Interviews
Comic-Con ’11 [Interview] ‘Attack the Block’ Star John Boyega!
He was the 17-year-old kid plucked from obscurity to carry Joe Cornish’s ghetto alien invasion flick Attack The Block (review). A year older and a little wiser, rising star John Boyega talked all thing Attack The Block with Bloody Disgusting at Comic-Con over the weekend.
Attack The Block follows a teen gang in South London as they try to defend their block from an alien invasion. Written and directed by Joe Cornish, with Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim, Hot Fuzz, Shaun Of The Dead) onboard as executive producer, the genre flick is shaping up to be one of the indie hits of the year. Applauded by critics and audiences alike, Boyega has emerged as one of the film’s breakout stars for his stoic portrayal of gang leader Moses. Below, he talks horror, Hollywood and the pressure to be Bruce Willis.
On the horror and sci-fi genres: “I was a fan of the sci-fi stuff, I like the early Halloween films, they creeped me out. I like the fact that this guy’s a normal human being but he still doesn’t die. I think that’s incredible. I watched E.T and all that, but they weren’t made in my time. My time was Transformers 1 and 3. We’d get that through Channel 5 late at night when you’d come home from church and watch a lil’ bit of Goonies or or The Warriors. It was cool the film was going in that kind of root because urban films back in the UK, you don’t have that sci-fi film with epic shots and orchestral music and scenes where I basically live and walk past everyday. I’m just so happy to be a part of that movement and it’s the first that’s ever done that. It’s going to set the bar for other kinds of genres, it’s great to be a part of it.”
On the audition process: “At the time I was doing my first job as a professional actor on stage in North London. Joe, Nira Park, the producer, and Nina Gold, the casting director, came to see me and I was on stage for 10 minutes. After that it was just recall after recall, it was crazy. I’m came back more that six times and then I got the part. Then Mr Cornish told me I had the part after the first audition, he just wanted to see my chemistry with the others.”
On the urban dialogue: “He (Joe Cornish) wanted to give it a heightened, sci-fi feel. But then at the same time, when kids their age get scared they say the dumbest stuff, like “it’s too much madness for one text.” We had a lot freedom and we worked closely with Joe. It’s the closest urban script I’ve ever read. I’m from South London, but when I’m with my boys and the energy . . . there’s something you just cant explain. It was fun to have that sort of script.”
On Nick Frost: “We call him Uncle Nick. Nick is like your all year round Santa Claus, you know?”
On how his parents view him after the role: “My mum sees me in a different light, she thinks I’m an action superhero. So therefore whenever she hears something creaking downstairs in the kitchen she’s like ‘John, you get it. Do something like you did in the film.’ Dad thinks I’m incredibly cool, but he still wants me to get to the level of Bruce Willis because he’s a big Bruce Willis fan. I asked him the other day, I said ‘dad, do you respect me more than Bruce Willis?’ and he said ‘yeah . . .no.”
On his fellow teenage co-stars: “It’s great, we’ve all kind of shared our first films together and are working on our own films now. The first person I met was Alex Esmail who plays Pest and he was so talkative. He was like yap yap yap yap and he was eating this bacon sandwich or something and then we went into the auditions and responded to each other really well. At one stage we were all in there, the same cast today, and we didn’t know we’d got the roles and we were all like ‘what if we got the roles? That would be sick, wouldn’t it?’ It was fantastic bonding and now we’re just the best of friends.”
On the stunts: “It was crazy. We had stunt doubles for some parts, but most of the stuff we did it ourselves. We did a bike riding course through witches cones, trained with stunt co-coordinators on the dirt bikes, it was mad. On the DVD extras you’re going to see me doing a lot of roly-poly’s on the floor and my BMX going in one direction, me in the other. It was amazing. I knew I was going to run in slow motion with the vest (at the end) so I can’t lie to you, I wasn’t like that before. I went straight to the gym and cried pumping weights. It was such a great experience, we just had such a blast.”
On Edgar Wright: “He’s just like Batman, I don’t think that’s him – it’s just a mask. That’s not who he is, he’s Bruce Wayne. Edgar was fantastic. Although we didn’t get to see him much on set, we knew very much about what he was doing and how his actions were affecting the film because obviously Joe and Edgar have been friends for a long time now and Joe looks up to Edgar and is very inspired by his work. It was very important that Edgar and Joe had that kind of relationship and it pushed Edgar to make the film the best it could be in its own ilk away from Hot Fuzz and Shaun Of The Dead and helping Joe get to a good place where he could say I’ve made my own movie and it’s a Joe Cornish movie, but with that magic and wisdom from Edgar Wright.”
