McG interview: The Babysitter: Killer Queen, sequels and genre mashups

1428 Elm: One of the best things about The Babysitter was that amazing cast of characters. Viewers even loved the “bad guys,” because each of them had such a unique personality, and they were so much fun.

It seems like all of the actors really worked well together, and I guess that means it must have been a fun shoot for them, because most of them came back for the sequel. Did you have to do a lot of finagling to get them all together again?

NOTE: ***The following two answers contain major spoilers from The Babysitter: Killer Queen. If you don’t want spoilers, please skip to the section reading “END OF SPOILERS.”

McG: Always, because everybody’s star has continued to shine and rise, so it’s always tricky with scheduling. Everybody has a creative appetite, and we’re all friends, so that part was clean, but it’s always hard to wrangle people who are blowing up, and all over the world making new and exciting stuff. It was tricky, but we all wanted it, so we all got it done, even down to the Samara of it all.

I just loved the card flip at the end of the first act, when the little girl next door who was so sweet, and was sort of the Jenny to Cole’s, Forrest Gump, and tethered him in the first movie is now the bad guy. And at the end, here’s Bee, and Bee was the puppeteer for the whole thing.

She originally was babysitting Phoebe, and whereas everybody else has sold their soul for ridiculous lightweight purposes, Bee sold her soul so that somebody else could live, which is obviously very honorable.

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1428 Elm: I loved the fact that we did get to see Samara. That was the main thing everybody was griping about after the trailer dropped, “Oh, she’s not gonna be in it…” That was a great swerve on your part, and it made me very happy! She’s fantastic.

McG: She’s incredible. I mean, look at what she’s doing, I mean, she’s on her way to becoming one of the most important actors of our time.

She’s just continued to shine. I remember doing a video conference with her when she was in Australia, and I just remember thinking: This performer could make the moves that I need her to make; which are odd, and very often don’t go together, and that’s hard to find.

Because usually people are quite serious and amazing, or they’re quite funny, and it’s very difficult to synthesize these incongruous tones, and boy, do you need the right actors to pull it off.

***END OF SPOILERS

1428 Elm: Absolutely. I’m going to be speaking with Hana later today, so I’m looking forward to that.

McG: She’s another one that’s just so considerate and so intelligent, and just had so much to do with the development of her character. You know, her nails were done, I love working with actors that go deep into development of the voice of the character.