Hellter interviews Directors and Stars of The Nursery!!
For those of you who still haven’t seen The Nursery. I seriously recommend this film. One of the best horror films to come out of 2018. You can either order the dvd or watch it on Amazon Prime. You won’t regret this. This film was very well written and the it was creepy as well. I interviewed Co-Directors Christopher A. Micklos and Jay Sapiro. Also actors/actresses: Maddi Conway, Carly Sauer, and Emmaline Friederichs. Enjoy:
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When Ranae agrees to babysit for a family with a tragic past, a run-of-the-mill Saturday night quickly turns into a confrontation with unspeakable horror:
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HELLTER: Hello and thank you for joining us today for Gruemonkey. We really appreciate it.
First off, Maddi and Emmaline and Carly. As actors, what drew you two to your roles in the film, and can you tell us what your roles are and what the film is about?
MADDI: The Nursery is about Ranae, a college sophomore with a troubled past who agrees to babysit for a family who, unbeknownst to her, also has a troubled past. After her friends come over, the night takes unpredictable turns as both Ranae’s and the house’s secrets make themselves known. I was attracted to the character of Ranae because of her intense backstory and her inner conflict. I liked the challenge of portraying someone who is not incredibly emotionally expressive but is put in highly emotional situations.
CARLY: I played Grace in The Nursery. What drew me to her was how misunderstood she is. She comes off as this over confident, “sex vixen” and really, she is just in tune with what she wants but also wants to be seen. I really connected with Grace because there was a lot to work with, and I was able to have some fun and play her as a “girl next door” meets “Joan Jett”. It wasn’t your typical blonde girl in a slasher film, she had a purpose to be there and made the best choices she could in the situation she was placed in.
EMMALINE: I was looking to get more experience working in film and came across the casting call at the right time. The Nursery looked like a fun, spooky story, and I really wanted to try my hand at horror. I play Calista. She’s Ranae’s best friend: a really snarky, mama-bear type. Her entire through-line of the story, beyond the spooky horror house and the friend infighting, is to support Ranae. She comes to the house because she can tell Ranae is scared, but she didn’t fully consider what is going on in the house until she confronts it head-on – and completely loses her cool.
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HELLTER: Christopher and Jay, what was your thought process while writing and directing The Nursery? Any inspirations you had to make this film?
CHRISTOPHER: Yes, we really wanted to emulate the flavor and feel of the kinds of gritty, low-budget movies we grew up on in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s, so we were very focused on trying to capture that very specific look and tone for The Nursery, both in the writing and in our direction. I’ve said many times how inspired I am by John Carpenter and his seminal work on Halloween, which I consider to be an almost perfect horror film. I don’t know if there’s a wasted frame in that entire movie. Beyond Halloween, though, I’m very inspired by that whole broad generation of filmmakers—not just Carpenter, but Coscarelli, Stuart Gordon, and that whole gang—who were able to navigate these small budgets and still deliver on their own unique, ground-breaking visions.
JAY: Chris wrote the script based on a concept and story that we developed along with our third filmmaker and business partner, Glenn Chung. We agreed that we wanted to make a fun, 1980’s-style horror flick that could be produced on a micro-budget. So, we kept ourselves in check by not thinking in terms of a massive cast, dozens of locations, and overly complex special effects. As far as directing goes, Chris and I co-directed the film. For us, it was second nature. Anyone who knows us will tell you that Chris and I share a brain. We think alike, work extremely well together, and balance each other out when it comes to this type of work. We drew inspiration from films such as Halloween, Phantasm, and House of the Devil, but my no means did we try to copy or re-create what’s been done before.
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HELLTER: Favorite scene in The Nursery and why?
JAY: One of my favorite scenes is when Ranae, Cali, and Jeremy are questioning Grace about what she saw and what made her scream. The scene doesn’t have a lot of action – in fact, it’s all exposition – but it ended up exceeding my expectations due to the amazing performance from the cast. They had to run through that scene many, many times during the shoot because we needed to get shots of each cast member either delivering their lines or reacting to what was being said. The cast was able to deliver consistent performances that were outstanding. That, in turn, made the editing process flow in a way that allowed us to cut together the type of scene that you really don’t see in micro or low-budget horror films.
EMMALINE: I loved doing the scene with Calista in the basement. That basement was just so cluttered and creepy, and Jay and Chris basically just sent me in with the Daniel Andera (our DP) and my phone flashlight, and had us wander around. Then they said “run.” I was getting stuck on things and running into boxes – all that stuff made it into the final product.
