Halloween Kills star Anthony Michael Hall remembers the incredible welcome he got from Jamie Lee Curtis when they first met on set. Halloween Kills opened on October 15 and promptly rose to number one at the box office that weekend. The film is the second part of a Halloween reboot trilogy created by director David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny McBride for Blumhouse. The trilogy ignores the other sequels and follows directly from the original 1978 Halloween, bringing back iconic actors in the original roles, including Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, Nick Castle as The Shape, Kyle Richards as Lindsay Wallace, Charles Cyphers as Sheriff Brackett, and Nancy Stephens as Marion Chambers.
In Halloween Kills, Anthony Michael Hall plays the grown-up Tommy Doyle. The role, which was originally played by child actor Brian Andrews in the 1978 film and Paul Rudd in the sixth film, 1995's Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, is the boy that Laurie Strode babysat during Michael Myers' first rampage through Haddonfield. In Halloween Kills, however, he's a hardened fighter who leads a mob of angry townspeople to hunt down Michael Myers and prevent him from claiming any more lives.
Speaking with THR, Hall explained his experience meeting Curtis for the first time. He had already been filming for almost two weeks before Curtis arrived on set, and described their first interaction with a laugh, saying the actress greeted him with "two bloodied hands." Hall praised Curtis' "wonderful energy" and "loving and generous" presence, which he said made the Halloween Kills set an encouraging place to work. Read Hall's full quote below:
"Jamie Lee started about a week and a half into the production. So we had already done a bunch of scenes, and I felt really good about it. And then one day, we were standing outside of the Haddonfield hospital that we doubled in Wilmington, and all of a sudden, these two bloodied hands were shaking and waving in my face. And through the fingers, I could see it was Jamie Lee. And then she opened her arms and gave me a big hug and said, “Welcome to the family.” She was great. Jamie Lee has a wonderful energy about her.
I think that she’s someone who certainly appreciates her journey and the amount of work she’s done and contributed to, but the most impressive part was just interpersonal. She’s encouraging of others and she’s a very loving and generous spirit ... As you’ve probably heard from many actors, the tone is often set by the leaders on set, whether it’s the filmmaker, the producers or what have you. So she was a great boss to work for and a great actress to work with."
If there's one person who can be considered the "boss" of the Halloween franchise, it's Jamie Lee Curtis. As the daughter of Psycho star Janet Leigh, Curtis has horror cinema in her blood, and her very first film role at the age of 20 was the original Halloween. She and Laurie Strode became as synonymous with the franchise as much as Michael Myers did. Once the trilogy's finale, Halloween Ends, premieres next year, she will have reprised the role a total of seven times throughout the years.
It would certainly be difficult for any actor, even someone as iconic as Anthony Michael Hall, to step into a film franchise and a role that has been iconic for four decades. The original Halloween came out when Hall was just ten years old, so taking on the role of Tommy would likely have been akin to literally stepping into the world of his childhood. Based on Hall's comments, the success of Halloween Kills can be largely attributed to Curtis, who worked to make it a welcoming and rewarding set for actors both new and returning.
Source: THR
