Voorhees victim is up against a deadly virus
Danielle Panabaker – star of this year’s Friday the 13th and the Kevin Costner serial killer thriller Mr. Brooks – is returning to the horror genre once again for The Crazies, directed by Breck Eisner. Joined by Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell and Joe Anderson, Panabaker faces not a masked maniac this time but a town of infected residents. Shock recently sat down with the actress on the Perry, Georgia set of The Crazies. For a full report click here.
ShockTillYouDrop.com: So, when we were doing Friday the 13th…
Danielle Panabaker: When we last spoke…
Shock: You were talking about following that film up with a different project. What wound up happening?
Panabaker: Yeah, that was a totally different project. I had met Breck but didn’t realize they were interested. I’m still planning on going to do Weakness and The Prodigy after that, but everything ended up working really well with the timing of this. It was perfect.
Shock: What did you think of the script? It’s a fairly radical turn from the horrors of Friday the 13th.
Panabaker: It’s good. I love. I love that it starts moving right away. There’s no secrets about what’s going on. Something’s wrong in this town and it just goes which I like.
Shock: Well, you’re a character that isn’t in the original.
Panabaker: Yes, I haven’t seen the original. I’ve read the description on IMDB. I need to see it. That’s my homework for the weekend. But the character is sort of there, so it’s four instead of five in this one, but it’s good. I think there’s a lot between my character and Radha’s character is really interesting just in terms of like a surrogate mother-daughter relationship that I really like and I love working with Radha. I think she’s really talented.
Shock: And you’re the daughter of who?
Panabaker: You don’t meet my parents in the film. My character Becca works for Radha Mitchell’s character at her doctor’s office and they have a really good rapport. Radha’s character teases Becca about all of her extracurricular activities as she hangs out with boys. She’s involved in her life which is cool.
Shock: We’ve been hearing so much about this car wash scene. What’s entailed there..
Panabaker: Oh my gosh, that’s because we just finished it. We were there all week last week. But, from what I hear it’s going be really cool. I’m too afraid to watch playback or anything, or dailies, but Radha and Tim and Joe really loved what they were seeing and everybody says great things about the dailies. It was intense to shoot, I mean, we certainly went all the way. So I think it will be really great. I’m excited. It’s a whole long sequence. We pull into the carwash to hide from the helicopters and things go very awry. The carwash is moving, people get wet, everyone gets soaked actually.
Shock: So it this one of those old monster ’70s carwashes with the big things that come down on the car and roll over it and all that business?
Panabaker: It’s one that you get in and you put your car in neutral and it moves your car, which is like the ones I know in L.A. You park your car and everything moves around it, but in this one, the car actually moves down a long â I don’t know what you would call it, channel, tunnel, something like that. You get the picture.
Shock: Were you hesitant to jump into another horror film? Are you afraid of the scream queen label?
Panabaker: I’d love to be a scream queen. I think it’s fun. I think you get to go so many places with something like this and there’s so many different notes that my character, as an actor, gets to hit because you see her before everything starts going wrong in the town and she’s very innocent, fun, and young. And then there’s a really dark journey that my character gets to take that you don’t necessarily get to take in just a romantic comedy. Pretty dark places. It’s fun for me. I don’t know why, but maybe I have a very warped reality, but I’m really happy to be here. I was really excited to work with Breck too. I think he has a lot to say and as sort of a newish director I’m anxious to see where his career goes and what he does.
Shock: How hardcore are your scenes?
Panabaker: They’re pretty hardcore. Yeah, we’re scared. Adrenaline is running. It’s funny, we were rehearsing a scene in the carwash last week and no one’s around. It was just the four actors and Breck watching and we’re rehearsing and we’re really, even in rehearsal, just totally committed and the scene was just going and going and then Breck looks at Joe and goes, “Joe are you okay?” And Joe’s like, “I was just acting.” So we’re there. It’s intense. I feel like, especially after all the stuff in the carwash just because that’s fresh on my mind, there were definitely takes where my heart was still beating afterward and it’s scary.
Shock: You’re used to make-up prosthetics at this point – what did you think of the make-up when you first saw some of the crazies?
Panabaker: Well, this one’s different from Friday the 13th because Friday was big and really scary. Big and scary in a different kind of way than I think these crazies – to see them everything down to the contacts. I don’t know how much you’ve seen, but they’re really…this feels like a disease, like an infectious disease and there’s something blood-curdling about it. And to see the actors in full make-up is grotesque in a way. I’m fascinated by it all. They have their own trailer for effects makeup and we actors aren’t really allowed in there, but it’s cool to see what’s going on in there, we can go take a peek.
