Set Visit Interview with Zoe Lister-Jones from THE CRAFT: LEGACY
Alyse Wax
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Blumhouse and director Zoe Lister-Jones’ The Craft sequel, The Craft: Legacy, with Cailee Spaeny, Gideon Adlon, Lovie Simone, Zoey Luna, Nicholas Galitzine, David Duchovny, and Michelle Monaghan will head straight to on-demand platforms on October 28th. In the lead-up to the film’s release, we’ll be sharing a series of interviews from our set visit in 2019.
Today, we’re talking to director Zoe Lister-Jones! Give the interview a read below the trailer and synopsis.
Synopsis:
In Blumhouse’s continuation of the cult hit The Craft, an eclectic foursome of aspiring teenage witches get more than they bargained for as they lean into their newfound powers.
Why is now the right time for this?
Zoe Lister-Jones: Well I think a story that centers on young people and young women especially, coming into their power. In this current climate, is really important to me, in terms of giving voice to narratives that have otherwise been marginalized and really prioritizing representation and representing young people and young women. Showcasing the struggles that young women are up against and creating a world that really feels current and fresh while still paying homage to everything that was so incredible about the original, which was really about centering voices of people who are otherwise considered outsiders. I think that particular story is more important than ever to tell now and yeah, I’m really excited and honored to be telling it.
Do you consider this a remake or reimagining, how much of the DNA of the original are you keeping in the story?
ZLJ: A reboot. Without giving away any spoilers I think again, it’s important to me to honor the original. There are definitely moments that are homages to it but it’s also very important to me to re-imagine it in order to represent today’s youth authentically and also the world we’re living in today. So yeah, somewhere in the middle.
I thought the original movie was so great because it dealt with issues about race, class, self-injury. What are some of the big concepts you’re bringing into this version?
ZLJ: Yeah, I think a lot of those same themes are tackled in this. We also have a trans witch, so there’s also some topics around trans inclusivity and intersexual feminism. I think the first one was very ahead of its time because it was intersexual in many ways but I think including a trans voice in this group of young women was really important to me.
Talking about feminism, what’s your view on today’s feminism and what do you bring from that to the movie? What have you put from your view into this movie?
ZJL: I think just speaking to intersexual feminism, I think that is what is most important to me, in terms of representing in this film. Again really, being authentic in the way we include all voices when it comes to a feminist message, however overt that is. I think to me it’s just about showcasing young women in all of their glory and in ways we might not have seen before and that is really about women in communities supporting each other rather than turning against one another, which I also think was paramount to me in this film as a theme. I think to me it’s what is most important, where we are headed in today’s climate against all odds, feminism is heading in the right direction in terms of identity politics being right at the forefront of what everyone’s talking about.
You mentioned community and I noticed that through your history you’ve seemed to have kind of created an artistic community that you work with. You work with the same actors and creators over a long period of time, bands. I wondered if you could talk about why that is important to you, as an artist to cultivate that, and how that represents to the work? What does that give to the work?
ZLJ: I think one of the most exciting things about being an artist is finding other artists who you love working with, who are incredible collaborators over a long period of time. So I feel very lucky to have experienced that. With my last film Band Aid, I brought my producer Natalia Anderson, my DP Hillary Spera, my production designer Hillary Gurtler, my editor Libby Cuenin. They are all on this with me so I love going from a movie that was much smaller and taking all of the incredible women that I worked with in the past on this ride. It is such an incredible blessing to find people who not only work in concert with my vision but elevate it.
A quick follow up…. Andrew Flemming, who is the director of the first Craft, worked with you on New Girl?
ZLJ: No, not one of my episodes. He’s never directed me but he’s so incredibly supportive and such a wonderful person. I’m so grateful to have his blessing to take his legacy and moving it forward.
Can you talk about the horror elements, especially compared to the original? How scary is this version?
ZLJ: You know, I think it’s witchy, in the best possible way, and I think there are definitely horror elements to it. I don’t know how to answer that so specifically except to say audiences will be scared.
How are you approaching that element because the original director wanted to do everything practically, even the snakes and the rats (that’s all real)? So how are you approaching that, whether it’s the witch stuff or other things?
