Interviews
‘The Deliverance’ – Andra Day and Glenn Close Talk Fear, Cycles of Abuse and the Unique Filming Experience [Interview]
Netflix’s possession horror movie The Deliverance centers on a single mother struggling to raise her kids while struggling with her inner demons, and that’s before the actual evil takes root in the new family home. Cycles of abuse lead to intense confrontations in this family, particularly between protagonist Ebony Jackson (Andra Day) and her mother Alberta (Glenn Close).
The Deliverance, out now in select theaters before arriving on Netflix August 30, is loosely based on a true story: that of Latoya Ammons and her 2011 haunting in the house that’s also known as the Demon House. While director Lee Daniels (Precious, The Butler), who also wrote with writers David Coggeshall and Elijah Bynum, spends a lot of time establishing complex characters that stand apart from their real-life inspirations, the filmmaker previously told us in a recent interview that he wanted to really dig into the drama and get to know the characters first before pulling the rug out from under viewers with the horror.
Daniels also explained how Glenn Close’s character doesn’t have a real-life counterpart; Alberta is a wholly original character created for this story. Alberta is a deeply complex character, grappling with her own place in Ebony’s cycle of abuse, which leads to no shortage of explosive exchanges between mother and daughter. That The Deliverance really delves into this relationship means Andra Day and Glenn Close share a lot of intense scenes together, and their director afforded them the rare gift of ample rehearsal time to sink into their roles.
“Lee gave us that,” Close says of building that mother-daughter relationship with Day. “It was generous to give us that time, usually you don’t get that much time. I think we came to understand that these are two women who exist in this cycle of abuse. The movie, I think, then becomes almost a metaphor for breaking that cycle and the power and the courage that it takes to break it. You can translate that into so many different stories. But I think where there’s great tension, there’s also potentially great love.”
The Deliverance. (L to R) Director/Producer/Writer Lee Daniels, Glenn Close as Alberta and Andra Day as Ebony on the set of The Deliverance. Cr. Aaron Ricketts/Netflix © 2024
As for Day, she recounts how inspired she felt to work alongside not just Close but the entire cast. “I mean, it’s impossible not to learn more about your craft when you are on set with Glenn Close, when you are on set with Mo’Nique, with Anjanue Ellis, with Caleb [McLaughlin], Demi [Singleton] and [Anthony B. Jenkins],” Day gushes. “Again, these are all not just veteran actors, but these are legendary iconic performances that they have given time and again. One of the things that I learned, particularly from Glenn, is that there was zero ego on set. They deserve to have that. You know what I mean? When she walked on set every day because it was a new character, she approached every day as if it was almost her first day on set, trying to get this right and really wanting to do this well. When you see somebody who you admire so much, and you’re a fan of their work, for them to have the same hunger and almost the same, not necessarily fear, but that drive underneath, you go, oh, that’s what has kept her and what has made her so amazing and so iconic. All of them, you know what I mean?
“That is what I learned: to stay that way, keep it fresh and exciting and keep that sort of hunger in your belly. Once you lose that, you should probably let it go.“
The Deliverance. Glenn Close as Alberta in The Deliverance. Cr. Aaron Ricketts/Netflix © 2024
Alberta may be a complex woman, but The Deliverance is Ebony Jackson’s story, and Andra Day’s character gets put through the emotional wringer as life throws every high-stakes obstacle her way with few allies to help. She’s also a character with a dark past that’s relayed piecemeal, revealing new facets late into the film. When asked at what point Andra Day felt like she fully understood who Ebony Jackson was, she revealed a surprising connection with her character. The actor even researched Latoya Ammons.
“Through multiple conversations,” Day said of finding her character. “As Glenn said, we did have ample time to prepare, and I actually knew about it on the set of The United States vs. Billie Holiday. So, it wasn’t until the end of filming Billie that he first brought it up to me. I was studying the woman. I was studying her family. But it was really through my conversations with Lee. I think the commonality, I have had a lot of fear in my life. Fear of not just failure, fear of just not being liked, not being accepted. Fear. Fear of showing up to every interview, to every set, to every show, to every, because I just am not good enough. I was reminded through her character that perfect love casts out fear.
“That was a theme for me through this project. Understanding who she was when she was sort of coming to her own understanding of faith. She was almost forced. It was like she had to be forced into this position in order to receive that and transform. I often find myself in that position. So, I think really understanding her came to finding those commonalities, which is like, it’s really, really hard for me to sort of change or receive different things or do different things unless I’m at this critical point, or unless I’m at critical mass and I have to. I think we have that in common, but once we do, then we are changed and we are transformed. We see that in Ebony. That’s what helped me to understand her.”
The Deliverance. Andra Day as Ebony in The Deliverance. Cr. Aaron Ricketts/Netflix © 2024
The Deliverance gives a new spiritual angle to possession horror, one that Lee Daniels wasn’t taking any chances with as he invited an apostle to set every day to anoint with prayer. It may have been an unconventional fixture on set, but it lent a calming presence and made the cast feel protected.