Shock: You got knocked out cold while shooting Friday the 13th. Did anything happen here? Is it just as challenging?
Panabaker: It’s funny, on Friday the original death, I don’t know how much this has even been out yet, the original death was completely different than that one. That one was sort of thrown together at the last minute because of logistics. With this one, my character gets tossed around again. We were shooting a scene in a barn and I got my arm hurt and last week I accidentally got hit in the mouth with a rifle. I’m totally accident prone, it’s unfortunate, it’s Murphy’s Law. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen to me.
Shock: So are they going to keep the shot of you getting hit in the face?
Panabaker: No, it was a complete accident. It’s not in the film at all. It’s funny, I’ve been doing this thing on Twitter where I put stuff on Twitter and I wrote, “Shooting the carwash, accidentally got hit in the face by a rifle” and one of the guys posted back, “Yeah, accidentally⦔
Shock: That was me…
Panabaker: That was you? I didn’t know that! I did! It was a complete accident. I wonder if it’ll ever be in the bloopers because you see us turning around and the rifle accidentally hits me in the face and then you see everyone turn back around and I’ve got my hands on my face. So, we definitely did not stay in the moment. The good news was my lip wasn’t split and it was just, onward…
Shock: With this string of horror films now, were you interested in horror before? Has this sparked your interest in that further?
Panabaker: It’s absolutely sparked my interest and I think being a part of Friday and getting to know Brad and Andrew, I have just the highest regard for them. Brad and Andrew are good at this. I did a horror film with them for a reason, because they’re so good at their job to understand what goes into it and to understand the formula of it was really fascinating for me. I’m still fairly young and new to the business. So, understanding all of the different aspects of filmmaking and what goes into it is fascinating to me, and understanding the different genres. I think this has a different feel to it than Friday did, we don’t have Jason. There’s an infectious disease essentially going around. It’s really cool to me, I got to hang out a little bit with one of the producers who are involved in this film and just talking to them about why they got involved and the social commentary on being responsible with these biohazardous weapons. Horror films, yes, so I had never heard of George Romero prior to getting this script…I know, I know. [laughs] Yeah, I absolutely started with the Jason series and then with the Romero.
Shock: What do you find more terrifying, a masked killer or something that you can’t see, like an infectious disease?
Panabaker: For me it would be the infectious disease absolutely because with the killer, you know what’s coming. If Jason’s coming for you, he’s coming for you. That’s it. It’s over. But with something like this, I think the unknown aspect of what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, how it’s going to affect you. They’ve really thought through what this infection means and what becoming crazy means. So, for me it would definitely be the infectious diseases. I’m a germaphobe.
I don’t know which is scarier. There’s a great moment in this film, one of my favorites for me as an actor, is the scene where my character, after understanding that everyone’s become infected and my character’s already been through a really traumatic experience. She meets up with her boyfriend, but there’s this moment of this person who you love and trust and have all this history with, like, “Oh my God, what’s going to happen?” You don’t know and I think that’s really scary. Also, the word paranoia stuck with me. The idea that these people, not knowing, I think it goes back probably to a big fear of the unknown and not knowing how that affects people and changes them, you know, you think about a mother being protective over her child, take that to an Nth degree. So the paranoia’s pretty scary too. It’s all scary.
Shock: So what are your thoughts on the likelihood of something like this actually coming to pass? Does that cross your mind as you’re shooting this, that this could be a very real thing?
Panabaker: Absolutely. It could be and I think it’s a commentary on social responsibility. Its great having all this technology and all this information, but with that information comes responsibility to be conscious and protective and not disregard the value and I think ultimately how fragile life can be. I know that sounds sort of cliché and cheesy, but with something like this, if something got into the water, and that’s the scary part, how quickly it would expand? What’s so cool about this disease is how perverse it makes everyone. The school principal who works with the kids and whatever, when he goes crazy, he is trying to kill the kids. That’s what’s fascinating to me about this disease is like, what it brings out of these people.
Shock: What are their true feelings are.
Panabaker: Yeah, dark, messed up stuff.
Shock: If your character was to go crazy, what would she do?
Panabaker: What would she do? That’s an excellent question. I don’t know. She works at the doctor’s office so instead of taking care of people…she’d be coming after them with all the medical supplies.
Shock: What would Danielle Panabaker do?
Panabaker: What would I do? What is my deep, dark…oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’d probably go after all of the people who ever told me no in my life.
Shock: How big’s that list?
Panabaker: Oh man. [laughs] I don’t know. It’s cool though, it’s cool to think about. I don’t know. That’s kinda dark too though.
Source: ShockTillYouDrop.com