ZLJ: It’s a combination of practical effects and special effects and visual effects. I love practical effects as much as possible but there are obviously times when that’s not possible and that is one of my favorite facts about the original. There were like six hundred insects and snakes and shit in that final sequence, which is so crazy so yeah, we don’t have that many practical snakes or maggots or rats. But yeah, I love harkening back to old school horror and fancy stuff that uses more practical elements than post.
There’s a huge queer undertone to the original that has been dissected since its release. Are you trying to bring some of that back to this?
ZLJ: No. I mean I think in terms of undertones, potentially. I don’t think any of the queer stuff was overly overt in the original so I think it was probably in dissections from the queer community. I totally get it. I would say really more than anything we’re focused on the trans elements of Lourdis’s character, played by Zoey Luna. Without giving spoilers away we do deal with sexual fluidity in the film and that was important to me. I think especially young people today are embracing fluidity in a way that is really exciting and gives me hope for the future. So part of what I wanted to represent with this film was the hope that I’m seeing what youth culture is, pushing in the face of so much bullying and oppressive culture that they are witnessing, so yeah there are definitely those undertones.
We not only have a trans witch but a Latina trans witch, so I’m curious: What was decision in bringing those strands of witchcraft into this film?
ZLJ: I think in terms of witchcraft and the history of witchcraft, it’s so easy to only see it as this one lane, of like sort of Wicca, and I wanted to make sure we were including. I mean our coven has to focus on their own particular brand of witchcraft, which is what’s so exciting about witchcraft. It’s sort of a DYI, you do what works for you and your coven. But I wanted them to each come from traditions that were representative of varying communities that practice witchcraft. So I’ve always been interested in that tradition, and also other traditions that are more voodoo hoodoo related, without naming them specifically. I just wanted to make sure they were in the ether; that we were seeing witchcraft means so many things to so many communities and is so stigmatized in so many communities and so also what I think was important to me was de-stigmatizing it.
Can you talk about some of the research related to witchcraft you might have done while writing? And then also I understand you have consultants on set; can you talk about working with them?
ZLJ: Yeah, Pam Grossman, who is a practicing witch and also hosts this amazing podcast called Witch Wave, and she just wrote a book called Waking the Witch. She’s been awesome and been my consultant throughout the screenwriting process, because I really wanted to make sure I was getting everything right and witchcraft practitioners who were watching the film would not say, “Well, that doesn’t feel authentic to my experience or the practice”, and to make sure I was honoring all traditions. So she has been incredibly helpful. And I’ve also been working with Brie Luna, more commonly known as the Hood Witch, who comes from more of the hoodoo voodoo tradition in her lineage; and then Aerin Fogel, who is here today, who is our local Canadian witch, and she’s been amazing too, just to have on set, to make sure when we are practicing rituals on set we are practicing them authentically. She’s also been really helpful opening and closing circles because magic is real, and making sure everyone feels safe, even though we are just making a movie. Those women have been incredibly helpful in helping me navigate this world.
Is there a journey or adventure related to getting the rights to The Craft?
Zoe: Blumhouse and Sony were pairing to reboot it and so I went in and gave them my take on what the reboot should look like and I got the gig. So that’s the long and short of the journey. Then I had to write the thing and get the green light which you know, is not an easy process. But it has been thrilling and I’m so deeply honored to be handed this torch because it was such a seminal film for me, having come of age in the nineties as a weirdo. I shaved my head when I was twelve and was bullied, as any girl with a shaved head would be at that age. So The Craft spoke to me as it did to so many people who felt outside of the norm so yeah, I’m really excited to continue the legacy of speaking to those who don’t feel heard.
On the original production, when they were doing the incantation on the beach, a lot of weird stuff started happening. Has anything like that happened on this set or any of the sets involved?
ZLJ: It is a good question and I’m wracking my brain. Nothing super crazy like the beach scene where I heard shit went haywire. What I think is really exciting is all of our actors in the coven are sort of very spiritually minded themselves and practice varying degrees of witchy stuff. At their chemistry read, I didn’t know this about any of them; after they finished they all had crystals in their pockets, so it was really cool to see. I was responding clearly to something I didn’t know about: that these young women are all so singular and special and authentically a part of this world in their own way. And they’re powerful, so TDB, there might be some crazy shit happen, maybe today.
Check back tomorrow for another interview from the set of The Craft: Legacy!
Categorized:Interviews News