MADDI: My favorite scene is right after Cali has a run-in with the ghost at the bottom of the stairs and Ranae tells her what is actually happening in the house. With it being Cali’s fall, and Ranae’s turning point, it’s an intense clash of energy as the dynamic of the characters switch. Personally, it was also one of the most challenging and thrilling scenes to film!
CARLY: One of my favorite scenes in The Nursery is when Ranae, Calista and Grace are surrounding the computer talking to Ray, Ranae’s younger brother, about the presence in the house. It was put together really well, and it gives the three women a lot of credit being so afraid yet stable enough to try to get some answers.
CHRISTOPHER: I’d have to agree with Jay. In the scene he referenced, I really feel like the movie takes a sharp turn: suddenly, it’s not just Ranae seeing things anymore—Grace has confirmed, basically, that there’s something in the house—and that raises the stakes dramatically. And between the outstanding performances and the really, really masterful editing job—which, incidentally, Jay is too modest to say is pretty much all his doing—that scene just springs to life and is crackling with energy and momentum. That is simply not the kind of scene that you’d normally find in a micro-budget indie film, and I’m really proud of all the work that went into pulling it off.
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HELLTER: Favorite kill in the The Nursery and why?
CARLY: I would have to say my own death, even though that’s weird to say! There was so much build up to the end that it had everyone, including myself, on their toes. It felt real and not overdone.
JAY: I have to agree with Carly. The scene where her character, Grace, dies is probably my favorite too. That’s, in part, because of how complex it was to construct and how much effort went into getting everything right while on location. Carly went through a lot so that we could get everything we needed. She was amazing…and quite a trooper.
EMMALINE: I’d say Grace’s, too. The sound of the stabbing and the blood and camera cuts…it was such an great mix of creepy, gross, cheesy, and throwback.
MADDI: Definitely Grace’s. It’s so dramatic and gory! Carly gave a phenomenal performance and it was one of the few scenes I wasn’t on set for, so I was completely shocked when I saw it!
CHRISTOPHER: The Grace kill scene really is a great scene. Not only was it one of our most challenging scenes to shoot, but there are several nods in there to older movies that I find inspirational and highly effective. There’s so much going on there! But, just to be a contrarian, I’ll say Jeremy’s final scene. That one was a real challenge, as well, but I love the editing and the progression that he goes through as he gets more and more desperate and closer and closer to death. Between that and the great, creepy build-up and the final, floaty shot of Jeremy—almost like his own spirit looking down at himself dead on the floor—I think there’s a lot to love there.
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HELLTER: Favorite experience about filming The Nursery?
CARLY: All of it was a great experience. The best was being on set with everyone. We all connected really fast with each other, and we became a little family together, if there was a day that one of us weren’t called on set right away, we still came in early to hang out. We all just really enjoyed being with each other on set.
JAY: That’s a good question, but it’s difficult to answer because the entire experience was simply wonderful. I loved every minute of it. We had incredibly long days (and nights!) on location, but the cast and crew were a joy to be around. And seeing our first feature length film start to come to life made the filming process a once in a lifetime experience that I’ll never forget.
MADDI: Can I say the whole experience was my favorite? With it being my first film, I found every aspect so astonishing. The moments before we’d start filming the group scenes were my absolute favorite though. We’d be making each other laugh so hard we’d almost be crying, then it’d be time to start rolling and we’d immediately snap back into character. It was magical.
EMMALINE: Definitely working with the cast – especially when it was all of us together – was just a blast. We were working these long days, often on little sleep, and we kept each other laughing. I really value the friendships that formed working on the film.
CHRISTOPHER: What an impossible question! Making The Nursery was the culmination of a lifelong dream, so every moment was a dream come true: from the scripting to the casting to the shooting and post-production…and all the way through all those first-experiences that are so mind-blowing for a first time filmmaker: first time seeing it on a big screen, first time seeing it with an audience, getting the DVD in the mail, and all that! But the thirteen days that we spent shooting The Nursery were among the best thirteen days of my life. They were demanding, stressful, overwhelming, occasionally infuriating, and always exhausting…and I wouldn’t have traded them for anything in the world.
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HELLTER: Do you believe in the supernatural and if so, have you had any experiences with it?
JAY: Wait a minute…that’s just the sort of question a ghost would ask! Nice try!
