job, and I won’t mention it—it was on Big Bang Theory—that shouldn’t have taken. That’s not me—that presentational style of acting is so not me. And I took it, regretted it. I cried. I cried the night … I remember driving to Warner Brothers praying to God—I don’t do that—that there would be a fire at Warner Brothers, and then there was! Isn’t that crazy?! But it wasn’t big enough to delay taping.
You’re no stranger to superfans…
DJ Qualls: Acknowledging that you’re recognizable … famous actors will tell me that I’m more recognizable than them. Because nobody’s walking around with this nose-to-ear ratio … this is specific to my face. It doesn’t mean that I think that I’m an awesome guy. I have a recognizable face, and people forget that, and I forget it. Like, we took the wrong route today, and I walked past the Hard Rock to get here and I was delayed by 20 minutes. You forget that kind of stuff. It’s pretty great because they’re responding to you, but you have to check yourself, because it has nothing to do with me. Somebody else wrote it, somebody else directed it, I showed up to do my best, but it’s really a production medium in this kind of entertainment. And I recognize that, and sometimes … when things are hard at work, I’m like, I bought my house from fucking pretending, like children do that. Relax. You know, keep your ego in check, and that will hold you in good stead. I do think it’s an art. I think that it’s hard. I think that we actors are able to do certain things that normal people can’t do as easily. I can cry on a dime. Like, that sort of emotional control, I have it in spades. I think it makes you crazy, but if I can do that, I should be paid for it. And thank God I found a job to do it. … My buddy just started dating an actress and I’m like, you know me, all my friends, What are you doing? Like this will [not] end well for you, I promise. … It’s not that I don’t like actors, I think you dislike the things in people that you don’t like about yourself. You know what I mean? Like that sort of … insecure bullshit we’re all dragging around with us. But I remember my sister, when she was 15, she told me she wanted to be an actor, and I started crying at Thanksgiving.
Are there any characters you’d like to play that people wouldn’t expect of you?
DJ Qualls: People remember my early work, the comedy work … the teen comedies and stuff that I did, which … changed my life. I literally went from working as a paralegal on a personal injury law firm, like when you “If you’ve been injured in an accident…”, I would send your ass to a chiropractor, try to get you a settlement. I went from that to six months later doing a movie, and six months after that I was on The Tonight Show, so I can’t crap on that early stuff at all. But it’s interesting, because a lot of people, even though they’ll see me in like a Hustle and Flow or Breaking Bad, or like, you know, I was the first ever killer on Criminal Minds. They’ll see me in that kind of stuff, and I’ll do it well, I think, and get good notices for it. But they can’t remember that work. They only remember the other stuff. I get to do the coolest shit. I haven’t got a comedy in fuckin’ seven years. I get to do the coolest stuff, you know, I get to be creepy, and I get to be the every man and the good guy. So there’s really no specific role, I think or kind of part—You know what, … I will never play a father of five children who’s happily married in a Lifetime movie. They wouldn’t ask me in that. I wouldn’t do it. But I see my friends whose careers are having moments—and … everybody’s career slides a bit at some point, for whatever reason—and they’ll do a Hallmark movie or whatever, and there’s merit in that, people love them. But that’s completely closed off to me because of how I look. And that’s okay, because it’s not my thing. I’m not a 22 episode television guy. I think seeing me 22 times in one season is too much. I’m a lot, visually and personality wise. I think 13 times a year is as much as you need to see me in any one project. And that fits my personality also. You know what I would love to do more than anything though? I cannot stand musicals. I remember I was doing press for something in London and they took us to see Mamma Mia. And it’s such a nice thing to do when we were like third row center and the cast knew we were there and jazz handing it for us. And 10 minutes into it, I was like “I gotta get out of here”. Singing drives me fucking nuts. I’m like, “Just say it, just say you need to go to the store and buy a loaf of bread, don’t fucking sing it. Just say it.” But, I would do Little Shop of Horrors on Broadway. I want to play Seymour Krelborn. I’ve loved it since I was a little boy. Rick Moranis was so good in it. I want to play that part on Broadway so badly. … Oh, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—I was offered that in the West End and couldn’t do it, cause of a scheduling conflict. I want to play Billy Bibbit in that. … I love doing horror things because they shoot at night. And a lot of actors hate night shoots. I love them because it feels like summer camp, like you wake up at like 3pm you go to work at five and you stay until 7am. It’s like a sleepover. And that’s my net normal clock anyway, if you let me alone long enough, I’m going to bed around that like seven, eight o’clock in the morning and sleeping all day. I love doing horror movies because of that. And all the cool shit happens at night. And it makes it more believable for you. And I love fake blood. I wish I could show you this great photo that I have on my phone, toward the end of my episode. … Look at this, it shows you what a fucking master Greg Nicotero is. And he can do a lot with like $5 worth of merchandise, like fake blood and …
What’s your favorite role you’ve ever done?
DJ Qualls: I was in a show for two years called Legit with a comedian named Jim Jefferies. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I played a guy with advanced case muscular dystrophy. [The response from the community] was so great. So initially, when I first signed on to do that part, I got a lot of backlash, because they’re like, “why not have an actor with muscular dystrophy play the part?” And I get it, but the thing is, we shoot for like, 14 hours at a time, and also our locations weren’t accessible a lot. And so like Venice Beach is not a very accessible … right? But when I started doing it, we got a lot of fans with muscular dystrophy who are watching the show. And we started being friends with them. And also half of our actors on the show were had some sort of disability. And so this kid named Turbo, we became like, pen pals, and or Twitter buddies. And it sort of kept him alive and [he] died right after the show was cancelled. And it was this thing he looked forward to. And I mourned the shit out of that guy. But what a great experience to be able to have that impact in somebody’s life. Because when I was little I cancer and all I wanted was to talk to somebody who sort of tried to empathize with me and not make me feel sick.
