Annarah Cymone as Sandra on episode six of “The Midnight Club. “Eike Schroter/Netflix “The Midnight Club,” which premiered Friday on Netflix, is creator Mike Flanagan’s first explicitly YA series. During a recent interview, Flanagan spoke about the show’s Easter eggs, casting, and more.
“This is the first show that I’ve been able to show one of my children,” the “Midnight Mass” creator said. Mike Flanagan is beloved by many for his adult-oriented horror projects “The Haunting of Hill House,” “The Haunting of Bly Manor,” “Doctor Sleep,” and more. But in his latest show, the writer and director set out to create something more young adult-friendly.
“The Midnight Club,” which premiered Friday on Netflix, is based on the works of Christopher Pike, a horror and mystery author for young adults. Featuring a cast of mostly newcomers (some Flanagan standbys appear in one-off storylines), the show’s narrative alternates between a group of teens with terminal illnesses living at a mysterious rural hospice in 1994, and the worlds of the spooky stories they tell each other late at night. Here’s what to know about “The Midnight Club,” and how Flanagan synthesized Pike’s numerous works into a show that’s both profoundly emotional and appropriately terrifying.
Mike Flanagan (center, in mask) with cast members on the set of “The Midnight Club. “Eike Schroter/NetflixCreating the world of ‘The Midnight Club’ was no simple taskPike is a prolific author, and as Flanagan told journalists during a recent roundtable interview, some creativity was required when the writers combed through Pike’s books ahead of the script-writing process. “There’s so many Pike books, we divided them up among the writers.
Everybody had to read their chunk of books, and we spent the first two weeks of the writers’ room giving book reports to each other, like we were in school,” Flanagan said. “We needed to be familiar with everything, and no one had time to read everything, or we never would’ve finished the scripts when they got started. ” Per Flanagan, the writers took some creative liberties when working with the stories that the Midnight Club members tell each other.
Since each club member also portrays a character in their story-within-the-story, Flanagan and the writers adjusted some of Pike’s narratives to better fit the primary characters telling the stories. (For instance, the story that Midnight Club member Spence tells his cohorts was changed to focus on two college men, instead of a high-school girl as Pike had originally written. )The ’90s setting was also something Flanagan and the show’s writers thought carefully about.
“This show was designed for today’s kids. And so we never wanted the nostalgia to overshadow the rest of it,” Flanagan said. “We wanted it as something in the background that the older viewers — us old viewers — could appreciate,” he continued.
“But it wasn’t about the nostalgia because the kids today likely don’t (and shouldn’t) care about that. ” Aya Furukawa on “The Midnight Club. “Eike Schroter/NetflixAbove all else, Flanagan said, he wanted to make sure the show was appropriate for slightly younger audiences, although he noted that “The Haunting of Bly Manor” in particular “really hits with teens.
” This meant that the director frequently touched base with his 11-year-old son, Rigby. “I would check in with him and bounce ideas and see what he thought, and if I thought something was gonna be too uncomfortable for him to watch, it felt like we were tipping [in the wrong direction],” Flanagan said. The director was quick to note, however, that Pike’s material dealt with very mature themes, even though it was marketed to younger readers.
“He didn’t pull his punches with violence, with heavy things that kids are really thinking about. Intense bullying, suicide, sex, drugs — all of that was fair game in Pike’s world,” Flanagan said. “One of the things that my contemporaries and I loved about the books was that he wasn’t sugarcoating things.
“”So while there was always a sense of like, bearing that younger audience in mind, we were also very careful not to condescend to them, or try to police the places the show would go,” he added. Ruth Codd as Anya on Netflix’s “The Midnight Club. “Eike Schroter/NetflixFlanagan assembled a top-tier cast for ‘The Midnight Club’ that features mostly newcomersAs Flanagan and producer Trevor Macy told reporters during the interview, casting the ensemble of young adults who carry most of the action in “The Midnight Club” was no easy task.