On breaking into Hollywood: “I’m an audience member as much as an actor. I would love to do something of the same ilk but a different character. I’m very much into creating other people so that when you watch me on screen and see me in real life, you can say those are two totally different people. That’s the magic of acting. I just got signed by CAA management and the scripts that I’ve been getting have been very, very interesting in terms of people not giving me the same old. The way they want to go is of epic proportions, let me just say that. I may be leading some sort of army again.”
On actors that inspire him: “I love actors who are doing the work and I believe in actors who are creating roles as an audience member. We owe the audience a service and a lot of actors forget that when they reach stardom. (I admire) The actors who haven’t forgotten that like Denzel Washington, Will Smith, Andrew Garfield, Tom Hardy, who are all working at creating different personalities instead of being one actor in just different circumstances. Those actors inspire me and I remember walking through downstairs and I saw Andrew Garfield in the lobby in the Spiderman suit and I felt so proud – I haven’t even met the guy.”
Interviews
“Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” Series Creators on Bigger Slasher Season, Horror Influences, and Spooky Spaghetti
The slasher-themed relaunch of “Pretty Little Liars” from series creators/writers/executive producers Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (“Riverdale,” “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) and Lindsay Calhoon Bring (“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) is back with the brand new season “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School,“ plunging the final girls into a summer of horror.
“Summer School“ begins TODAY (May 9), only on Max.
After surviving last season’s Millwood massacre and unmasking “A,“ Mouse (Malia Pyles), Noa (Maia Reficco), Faran (Zaria), Imogen (Bailee Madison) and Tabby (Chandler Kinney) are back to process their trauma and get on with their lives. Except they’ll be forced to take on summer school. When a mysterious new villain emerges, summer school won’t be the only thing derailing the girls’ plans for summer fun and romance (read our review).
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring about the second season, which continues the heavy emphasis on horror and packs in the references. That even includes an homage to Bloody Disgusting!
The pair also reveal more about this season’s threat, and what lies ahead.
“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin“ saw the core five survive their violent confrontation with “A,“ presenting a unique scenario in creating a slasher centered around not one but five Final Girls. That presented a unique challenge for the writers this season.
Aguirre-Sacasa explains, “It’s funny, your first question literally cuts to the heart of basically every conversation we have in the writer’s room, which is most slasher movies or shows have one final girl. But the very essence, heart, and DNA of our show are that we have five final girls. Six, if you count Kelly [Mallory Bechtel]. One of the tropes of a final girl is that there’s always an amazing chaser test at the end of the movie. We landed, I think, pretty early on the idea that Bloody Rose would test each girl as though preparing them to be the final girl for the final test. So that was a very conscious decision early on, and that would be a cool way to create horror set pieces for each girl.“
“It was,“ Calhoon Bring adds. “In season one, our ultimate final girl ended up, story-wise, thematically, with our sins of the mothers being tied to the child, and the ultimate sinner being Imogen’s mother. Our ultimate final Final girl was Imogen. This season going in, we knew that we wanted to test each girl, as Roberto said, but we also did love this idea of one of our little liars being the final Final Girl. So without giving too much away, our finale does center on one of our liars as the ultimate Final Girl this season.“
There’s a distinct tonal shift this season, with “Summer School“ much lighter than the grim “Original Sin.“ While the setting contributes to that, Bloody Disgusting asked the showrunners whether the shift in horror – embracing everything from creepypastas to cult horror – informed that tone shift in any way.
Calhoon Bring answers, “We always approach every episode, every season with story first, character first, and what are our little liars going through? We knew that with season two, we didn’t want to forget the events of season one. We didn’t want them to jump past them. We wanted them to live in them and move through them. At the same time, per your tone question, we thought, ‘Gosh, season one was really heavy. The girls were grappling with really dark, grounded horrors and dramas, as well as the heightened horror of having a Michael Myers chase them with a knife.‘ We did want to infuse more fun into this. Summer, to us, did feel like the perfect backdrop for fun, slasher horror, a little more fun for the girls bringing in Dr. Sullivan [Annabeth Gish] to help them work through their traumas, but also give them permission to have summer flings, have summer jobs, have a good time. So we did consciously do a bit of a tonal shift as well.“
Creepypastas influence the horror in a huge way this season, both with the villain, Bloody Rose, and the mysterious “Spooky Spaghetti“ website. Aguirre-Sacasa breaks down the idea behind “Spooky Spaghetti“ and a surprising source of inspiration for its creation.
