By Jessica Mansfield and Gill Pringle
Anthony LaPaglia has been an Australian in Hollywood since the ‘80s, cementing himself both here and abroad with films such as Lantana and Betsy’s Wedding and television hits such as Without a Trace. And, while Miranda Otto’s humble beginnings in the Hollywood system didn’t come until the late ‘90s, her work includes not-so humble films like the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, and Australian classics such as Love Serenade and The Last Days of Chez Nous. With both set to star in Annabelle: Creation, the prequel to 2014’s Annabelle (which, in turn, was spun off from The Conjuring) directed by Lights Out’s David Sandberg, Otto and LaPaglia brought very different paths to the table: Otto’s experienced horror/thriller background with War of the Worlds, I, Frankenstein, and What Lies Beneath compares starkly against LaPaglia’s newcomer status to the horror genre.
Sitting down together to talk about working on the film, LaPaglia explained his decision to try the genre and his methods to make sure he fit right in.
“To be honest, it wasn’t my genre; I think I dropped out of horror movies around The Omen and The Exorcist and Jaws,” LaPaglia admits. “It wasn’t really particularly my genre. But I have a fourteen-year-old daughter, and it is her genre, so when she heard me talking on the phone about Annabelle, God – she hasn’t looked at anything I’ve ever done, she doesn’t care. at all. And it was the first time she went, ‘Are you talking about Annabelle, the movie Annabelle? Oh my God, you have to do it, you would be the coolest father ever if you did this!’ I was like, ‘alright, that’s a good start.’ I was aware that this was a genre I hadn’t done before, so I did watch a couple of films, just to figure out what tone it was. Just to make sure that you know what movie you’re in.”
“That’s why I always like to see some of the dailies coming along,” Otto chimes in, giving us an insight to her process. “Just so I can see something, even if it’s not something that I’m in, so I have a picture in my head of how much is being done by the visuals, so I know my universe.”
“On this one, there’s so much help from the set,” says LaPaglia. “The set was beautiful, it had genius direction, and art direction, and so specific down to the last detail. And it had that beautiful decay. Sometimes you’d come on and there’d be dust mites coming through the light. It had that boarded-up feeling, I don’t know how they did it, but it was a pretty amazing set. And that does a lot of work for you. You only have to be in the environment – so it was more about that, it was more about moderating your performance, making sure that it’s not too much, and not too little. It was something I was experimenting with, from the time I read the part; I wanted to walk this line of, ‘is he good or is he bad, is he involved with this or is he not.’ Sometimes he looks slightly more ominous – there’s one scene where I get Janice [Talitha Bateman] at the door, and tell her not to go in her room, and it’s vaguely threatening. And then there’s other scenes, where he’s sitting outside with Linda [Lulu Wilson] and having a conversation, and you can see a bit more of him, and that he’s not a bad guy.”
As well as being aided by the set, Otto and LaPaglia, of course, had help from their up-and-coming director, David Sandberg. Though Annabelle: Creation is only Sandberg’s second feature length film, his feature debut last year with Lights Out got people talking across genres, and it’s since been rumoured that he will direct DC’s Shazam! Sandberg, however, seems apparently nonplussed.
“I don’t know if it’s because of his Swedish background, but he was incredibly calm and together, probably the calmest person I’ve ever worked with,” Otto commends her director. “He just made it seem very easy, and you would just not have thought it was only his second film, he just took everything in his stride. Usually, most sets I’ve worked on, at some stage a director will be stressed or tense, or pressured about the length of the day or getting it shot. But David’s just not like that; I think there must be a joy, coming from something where he’s really done everything himself, and then you’re on this big thing, like it’s all just coming together, and everybody’s doing their job.”
“I think for me, it’s the most amazing transition from European filmmaker to the Hollywood system that I’ve ever seen,” LaPaglia adds. “Like, effortless. And probably that background helped him, I don’t know, but he was unflappable; he was very specific with what he wanted, he was really actor friendly, and you would never know it was his second Hollywood production. Even now, at Comic-Con in San Diego, somebody said, ‘Oh, your next project is Shazam!?’, which I don’t even know, but that’s a big deal. And he’s just like, ‘Oh, yes, of course I’m doing Shazam!’ He’s like, ‘This is normal business for me.’ He’s not really impressed by anything, it just seems like part of his job.”
“He finds it almost a little humorous I think, he’s kind of silently smiling on the inside, like he can’t believe it’s all turned out this way,” Otto laughs.
Annabelle: Creation is in cinemas August 10, 2017
