The Ghostbusters franchise continues with the latest film, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, premiering in theaters on November 19. The film stars Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Celeste O'Connor, and Logan Kim along with original cast members Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is directed by Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman, who directed the first two Ghostbusters films.
Screen Rant spoke to Celeste O'Connor and Logan Kim about what it was like joining the iconic Ghostbusters franchise, their first comic con experience, and their hopes for the future.
Screen Rant: How is New York Comic Con? This is the first year I'm not there, so I need to live vicariously through you both.
Celeste O'Connor: Oh my God, it was the most amazing experience of all time. It was the first time I had been to Comic Con, so I really didn't know what to expect at all. But I got there, we went up on stage, I looked out and I was like, "There's literally 3000 people here." It was crazy, and then and then we surprised all the fans at the end and showed the movie. And it just got the most incredible reaction. I was holding back tears.
The Ghostbusters franchise is so iconic, and now you're both a part of it. Did you know what you were auditioning for when the part came up? What did you think it was, and how did you react when you found out it was Ghostbusters?
Logan Kim: We had no idea what it was. I remember getting the call from my agent, and I got the script. "Boy" and "girl" were on the script, so I was like, "Okay, that's a little weird." I read through it, and I was like, "This is super good. It's very mysterious," and I liked it.
I went with it, and we turned it in. We got a callback, and just fast-forward all the way to the night before we did our screen test - the final stage in the process. The teaser came out, and we figured out it was Ghostbusters. My mom and my dad were all screaming, "Aahh, this is insane!" My dad especially really loved it.
I didn't even think about the teaser coming out before. No pressure!
Logan Kim: I know! It made us so much more nervous.
Celeste O'Connor: It really did. Similarly, I had no idea what I was auditioning for until the very end. But it was a really fun process too.
How do you describe walking onto that set and seeing the proton packs, the Ecto-1, the jumpsuits, the Reitmans? What does that feel like?
Celeste O'Connor: It was amazing. I was super intimidated when I walked onto set because I had just come from a smaller independent film. I walked onto the set, and I saw all of these ginormous soundstages. I saw forklifts and cranes, and I didn't even realize that there could be construction teams on sets. It was crazy. And they were building these just amazingly huge sets. They were like 40-50 feet tall - and even just to see the Ecto-1 and all the gadgets and everything.
What was incredible to me was just to see how many people were involved in this project. It was really a huge team effort with so many creatives and so many artists coming into the community to tell the story.
The film is such a beautiful love letter to Ghostbusters, but it also paves the way for this new generation. Do we think that there's a sequel? Would you like to see a sequel, and what would you like to see?
Logan Kim: We would love to see a sequel, and the movie came out so well. When Ivan and Jason were working together, you had Ivan bringing in all the awesome stuff from the old one and putting it in the new one. And you had Jason bringing even more stuff onto that.
The movie is not only for Ghostbusters fans, it's for everybody. And everyone can see it, no matter if you're a fan or not. You can really get into that universe, and it was such an amazing experience to be a part of that.
