Posted in: Exclusive, Horror, Interview, Movies | Tagged: The Avenue, Witchboard

Witchboard Star Madison Iseman on Russell, VFX, Supernatural Horror

Madison Iseman (Knights of the Zodiac) spoke to Bleeding Cool about her supernatural horror journey in The Avenue's Witchboard.

Madison Iseman is as versatile as they come in Hollywood, accomplishing so much in her career that spans over a decade since her on-screen debut in 2013's Second Chances. She's done her share of comedy, horror, action, and drama with memorable roles on ABC's Modern Family, Nickelodeon's Henry Danger, CMT's Still the King, Columbia/Sony's Jumanji franchise, New Line's Annabelle Comes Home (2019), Prime Video's TV adaptation of I Know What You Did Last Summer, and FX's American Horror Stories. Iseman's latest is the remake of the Kevin Tenney horror classic Witchboard. Set in present-day New Orleans, a cursed artifact unleashes a vengeful witch, drawing a young couple into a deadly spiral of possession, temptation, and occult terror. Dominguez spoke to Bleeding Cool about working with horror legend writer-director Chuck Russell, giving Emily the depth required of her character, the over-the-top practical effects sequences, and working with co-stars Aaron Dominguez and Jamie Campbell Bower.

Witchboard Star Madison Iseman on Embracing Chuck Russell's Horror, Film's Memorable Sequences, Co-Stars

What intrigued you about 'Witchboard?'

What originally drew me to it so much was Chuck, who's been around forever. He's so incredible and such a legend. 'Dream Warriors' (1987) was one of my favorite films when growing up. The opportunity to jump in with him was probably the number one thing that drew me to this. We had early conversations about what he wanted. The script was this fantastical take on this original IP, and it was fun from start to finish. He had all these incredible ideas, and it was something that I wanted to dive into. It was unlike anything that I had done before.

What was it about Chuck's script that stood out to you?

First, when my agent called me originally, they were like, "You're going to like the script." There are cats all over the whole thing, which I'm a huge cat lady. I was jumping at the opportunity to work with cats, but other than that, it was a fun acting challenge. Emily's a recovering addict. When you meet her, she starts a new restaurant with her fiancé. She's grounded, curious, and starts to get her life back together, and then she goes through this wave of emotions as she finds this board and gets enthralled with it, possessed by it, and without giving anything away, then somehow becomes a bit of a different person. So, reading it from the perspective of an actor, there was a lot to jump into that made me excited, and a lot of elements that I haven't gotten to do yet in my career.

I was wondering about that bed sequence with the multiple hands coming from below. How do you prep yourself to deal with that and go through the motions?

When I talked to Chuck early on, I brought up a lot of these scenes written on the page that were a bit larger than life, and one of my questions was, "How are we planning on tackling half of these things?" What makes Chuck so great is the practical effects, and he had all these crazy ideas about how we were going to get through them. The Hands was a big one because, written on page, it reads one way, but then you're like, "How do you pull this off?" I remember that day we showed up, he had a whole rig set up where they cut holes into the bottom of the mattress. We had about eight stunt people underneath me, choreographed the whole thing to where they stuck their hands through, and it was such a well-oiled machine from all the practical effects they did.

Even the one where I'm hanging over the bathtub, which is in the trailer, and they built a whole bathroom set on top of a 15-foot tank. There was a board underneath that would drop through whenever I needed to fall into the water. It was physically challenging, but I enjoyed jumping into things like that, so I told Chuck early on that I was pretty much game for anything he threw my way. We would bounce off each other a bit, and he would get excited when I got excited, and so we were a match made in heaven.

Was there any other sequence that stood out, and you might have had a hard time with?

I feel all the sequences on their own were a bit of a challenge. One of the sequences, I'm in the scene, but I'm not deep into what they're doing. There is a huge choreographed sequence about halfway through where a bunch of people get murdered. It was this incredible sequence, and we had such an incredible team behind the whole thing. It was a chaotic madhouse of everything. It was so beautifully done, but that was one of those things I remember reading it on the page, being like, "Okay, this is going to be a feat to get through." The fun part about that sequence is I'm standing off to the edge, which ended up being so great, because I was able to watch everyone do their incredible work and see it from the side. That was probably one of the most impressive sequences I got to witness, our whole time filming.

What'd you like about working with Aaron and Jamie on set?

They both have become such good friends of mine. They're both so sweet, and some of the most present actors I've ever worked with. Aaron's been such a dear friend, and he's so good as Christian. He's so grounded and brings our movie home, which is what I love so much about his character, because we're all these larger-than-life people in these larger-than-life experiences.

Jamie's so good and so talented. He had all the exposition in our film, so no one else could do it better than Jamie, explaining all these crazy instances we're going through. Also, more than anything, we just had such a good time. There are some moments when we're doing the most insane things possible, and all you can do is laugh and have a good time. We had the best filming experience. It's crazy because we filmed this so long ago, around 2023. It's fun to watch it come out now, and everyone else finally gets to experience everything we got to do.

The Avenue and Highland's Witchboard, which also stars Melanie Jarnson, Charlie Tahan, and Antonia Desplat, comes to theaters on August 15th.

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