It was especially difficult finding an actor to play Anya (Ruth Codd), a rebellious and outwardly bitter amputee with a kind heart who, along with fellow Midnight Club members Ilonka (Iman Benson) and Kevin (Igby Rigney), uncovers the hospice’s sordid past. “Anya was a really hard part to cast. She’s written to be an amputee in the book, and we really wanted an actor who was.
We cast a huge net, looking [for her],” Flanagan said. But according to Macy, casting directors found Codd because of her “hilarious” presence on TikTok. Codd then sent in an audition tape that Flanagan said “eclipsed everybody else,” and then nonchalantly agreed to take on the part.
Heather Langenkamp as Dr. Stanton on “The Midnight Club. “Eike Schroter/NetflixAlso featured on the show is Heather Langenkamp, who horror fans might recognize from her role as Nancy in the 1984 classic “A Nightmare on Elm Street.
” The actor had mostly kept a low profile in recent years, working behind the camera as a specialty makeup artist (along with her husband, David Leroy Anderson) on projects like “Dawn of the Dead” and “American Horror Story: Freak Show. “”It’s one of the fastest casting processes I’ve ever had,” Flanagan said of their decision to cast Langenkamp as the hospice’s resident physician, Dr. Stanton.
“We zoomed from the production office and I was like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God. ‘”Heather Langenkamp and Ruth Codd on “The Midnight Club. “Eike Schroter/NetflixHeartbreaking storylines were treated with sensitivity, but Flanagan said there was still some room for humorThe stories of the young, terminally ill patients on the show are taken “incredibly seriously,” per Flanagan, especially considering that many of the people who worked on the show (including Langenkamp) had lost young loved ones to disease themselves.
“I don’t think any of us were really prepared for just how many people in our cast and crew were gonna raise their hand and say, ‘I lost someone too young to leukemia. I lost someone too young to cancer,'” Flanagan told journalists. The show ultimately paid tribute to these deceased loved ones of the cast and crew through plaques (each named for someone who died) placed on benches and outside of doors on the hospice set.
While these crew members were grateful for the approach Flanagan took, the director said, they also encouraged filmmakers to find the “levity” in the situation, since that would have been something terminally ill teens themselves would have “held on to. ” Chris Sumpter during the infamous jump scare scene on episode one of “The Midnight Club. “Eike Schroter/NetflixIndeed, there are several silly moments throughout the series — especially in the pilot episode, which Flanagan said now holds the Guinness world record for most jump scares in a single episode of television.
The jump scares (which number approximately 20 and take place in once specific scene) quickly change from terrifying to gratuitous, and are ultimately rendered meaningless, which is why Flanagan hates them so much. “I hate them, because I feel like it’s very easy to walk up behind someone and smash things,” Flanagan joked. The cast of “The Midnight Club,” from left to right: Iman Benson as Ilonka, Igby Rigney as Kevin, Annarah Cymone as Sandra, Ruth Codd as Anya, Adia as Cheri Ian, Chris Sumpter as Spencer, Aya Furukawa as Natsuki, Sauriyan Sapkota as Amesh.
Eike Schroter/NetflixFans of ‘The Midnight Club’ are in luck, because it’s the first of Flanagan’s television projects that could potentially include a second seasonThe ending of the teen drama purposefully left some questions unanswered, Flanagan said during the interview. “This was designed to be ongoing. I don’t know if it will, we’ll see how it goes.
And we probably won’t know for another month or so what Netflix wants to do. But this was very much designed to continue,” Flanagan revealed. “Pike has 80 books, so we have a lot of incredible material to pull from.
” And in the event there’s not a second season to address the “bigger” unresolved questions of the first season, Flanagan has already come up with a solution to share the answers with fans. “I’ll put ’em up on Twitter, and then at least we’ll be able to talk about it,” he joked. All 10 episodes of “The Midnight Club” are currently streaming on Netflix.
You can watch the trailer below. Read the original article on Insider.
From: insider
URL: https://www.insider.com/midnight-club-netflix-mike-flanagan-interview-easter-eggs-2022-10