MADDI: YES! The supernatural terrifies me, but I’ve believed in it since I was a child. I was around eight years old when I told my mom I sensed a ghost in our house. Since then I’ve had countless experiences, especially in the house I grew up in. I once woke up early one morning and saw a tall, white, figure in what looked like a wedding dress standing at the bottom of my stairs. I told myself I was just tired and never told anyone until a few months later. I asked my older brother if he’d ever seen a ghost and he described the same woman figure I saw! Another time I was giving my sister a tarot card reading and all the lights including the CANDLES went out and came back on. Freaky stuff, but fascinating too.
CARLY: I do, yes. It is one of those things that I feel you have to see to believe. I have had a few experiences seeing something or feeling a presence that I couldn’t explain. We actually did have a spooky experience on set one night working late where a bedroom light kept turning on and off by itself. We asked the crew if they were messing with us, and they had no idea what we were talking about.
EMMALINE: I go back and forth about it. I believe in it against my will. We had one experience when we were on set one day: they were filming a scene in the basement, so Carly, Maddi, and I were upstairs in the kitchen. Suddenly, a light in the room across the hall turned on. We were the only ones upstairs, and we had no idea who could’ve done it! On the more personal side, when I was about 3 years old my mom said that I knew a bunch of specific, random facts about my mother’s childhood – things that she had no reason to tell my father. I told her that, after she would tuck me in at night, Grandma and Grandpa would come and tell me stories. My mother’s parents both died about 15 years before I was born.
CHRISTOPHER: Thanks, Emmaline: now I won’t sleep tonight. Honestly, I think it’s completely arrogant to think that we know and understand everything about this world and everything that goes on around us, so I don’t pretend to. So, whether you consider unexplained phenomena to be supernatural or spiritual or just science that hasn’t been discovered yet, I think that there’s plenty of mystery in the world that I’m not qualified to put a label on. But, I’ll tell you what: when the lights go down in a theater and the first strains of creepy music start to fade up, I’m usually ready to believe in absolutely anything!
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HELLTER: Tell us what you hope the audience takes from this film?
MADDI: Trust your gut and stand your ground.
JAY: I hope the audience simply has a good time watching the film. It’s an old-school horror flick that stays in its lane and, hopefully, sucks you in with our twists and turns.
CARLY: I hope they have fun with us. I hope they look past the cliché horror and dive deep into our characters. What I tell viewers is the horror makes it fun and the horror stereotypes are just part of the genre. Just remember, Halloween was a low budget film with a bad Captain Kirk mask. But now it one of the most well-known horror movies in history. Maybe someday we can be recognized as that too.
CHRISTOPHER: Well, nightmares, first and foremost. I hope that they walk away with nightmares! But, beyond that, at some level I hope that the audience feels how much we love and appreciate horror films, and how much we appreciate and respect horror fans. This is a movie made for horror fans by horror fans, and even if our audience doesn’t get that consciously, I hope that at some level they understand it.
EMMALINE: I hope they enjoy it, mainly! I hope they have some good scare moments, some laughs, and enjoy the film for what it is. We had a lot of fun making it, and we want the audience to have fun watching it.
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HELLTER: Is there any scene in The Nursery that really scared you or freaked you out a little?
JAY: A lot of folks have told me that they had to turn the lights on while watching our film because the scares are so effective. I have to agree. In fact, at one point when I was editing the film, I thought I paused the session, however, I was mistaken. I started to walk away, but thought I heard something coming from one of the monitors. When I turned around to look in the direction of the sound, the scene where someone (or, more appropriately, someTHING) rushes at the camera started to roll on-screen. That caught me off guard and really got me. I decided to call it a night and start editing again in the morning.
MADDI: Nothing freaked me out more than real moments on set! We were filming a scene in the basement, and the light I was supposed to turn on kept turning on and off by itself!! Another time—Emmaline talked about this earlier—a few of us were on a break upstairs while they finished a scene downstairs, and a light turned on in a room we didn’t even use! We screamed so loudly they had to yell quiet on set again.
EMMALINE: It’s a small thing, but I’ve always been scared by the idea of figures showing up where the shouldn’t be – in windows, in mirrors, etc. Specifically, growing up I could never have the shower curtain closed when I went to the bathroom. So that little scene with Jeremy and the ghost behind the shower curtain reignited that childhood fear.
