Interview: Harron & Robb tell us what to expect with The Expecting

The Expecting recently began streaming on Quibi, and 1428 Elm sat down with director Mary Harron and star AnnaSophia Robb to talk about it.

Horror fans know the director of The Expecting, Mary Harron, as the director of the cult favorite film, American Psycho (among other projects) while AnnaSophia Robb has appeared in genre films such as The Reaping, The Act and Down a Dark Hall.  We talked to Mary and AnnaSophia about their new Quibi series, horror films and their readiness to get back to work after the COVID-19 shutdown.

1428 Elm: I know that both of you have experience in the genre, and the project we are talking about today is one that you worked on recently, a Quibi series called The Expecting. I did have a chance to watch the first three episodes, and I will definitely be watching the rest of it as soon as it’s available. It’s very intriguing. We’ll start with you, Mary, can you tell our readers what The Expecting is all about?

Mary: Well, it’s about a young woman who’s kind of down and out, she’s working as a waitress, her grandmother’s died and she’s living in her Grandmother’s broken down house. She wants to be an artist, and then she goes with a guy she’s seeing into the woods, and in the opening of the first episode, she wakes up in the woods naked, and something very strange has happened, and then it goes on from there. It’s a great, crazy journey for young Emma.

1428 Elm: AnnaSophia, you have worked quite a bit in the sci-fi/horror/thriller genres, do you especially like horror films?

AnnaSophia: I haven’t been a fan until recently, in college I took a Japanese Cinema course, and I learned that, wow, horror is a lot more than just scaring people, it’s really about taking a closer look at what we fear and why we fear it. And so, I think I’ve gained an appreciation for horror within the past couple years.

1428 Elm: It’s never too late to start to enjoy it! Do you have any recent horror films that you have especially enjoyed?

AnnaSophia: Hmmm…it’s not a new film, but I saw The Babadook, I think it was last year, and I really had a heart experience watching this mother in the film, and I think that was a great example of taking something that is so hard to put into words and making it beautiful. We have been talking about horror in these interviews, that horror can be used as a catharsis or a way to take something that is just so big and enduring and add a lot of creativity and flexibility in terms of telling a story and breaking rules to explore a topic. In our case, it’s pregnancy. Being pregnant and your body changing and being taken over by a baby is terrifying. We’re investigating that further and sort of playing with those ideas.