“Obviously, one of the inspirations for season two was the Slender Man,“ the showrunner says. “Lindsay and I love not the Slender Man fictional movie but the Slender Man documentary, and we are obsessed with the Slender Man true crime case. I think one of the things we think is so terrifying about the Slender Man is that you kind of don’t know if he’s real or not. You don’t know if it’s this supernatural figure that crossed over into the real world. So, we needed a website that held that legend, and thus Spooky Spaghetti was born. One of the really fun things about it that we liked was that it took one of our favorite Pretty Little Liars, Mouse, and put her at the heart of the mystery in a really organic, cool way. Sometimes, that can be the hardest thing to do. But I remember when we got the cut of the first episode, I think, Lindsay, you got to see it before me, and you called, and you were like, ‘Oh my God, here’s what really works. Spooky Spaghetti.‘ We agree.
“But for sure, listen, I think we all check Deadline and Bloody Disgusting ten times a day, so it’s an homage to Bloody Disgusting as well.“
The default aim for slasher sequels is to go bigger than before, and “Summer School“ takes that to heart with more elaborate, visually creative set pieces this season. Especially the more Bloody Rose tests the Liars.
“We have such an amazing team, and we love talking about them,“ Calhoon Bring says of this season’s sets. “Our production designer, Brett Tanzer, and his set decorator, Lauren [Crawford]. We also have an amazing locations manager, Dave Lieber, who has so much fun. Sometimes, the locations will inspire a story for us, too, because as he’s looking around the locations in the upstate New York towns that we’re seeing, he’ll send us photos and say, ‘Hey, I found this amazing roller rink.‘ Then we think, ‘Well, we have to use that amazing roller rink. We have to find a space for this.‘ ‘Hey, there’s this an abandoned campground. What could we do? Can we do an outdoor movie at an abandoned campground? That would be amazing.‘
“We worked very closely with our team to make sure that every episode was very special and had a special set piece. A big ongoing conversation for us that was a tricky thing to do actually was that we knew early on that we wanted Faran to be a lifeguard, and we knew that we wanted to have a pool as a summer set piece. Those conversations happen so early, and finding a pool isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s like finding the right pool, making sure that it’s the right aesthetic, that it’s broken down, that there are woods nearby, that it feels scary, that it’s operational, that we can use it. So, those conversations happened even sometimes earlier than we were writing the episodes.”
Aguirre-Sacasa elaborates, “Just to piggyback off that, the day that Lindsay and I got emails from Dave, our locations manager, for the church where Redemption House, that storyline was set. When we toured it, it was like, ‘This is the creepiest.‘ Literally, it’s next to a cemetery, and across the street from it is another cemetery. It’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to be setting up shop here.‘ We just moved in for the season. It was really great.”
While the series creators won’t spoil all the horror fun ahead in “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” – but definitely expect the new season to really embrace all of your summer horror favorites in a big way – the pair do offer some exciting teases for what’s ahead.
“We’re so happy that we have Annabeth Gish with us, reprising her role as Dr. Sullivan,“ Calhoon Bring tells us. “Roberto, you’ve mentioned this; one of our favorite things in horror movies is the amazing monologue that a harrowed, usually final girl gives talking about her trauma. Roberto invoked Phoebe Cates in Gremlins, talking about that ill-fated night. We love those. We think that Annabeth, as Dr. Sullivan, delivers a tour de force horror monologue and a horror sequence in our penultimate [episode] that we’re very, very excited for people to see.“
“Yeah, it is kind of like Jason’s mother’s monologue about Jason drowning,“ Aguirre-Sacasa added. “It’s about Dr. Loomis talking about Michael Myers and the devil’s eyes. We love that. I think we can also tease in our finale. It’s our favorite episode of the season, the finale, and knowing that we had done essentially a handful of final girl chases and tests throughout, we knew that our finale had to be pretty apocalyptic and pretty epic. So we looked at some of our favorite movies like Midsommar and Texas Chain Saw Massacre for those truly apocalyptic horror movie endings that are just so gonzo, and without spoiling much, we wanted to do our version of that.
“And it is pretty harrowing, pretty harrowing.”
Which Final Girl will become the ultimate Final Girl this season? “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” debuts exclusively on Max on May 9 at 12:00 a.m. PT with two episodes, followed by one new episode airing weekly through June 20.
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