CARLY: Grace’s final scene was one of the most intense scenes I have ever done. I don’t think I have ever thought in my life “okay, this is the day I die.” The whole process was intense: the makeup, setting the scene, and the prep for what was going to happen took about 6-8 hours. We also had to turn the heat off in the house because it made too much noise. We shot in November and Grace wears little to nothing. With the blood, I was freezing, almost to a point where it felt a little like I was touched by death emotionally. Not physically, not that I was in any danger at all. Chris, Jay and Glenn made me feel super safe. It did freak me out, though. I felt out of my body. And I think that shows in the scene, the moment where Grace leaves and it’s just a body. I think everyone there was worried after seeing my face after we cut. But then when I showed up the next day bright and early, they knew I thought it was worth it. And it was. I would do it all over again.
CHRISTOPHER: Just to follow-up on what Carly said…I couldn’t believe that she showed up the next day after her big death scene. She went through hell that night—everything that she described and more!—and by the time it was over, she looked so completely, irrevocably miserable that I honestly was not sure she’d ever come back to set again. But when she showed up the next day hours before her call time so she could just hang out and enjoy being around everyone again, for me that was an amazingly special and affirming moment. Maybe my favorite moment of the whole thing, in fact. Getting back to the original question, though, in terms of the scariest scene to me, I’m a huge fan of the sequence in which Calista is exploring the basement storage area in the dark and comes across a not-so-friendly apparition. I think that the build-up has a lot of effective tension to it, and the imagery at the end—when the demon suddenly turns its head to look at her—is a great scare moment. As someone who was afraid of the back-room in our basement when I was a kid, there’s a lot going on in that scene for me.
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HELLTER: How fast would you run out of a house if you took a babysitting job and realize something isn’t right and something is evil?
JAY: I’d be outside in the blink an eye. Once outside, I’d yell to the kids that I was babysitting, “Don’t worry about me! I’m safe!” Then I’d go get myself nice meal.
CARLY: I would have been in the next town over within an hour of all of that. I would have grabbed Miller, called up the parents, and told them to meet me somewhere else. Then I would tell them to move.
MADDI: I feel like I would be too curious to leave right away, despite wanting to run!
EMMALINE: I like to think I’d at least grab the kid first. Then again, I may be giving myself too much credit.
CHRISTOPHER: When I was babysitting as a teenager, the most frightening thing to me was finding there were no more Pudding Pops in the freezer…so I come at this thing from a completely different angle than everyone else.
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HELLTER: Any projects you working on that you want to promote and discuss?
MADDI: I just wrapped working on a short film with a wonderful friend and filmmaker, Miles Kietzer! Aside from film work, I’ll be making my directorial debut with Outskirts Theatre Co. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this winter. You can visit outskirtstheatre.org for more information. I’m fairly active on my Instagram page, so follow me at @madqueenmadeline if you’re interested in my whereabouts!
CARLY: Nothing at the moment! I did just wrap a commercial, and I hope to be doing something spooky in the fall.
EMMALINE: I just got back from New York, where I was working on a short play for a theater festival called DarkFest. This August (the 24th and 28th) a dark comedy film I did last year, Pieces of David, will be showing as part of the Black Harvest Film Festival in Chicago. Tickets can be purchased at https://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/piecesofdavid. I will also be beginning rehearsals for a show in Milwaukee this September, but I’m currently not allowed to say anything more. Details will be shared on my page (www.facebook.com/EmmalineFriederichs/ ) as I’m permitted.
JAY: Chris and Glenn and I had a feeling that we’d want to continue making feature length films, so the three of us started a company called Three Tortured Minds. We are working on production now. We hope to start principal photography early in ’19.
CHRISTOPHER: Ditto to what Jay said. We’re really champing at the bit to get moving on the next film, which will have a much different feel than The Nursery…so it will be exciting to try something a bit different. Beyond that, I’m writing a few things and hoping that I can continue to get better at that part of filmmaking.
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HELLTER: Christopher and Jay, will there be a Nursery 2?
JAY: Maybe. If the film does well (it was just released in June), then I think we’d seriously consider doing something that keeps The Nursery alive.
CHRISTOPHER: The real appeal of doing a sequel for me would be the opportunity to work with our great cast again, so considering the aforementioned kill scenes that we were all talking about earlier, figuring out how to bring everyone back would be a bit of a challenge! But you never know…
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HELLTER: Thank you for joining us on Gruemonkey.
JAY: Our pleasure. Thank you.
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EMMALINE FRIEDERICHS INSTAGRAM
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