Interviews
‘Lamb’: Noomi Rapace and Valdimar Jóhannsson Break Down the Birth of A24’s Latest Folktale [Fantastic Fest]
In A24‘s latest, a couple’s lives get upended by the bizarre arrival of a lamb-human hybrid. Director Valdimar Jóhannsson, working from a script he co-wrote with Sjón, makes his feature debut with a strange yet earnest Icelandic folktale that tugs at your heartstrings. Especially thanks to its precious little lamb child, Ada.
Jóhannsson shared how this oddball folktale came together, “I knew Sjón’s work; he knew the Icelandic fairytale so well, and he used lots of elements in his books. We came up with the creature because there are no Icelandic folktales about that. We wanted to work in this, kind of a mythical world, but trying to have it as normal as possible, that you would believe it.”
Coming up with the look of Ada, the director would clip and paste various parts of lambs and humans together. “I did a few versions of that, and I thought it was so cute. I thought it was an amazing creature, but it was so funny when I was showing it to other people. They thought it was so creepy,” Jóhannsson laughed about his collage-like designs of Ada.
Lead actress Noomi Rapace (Prometheus, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) took to Jóhannsson and the mood book he’d designed for Lamb. It wasn’t just the more adult fairytale elements that spoke to her or the character of Maria, but the experience of growing up on a farm. She understood Ada immediately, explaining, “I grew up on a farm. We had sheep when I grew up. It was always the mother sheep; if she had four lambs, she would quite often reject one. So, we had one that my sister and I had to feed and was living with us. You know, we pretended that the lamb was our baby. We had to cause the mother didn’t want it. It was almost every summer; it was two or three lambs. They’re quite cruel, the mothers. If there’s one that is slightly weaker, they discard it. Or they pick their favorites.”
While Rapace had plenty of experience raising sheep, she had none when it came to their birth. The short window of lambing season coming to a close meant that Rapace barely had time to arrive on set before filming a live birth scene. “The farmer told me what to do. I saw him deliver one baby before it was my turn. I was like, okay, and I just put my hands in there.”
Rapace explains why she took to Maria, “In a lot of Icelandic families, the woman is the leader. I would say my grandmother in Iceland; she’s running the family. She raised like a lot of kids, including myself. When I was eight or nine, we had a female Icelandic president, and I started realizing out in the world that’s not the reality. She’s like the only one in the world. Maria is she’s a doer. She’s driving the tractor, pulling out the lamb, she’s marking the lambs. Her husband is sitting next to her and making notes in a book.
“It’s almost like when we first get introduced to her, she’s surviving, but she’s not living. It’s almost like her life is on hold. Then, you can feel she has so much pain inside and carrying this grief of losing her daughter. Then, throughout the story, she starts breathing again. For me, it’s very much a story about healing, motherhood, and a dream of life even though you lost the one thing you cannot lose.”
Lamb releases on October 8, 2021.
Only one episode remains in Season 3 of “Chucky,” and what a bloody road it’s been so far, especially for actor Devon Sawa. The actor has now officially died twice on screen this season, pulling double duty as President James Collins and body double Randall Jenkins.
If you thought Chucky’s ruthless eye-gouging of the President was bloody, this week’s Episode 7 traps Randall Jenkins in an elevator that feels straight out of an iconic horror classic.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with series creator Don Mancini and actor Devon Sawa about that ultra-bloody death sequence and how the actor inspires Mancini’s writing on the series.
Mancini explains, “Devon’s a bit of a muse. Idle Hands and Final Destination is where my Devon Sawa fandom started, like a lot of people; although yours may have started with Casper. I was a bit too old for that. But it’s really just about how I love writing for actors that I respect and then know. So, it’s like having worked with Devon for three years now, I’m just always thinking, ‘Oh, what would be a fun thing to throw his way that would be unexpected and different that he hasn’t done?’ That’s really what motivates me.”
For Sawa, “Chucky“ is an actor’s dream in that the series gives him not one but multiple roles to sink his teeth into, often within the same season. But the actor is also a huge horror fan, and Season 3: Part 2 gives him the opportunity to pay homage to a classic: Kubrick’s The Shining.
CHUCKY — “There Will Be Blood” Episode 307 — Pictured in this screengrab: (l-r) Devon Sawa as President James Collins, K.C. Collins as Coop — (Photo by: SYFY)
“Collectively, it’s just amazing to put on the different outfits, to do the hair differently, to get different types of dialogue,“ Sawa says of working on the series. “The elevator scene, it’s like being a kid again. I was up to my eyeballs in blood, and it felt very Kubrick. Everybody there was having such a good time, and we were all doing this cool horror stuff, and it felt amazing. It really was a good day.”
Sawa elaborates on being submerged in so much blood, “It was uncomfortable, cold, and sticky, and it got in my ears and my nose. But it was well worth it. I didn’t complain once. I was like, ‘This is why I do what I do, to do scenes like this,‘ the scenes that I grew up watching on VHS cassette, and now we’re doing it in HD, and it’s all so cool.“
It’s always the characters and the actors behind them that matter most to Mancini, even when he delights in coming up with inventive kills and incorporating horror references. And he’s killed Devon Sawa’s characters often. Could future seasons top the record of on-screen Sawa deaths?
“Well, I guess we did it twice in season one and once in season two,“ Mancini counts. “So yeah, I guess I would have to up the ante next season. I’ll really be juggling a lot of falls. But I think it’s hopefully as much about quality as quantity. I want to give him a good role that he’s going to enjoy sinking his teeth into as an actor. It’s not just about the deaths.”
Sawa adds, “Don’s never really talked about how many times could we kill you. He’s always talking about, ‘How can I make this death better,’ and that’s what I think excites him is how he can top each death. The electricity, to me blowing up to, obviously in this season, the eyes and with the elevator, which was my favorite one to shoot. So if it goes on, we’ll see if he could top the deaths.”
CHUCKY — “Death Becomes Her” Episode 305 — Pictured in this screengrab: Devon Sawa as James Collins — (Photo by: SYFY)
The actor has played a handful of distinctly different characters since the series launch, each one meeting a grisly end thanks to Chucky. And Season 3 gave Sawa his favorite characters yet.
“I would say the second one was a lot of fun to shoot,“ the actor says of Randall Jenkins. “The President was great. I liked playing the President. He was the most grounded, I hope, of all the characters. I did like playing him a lot.” Mancini adds, “He’s grounded, but he’s also really traumatized, and I thought you did that really well, too.”
The series creator also reveals a surprise correlation between President James Collins’ character arc and a ’90s horror favorite.
“I saw Devon’s role as the president in Season 3; he’s very Kennedy-esque,“ Mancini explains. “But then given the supernatural plot turns that happen, to me, the analogy is Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, the character that is seeing these weird little things happening around the house that is starting to screw with his sanity and he starts to insist, ‘I’m seeing a ghost,‘ and his spouse thinks he’s nuts. So I always like that. That’s Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, which is a movie I love.”
The finale of “Chucky” Season 3: Part 2 airs Wednesday, May 1 on USA & SYFY.
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