Tricia Helfer (“Lydia Layne’s Better Half”)
Can you talk about your role?
Tricia Helfer: I play Lydia Layne in “Lydia Layne’s Better Half”. Lydia Layne is a very high powered businesswoman, extremely wealthy, has worked her way up to [own] her own company. And she is set to give a big promotion to one of her employees. She knows the little bit [of] the power that she has over both of them waiting to hear. And she makes the decision, and it basically comes back to haunt her. I don’t think she necessarily makes the wrong decision, but she makes the decision likely based for selfish reasons. And she ends up getting into an argument with the employee that did not get the job, and things go awry. And then she makes another wrong decision in trying to cover it up—cover up the accident—instead of doing the right thing and dealing with it. Because it was an accident. She tries to cover it up and gets locked in an elevator for many, many, many hours after an earthquake, set in LA. Which, that in itself is terrifying—the idea of being locked in an elevator for 30-some hours with aftershocks happening, and elevator dropping more floors and things, but then also to be locked in there with a mistake. You know, and of course, that’s when Greg’s magic with makeup comes to play as well. And so it’s sort of modeled after, in Creepshow 2, “The Hitchhiker”, where it’s a different story, [but] very similar in terms of this woman really kind of wrestling with the idea of is she losing her mind? Is she actually in this, [is it a] supernatural something that’s happening? Or is she just like dehydrated? Is she tired? … Has she hit her head in one of the elevator jostlings around? And she just doesn’t know what is happening. And her mental status is slowly deteriorating the longer she’s in there. And she’s just got to get out of there. And also, if she is rescued, and the fire department does get to her, she’s been there with a mistake. And she … really starts to unravel, and is losing control of her faculties. She just ultimately wants to get out of there.
Can you talk about the challenges of preparing for an actor showcase role like this?
Tricia Helfer: I never really thought of it at the time…it is pretty much mostly me. We shot it all in three days. And the first day was the setup with the other actors and the dialogue and everything that’s happening and the initial type of cover up, and then the second two days were in an elevator. … It’s challenging in the way that you’re trying to show—you’ve got two days filming in this elevator and you’re trying to show … It was harder actually thinking about how it was going to be than actually filming it because once you’re filming it, you’re like “OK, how am I going to make this different? How am I going to make you know what’s happening now different and exciting and interesting from what happened 15 seconds ago in the story, right?” It’s me in an elevator, but there’s there’s so much happening. And you know the makeup magic that they do with Danielle, the Celia character, that’s progressing as you’re going through the day. And you know, when you actually film it your’re seeing it and maybe it’s just me, I don’t know, but I just didn’t really think about it that way because you’re so just kind of invested, you’re dealing with what’s happening there, and the character is getting so distressed that I just really kind of focused on doing my work. But I had fun with it. Got pretty banged up—there’s a couple of aftershocks that happen and so I’m flinging myself across the elevator and banging into things and hitting my head. But it was a lot of fun. Celia, who’s played by Danielle Lyn, her and I just bonded immediately, and we’ve become really good friends. So we have a laugh too, like, there’s one scene, they took some stills of it and she took a … screen capture … and we call it our Vogue photo shoots. We’ve got blood and everything everywhere, and we’re both knocked out, you know, we’re both like passed out. And she said “We actually look like we’re in Vogue here”. You find the light moments in it too. And you just really, her and I, … and even though she’s playing dead. Yeah. So it was really me in terms of dialogue and things. But her and I really bonded. And so we have a lot of fun, had a lot of deep, deep discussions actually between scenes and life discussions. … She should be a life coach. She’s been an amazing empath, and a very knowledgeable young woman. So yeah, we had a lot of fun filming as well.
What drew you to the project?
Tricia Helfer: It was the role that interested me. And wanting to work with Greg. I haven’t been necessarily a horror fan. I get scared pretty easily. As a kid in the 80s, I hadn’t seen Creepshow or Creepshow 2— I have since. And after watching them now … like what you don’t know you don’t know. Right? If you’ve ever seen it and I just sort of never really lean that way, but after getting the show, and I’ve watched them, and I was like “Oh, this is what it’s about, it … they’re fun”. And I understand it now. I didn’t know the tone to it, as opposed to something that’s just like a straight out slasher just meant to terrify. So I really enjoyed them. I’m going to be first in line waiting to see all the rest of these stories. I’m really excited for them.
Is there a lot of humor in your episode?
Tricia Helfer: It is pretty serious. It’s definitely one that’s a little bit more, I would say grounded. I mean some extreme stuff happens, for sure, but it’s fairly grounded. There is some humor in the way … the circumstances. And there’s a few things that happen where even the characters almost start to laugh because she doesn’t even understand what’s going on. But it’s definitely a little bit more of an exhaustive laugh. And there were a few moments where added a little bit of humor, like maybe—I hate to say slapstick humor, it’s not slapstick humor—but in terms of like trying to cover up, and then there’s supposed to be nobody in the office, it’s late at night, and then somebody’s still there, and it’s that’s moment of “Rrryupp, not doing anything here”, you know, that type of thing. So there is some light moments in it, and a little bit of humor, but overall it’s pretty heavy.
