More than four decades after she first did battle with 'The Shape,' Jamie Lee Curtis is back for blood in Halloween Ends, the culmination of director David Gordon Green's trilogy of follow-ups to John Carpenter's 1978 original, Halloween. Set several years after 2021's Halloween Kills, the previous entry in the series, Halloween Ends sees Laurie Strode trying to make peace with her past.
She has spent her whole life afraid of Michael Myers, the masked killer with seemingly supernatural strength and resilience. She's tried to move on from her trauma, but she knows in her heart of hearts that as long as the evil of Michael Myers still lives, her journey is not over. One way or another, she still has to fight one last battle against the man who has haunted her for more than 40 years before Halloween Ends.
While promoting the release of Halloween Ends, Jamie Lee Curtis sat down with Screen Rant to discuss her lifelong association with the Halloween franchise. She talks about working with David Gordon Green and Laurie's psychological arc throughout this revival trilogy. Finally, she shares how her real-life chemistry with co-star Will Patton led to his expanded role in the sequels after being seemingly killed off in 2018's Halloween.
Jamie Lee Curtis on Halloween Ends
Screen Rant: Halloween Ends. You can try to make peace, you can try to move on, but eventually, you have to exorcise your demons.
Jamie Lee Curtis: Eventually. It's an inevitable collision.
The bill comes due.
Jamie Lee Curtis: The blood comes due. The violence comes due. For sure.
Tell me about the earliest days of you and the writers sitting down and being like, "How are we going to wrap this up?"
Jamie Lee Curtis: I don't have anything to do with the creation of these stories. I'm an actor. I'm a producer, but I'm an actor. I show up. It's David Gordon Green who has constructed the idea.
2018 was Laurie Strode with no mental health support for her entire life, living behind barbed wire with a singular purpose for her life, which is that Michael is coming back, at the result of her losing her child and has no relationship with her granddaughter. And then, the cultimating event of Halloween Kills, which is the death of her daughter.
And this new movie starts four years later, and we actually see Laurie Strode living next to grief... But actually starting to maybe heal a little bit enough that, as you said, she's almost innocently flirtatious, the way Laurie in 1978 sang about, "I wish I had you all alone, just the two of us." There's almost a moment we see that same innocent girl with Frank at the market, before the cieling collapses and all breaks loose. And the end of the movie is this very sad conclusion.
I'm so glad you mentioned Frank. Segue! Will Patton is an incredible actor. I've been lucky enough to talk to him in the past. What a tremendous scene partner he must be.
Jamie Lee Curtis: He is a great scene partner. I'm going to tell you a secret. Nobody knows this. There is a reason why Laurie and Frank have kind of had this dance. You see it in Kills a little bit. There's a scene about the night in the bar when they came in contact...
The day I met Will, we were shooting the 2018 movie, and we were outside with Sartain. He was sitting in the chair, and we have the line from the trailer, where I say, "I've been waiting for him to escape," and he says, "Why would you do that?" "So I can kill him." That sequence was the first day I worked with Will. I remember walking up to the set, doing that scene, and having this incredible sense with Will. We didn't know each other. I literally went, "Hi, I'm Jamie," boom, let's do the scene.
But I went to David Gordon Green after and I said, "I think he's Judy Greer's father." Because I think Laurie Strode was drunk in a bar a lot. I think she came into sexual collision with a bunch of people. I think, when she got pregnant, she didn't know who the biological father of that child was. And I said to David, "I think it was Frank."
So, all of a sudden, two years later, I'm reading the script [for Halloween Kills] and there's a scene where Frank gets rolled into the hospital, and now there's a scene about, "Do you remember the night in the bar?" And I was thinking it's gonna be that we have this moment where I say, "I think you're Karen's father!" But he says, "I wanted more. We kissed, I wanted more, but we didn't."
And now, in the last movie, the person she comes into a little hopeful contact with for a second is Frank. All of that is built organically when two actors meet. You get a feeling, and then David writes the relationship. I don't think that was the intention of the three movies, that Laurie and Frank would have this thing! And it came out of that first moment with him.
It's such an incredible, defining throughline. I love it so much. I'm definitely shipping you and Frank over Ben Tramer.
Jamie Lee Curtis: Yeah! Ben Tramer. Ben Tramer.
About Halloween Ends
Four years after her last encounter with masked killer Michael Myers, Laurie Strode is living with her granddaughter and trying to finish her memoir. Myers hasn't been seen since, and Laurie finally decides to liberate herself from rage and fear and embrace life. However, when a young man stands accused of murdering a boy that he was babysitting, it ignites a cascade of violence and terror that forces Laurie to confront the evil she can't control.
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Halloween Ends releases October 14 in theaters and on Peacock.