Exclusive: Carla Gugino talks being terrified to make Haunting of Hill House

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Carla Gugino is simply phenomenal in Netflix’s forthcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s GERALD’S GAME. Her performance runs the gamut of emotions, and she hits every one with authenticity and strength. Truth be told, I think it’s one of the best performances by a woman in a horror movie in recent memory, and there’s no doubt that she – and the film – will be leaving plenty of marks on the audience when it is released on September 29th.

I recently had the good fortune to speak with Gugino (and her GERALD’S GAME co-star Bruce Greenwood) at Fantastic Fest, where they premiered the film to great acclaim. And while the full interview with the duo will be online soon, I first wanted to share a small but cool tidbit about Gugino’s next project, which reunites her with director Mike Flanagan and Netflix: THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE TV series based on Shirley Jackson’s beloved horror novel.

We still don’t know much about the plot of the series, although we can expect it will make some significant changes to Jackson’s novel. The original HILL HOUSE is about…

four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

The details of Gugino’s character are under wraps, like most everything else HILL HOUSE-related, but I still asked her to talk a little about her approach to the project and how she was feeling about it.

I know that I’m not even supposed to reveal who I’m playing, I don’t think. Obviously it’s an amazing novel, so the source material that it’s being inspired by is of good stock. I know Stephen King talks about it being the best haunted house novel of all time. Totally different role, and what Mike [Flanagan] was telling me about it, what I was so intrigued by, is it’s dealing with not just ghosts the way we think of them in a haunted house, but the ghosts we have to live with, that we have to reconcile with. And it’s about family, and about the hidden grievances and denials and how they ultimately make us who we are.

All I can say is that I have a journey as a character to a place I’ve never gone before, and don’t know how I’m going to do it yet either. I go in with some excitement and terror yet again!

Gugino’s co-stars in THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE include Michel Huisman, McKenna Grace, Henry Thomas, Elizabeth Reaser, Kate Siegel, Timothy Hutton, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Lulu Wilson, and Victoria Pedretti. No release date has been announced yet, but shooting will last until next summer.