
HALLOWEEN: New Michael Myers Actor Had A Chilling Response To Putting On The Iconic William Shatner Mask
Well, this is creepy…
Later this year, we’ll get a chance to revisit Haddonfield, Illonois when director David Gordon Green gives us a new Halloween. The film will act as a sequel to the original, despite the fact that it currently has the same title, and Green is trying to honor the past in certain key ways. For starters, there’s the return of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode. Then there’s having Halloween creator John Carpenter on board to score the film, and to offer script notes. And he even went as far as to bring back one of the original Michael Myers actors, Nick Castle, to don the iconic Captain Kirk/William Shatner mask!
But with Castle now being a septuagenarian, Green also had to hire a younger actor to do a lot of the more demanding sequences. That actor ended up being James Jude Courtney.
In a chat with Halloween Daily News, Courtney described what it was like putting on the mask for the first time:
“David [Gordon Green], Danny [McBride], Jeff [Fradley], Mike [Simmonds], Rawn [Hutchinson], and myself, we all walked off to a room to the side where nobody could see it, and Chris [Nelson] pulled out the mask, and he said, ‘Okay Jim, let’s put it on and see what it feels like. So I walk over and he puts it on me and fastens it in for me, and I was like, ‘Whoa.’ David goes, ‘What does it feel like, Jim?’ I said, (lowers voice to a near-whisper) ‘It’s perfect for killing.’ It was perfect.”
While that’s a tad unsettling (yet wholly appropriate), he also felt a very monumental sense of respect and responsibility.
“And all the sudden, this thing happened to me inside. I had already created the energy, I already knew the space, but man that was like after burns, dude. And the love, it’s more than just the beauty of the art that Christopher [Allen Nelson] created when he did the mask, it’s all that knowledge he put into it, and somehow he imbued all the history, the 40 years of history and all the work that all the people have done, and all the fans’ expectations and love. I felt all of that. I will never forget the first time I put that mask on.”
It’s nice to hear how taken Courtney was with the whole experience, and the fact that he seems to view the Halloween mythology with such reverence.
Indeed, so much of what we’ve heard about this film makes it feel like a real love letter to one of the greatest horror films of all time. Whether it’s from the mouths of Green, McBride, Carpenter, Curtis, or Courtney, you get the sense that the people working on this are really excited to be continuing this legacy and- perhaps- introducing a whole new generation to Michael Myers.
ALSO READ: “John Carpenter Opens Up About Returning To HALLOWEEN“
Halloween arrives on October 19.
SOURCE: Halloween Daily News
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