The tenured Close remarks, “I’ve never seen that on a set. I’ve never witnessed this on a set. Never had somebody talking tongues before you start working. I loved it. I loved every single minute of it, every minute of it. I think it really did inform each day when he was there, and we did that. I felt protected.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly it,“ Day agrees.” That’s what I was going to say too. As she just said, I felt protected. I felt covered. I think we all did. Whether you engaged, not everybody had to engage with him if they wanted to or if they didn’t want to. But he’s done this. He has performed many deliverances here, in other countries, and in a lot of different places. He’s very familiar with the process, how it’s supposed to go, and the spirit from which it’s supposed to come if you are representing it from this perspective. So, I loved Apostle Louis. I loved praying with him and working with him on set. And it just reminded me that we’re here for a reason. We’re here for a purpose. And it’s not just to scare people. For me, I want people to encounter God. For people to encounter light. That was what that was for me.“
“It was great,“ Close adds. “Lee would say, okay, everyone, we’re going to pray now. Come if you want to; it’s okay if you don’t want to.”
Interviews
‘Rubberhead’ Director Nick Taylor on FX Maverick Steve Johnson, Practical Effects, and Seven-Year Journey
Horror journalist, producer, and podcast host Nick Taylor moves into the director’s seat for his feature debut with illuminating documentary Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson.
It chronicles the wild life and career of SFX maverick Steve Johnson, based on the multi-volume book series Rubberhead: Sex, Drugs and Special FX, and those familiar likely already know Rubberhead isn’t your standard horror documentary.
Johnson is responsible for so many memorable movie monsters, having worked on Fright Night, Poltergeist II, An American Werewolf in London, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Night of the Demons, to name a few. He’s also extremely candid in ways that feel atypical in this industry, open about his failures as much as his successes.
“It was a natural progression for sure,” Nick Taylor tells Bloody Disgusting of his transition into filmmaking ahead of Rubberhead‘s world premiere next week at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 23. “I think with my podcast, I got adept at interviewing people and pulling creative lessons out of them, which was the point of my podcast. I wanted this movie to be sort of a creativity pill for artists where if they’re starting a project or feel creatively stuck, they could watch this movie and be inspired and get actual practical creative lessons.”
Taylor’s background in PR and marketing also organically led him down this path.
He charts the course from book promo to documentary director: “But also Bloody Disgusting had a lot to do with this movie because in the very beginning when I first met Steve, I was helping him promote his book and I said, ‘Hey, I got a marketing background and a journalism background. Let me help you promote this book. I’ll just pitch stories from your life to the media, and we’ll see what happens.’ And John Squires wrote an article about Steve making Slimer under the influence of tons and tons of cocaine, and that went fairly viral.”
“For a week, it was story time with Steve,” Taylor continues. “He would tell me a story from his life, and every story was about a major movie, a major director, lots of drugs and alcohol and insanity. I would write them up, and I think John published about three or four of them. So huge shout out to John Squires because that was really great. So yeah, there were definitely a lot of outgrowths of my journalism background that definitely contributed to this movie.”
Rubberhead condenses the multi-book series into a cohesive feature film with a breezy runtime, sparking the obvious question as to how Taylor approached condensing Johnson’s life down to an under 2-hour documentary film.
“That was one of the more difficult parts of all of this, because we had enough for a series or an epically long six-hour fan documentary,” he answers. “But from day one, I did not want to make a fan documentary. I love them. They’re a lot of fun, but I did want the movie to stand on its own two feet as a character-driven portrait of an artist and a time period and a technology, that being practical effects. I did want to be objective. I didn’t want to make this too long. I wanted to make it re-watchable. So I think we just really had to focus on what the narratives were that we wanted to tell. So there were some basically almost cliché archetypical mythic narratives present in Steve’s life. We could have made this way longer, but we wanted to keep it short. But luckily that’s why you have special features.”
Johnson quickly proves to be an engaging subject thanks to his self-effacing wit and frank self-reflections; expect no shortage of stories about how drugs factored into the height of his career or the failures it wrought.
That rare quality was an asset for Rubberhead, Taylor confirms. “He does not shy away from anything about the drugs, the addiction, the bridges burned, the mistakes made, the lessons learned. He just is honest about all of it. He’s had a lot of time for reflection, and he’s done a lot of reflection, so he doesn’t shy away from any of it, which is huge because it’s very refreshing. I don’t think a lot of people are that way, at least in this industry from what I can see. So I think it was hugely beneficial. We wanted to lean into that, and we wanted to make this sort of a gonzo Hunter S. Thompson sort of wild tale through Steve’s overall life.“
Condensing his life into this doc was a slow and steady process for Taylor, too. “It’s been almost seven years. It’s been a labor of love. We’ve been as indie as it gets. We would shoot what we could when we could, and then we would edit when we could. Then after a while it all came together.”
In a way, making Rubberhead brings Taylor’s horror fandom full circle. It turns out that the very film that sparked his interest in the genre and practical effects also comes with an amusing Steve Johnson anecdote.
Taylor explains, “My gateway for sure was Beetlejuice. I saw that at a very young age; I think I was four or five. I felt somebody had shown me, my soul. I get a little emotional thinking about it. There was something about that movie that felt so strange and unusual, but also felt so familiar. It was spooky, but it was fun, and it was lighthearted, and it had humor, but it also had this macabre celebration to it that I just really got into as a kid. I felt somebody had shown me my own soul. And funny story, Steve got fired from Beetlejuice because Tim Burton gave him his hand-drawn designs and Steve’s like, ‘Oh my God, these look like kids did them. This is not what you want. I know what you want. I’m going to redesign these for you.’ And Tim Burton was like, ‘Yeah, no, you’re not.’ So yeah, funny story.”
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