Interviews
THAT Scene from ‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’ Will Unleash 10,000 Spiders [Exclusive]
The trailer for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark gives you a taste of the film’s adaptation of the infamously nightmarish Red Spot story from the books. That was actress Natalie Ganzhorn you saw playing Ruth with more than a simple red spot on her face, frankly. It was pale and infected with… a leg growing out of it. A spider leg, to be precise.
Ganzhorn assures Bloody-Disgusting we haven’t seen anything yet.
“We are just scratching the surface in the trailer of what is to come out of my cheek,” Ganzhorn told us this week. “It gets a lot scarier than that. What you saw in the trailer is the beginning of the horror that my character faces.”
Another addition to the book is an entire ARMY of spiders.
“There’s 10,000 CGI spiders that you will see over the duration of my scene,” Ganzhorn revealed.
“I’ve always been afraid of spiders. I was really worried when I booked it that they were going to be using real spiders. Luckily they weren’t. It was all CGI but it’s definitely made my fear worse. If I ever get a spider bite, I’m going to be absolutely terrified.”
Even the prosthetic bump on her face gets bigger.
“There’s a few different stages of the prosthetic,” Ganzhorn said. “The smaller the bite the quicker it was. That big prosthetic you saw in the trailer was two hours. There was one that was a little bit longer. It’s post spider attack and it’s a little bit more gory, a little bit more bloody.”
The characters in the movie actually find a book called Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The book starts to write itself as they’re reading it, and the stories it tells come true for each of the characters – they’re not reading the book, the book is reading them. For poor Ruth, it goes a whole lot deeper than a bout of high school acne.
“What the book does is it plays on their worst fears,” Ganzhorn said.
“My character cares a lot about her appearance and how she looks. She’s the lead in the school play and so the story that gets written for her is that this massive, terrifying imperfection is at its worst the night of the school musical.”
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark opens August 9.
As the inaugural season of Apple TV+’s stellar new series “Widow’s Bay” barrels toward its finale in two weeks, the latest episode gives Kate O’Flynn the spotlight as her character revisits her trauma with the Boogeyman.
“Your Baggage“, directed by Andrew DeYoung (Friendship), sees O’Flynn’s scene-stealing Patricia once again renew her fight with the Michael Myers-like stalker that slaughtered her peers during her adolescence. Thrillingly, it makes for one extended chase sequence that sees Patricia trying to warn others, while evading the undead killer.
In short, this episode’s incredible riff on Halloween and the slasher subgenre transformed Patricia into a fierce Final Girl.
“Well, that felt like a bucket list that I didn’t know was on my bucket list until I did it, but when I did it, I just lapped up every minute,” O’Flynn tells Bloody Disgusting of her triumphant turn this episode. “It felt fantastic for her to get that moment where she is becoming a badass. That was amazing.”
The actress turned to a few notable references for her performance. “Horror-wise, I go back to my youth, which was referenced in some of the episodes: Wicker Man, Carrie, and Rosemary’s Baby, that sort of thing is my kind of vibe.”
O’Flynn also notes how the series’ unique tone allows for so much creative freedom to make bold swings. “There’s something very freeing about it. Every moment is up for grabs, so it’s like we don’t have to totally land in one direction or another. It keeps it alive.“
Patricia is the eccentric assistant to Matthew Rhys‘ Mayor Tom Loftis, who’s at the forefront of trying to solve the island’s pesky curse predicament. Rhys felt the same about “Widow’s Bay” and its rare ability to make you laugh and scream in equal measure, stemming from series creator Katie Dippold.
“The mandate was, ‘It’s a real world with real people. You play for real.’ There’s no playing for comedy or horror,” Rhys echoes O’Flynn’s sentiments on how freeing the series’ tone has been.
New episodes will release every Wednesday through June 17 only on Apple TV+.
Kate O’Flynn in “Widow’s Bay,” now streaming on Apple TV.
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