Australian star Anthony LaPaglia faces horror in Annabelle: Creation and in the US
ANTHONY LaPaglia fights an evil doll possessed by a demon in his new movie Annabelle: Creation. But there’s something scarier right on his doorstep.
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ANTHONY LaPaglia ain’t afraid of no ghost ... or no doll possessed by evil demon. Which is just as well, because in the latest instalment of James Wan’s ever-growing The Conjuring horror franchise, creepy doll origin story Annabelle: Creation, it turns out its LaPaglia’s fault that this Baby Kills-A-Lot ever came into being in the first place.
“I like the doll. Nobody likes it but I do, it’s my baby,” LaPaglia tells Hit from Los Angeles, where he’s getting towards the end of a day plugging his first studio movie outing in more than a decade.
Annabelle: Creation is the sequel to 2014’s Annabelle, which expanded on the story of the pigtailed and possessed killer doll first introduced in Wan’s surprise 2013 hit The Conjuring.
“People have been asking me all day if I was scared of the doll or not and it’s like, not really. It’s a doll,” LaPaglia shrugs. “But I understand why some people are.”
Perhaps LaPaglia has some other fear he’s carried into adulthood — clowns, the bogeyman ...?
“Not really. I grew up in Adelaide — you weren’t afraid of much there. I don’t have any childhood hang-ups about clowns or people under my bed or stuff like that. I find real life to be a lot more scary than imagined worlds.”
Indeed, the 58-year-old Australian reckons there’s much to be scared of in real life America at the moment, much of it to do with the election of President Trump.
For the first time in 35 years of living in the US, LaPaglia admits to having second thoughts about staying.
“I moved here in ’82 and to be honest, this is the first time ever that I’ve felt genuine concern. And that only builds with every day. I think it’s intentional,” he adds of the chaos that seems to go hand-in-hand with the Trump Presidency.
“I was in New York from the ’80s through the ’90s and Donald Trump was very much present then doing exactly the same schtick. If they want to know where the leaks come from, they should talk to him.
“This whole leak thing — everything’s just a distraction from the Russia investigation. The real prize is staying on Russia. That’s where the gold is.”
Even back in Australia, where he worked from April through mid-May shooting SBS series Sunshine, LaPaglia found there was no escape.
“That’s the sad part. It’s all pervasive. Honestly, if we, if the media stopped paying attention to his every f---ing tweet, he’d shrivel up and die. He loves that s---. But he’s getting exactly what he wants. He loves chaos.”
In Melbourne back in April, LaPaglia revealed his engagement to 28-year-old Australian Alexandra Henkel. For now though, LA remains his base — and also that of his daughter Bridget, 14, with ex-wife Gia Carides.
It was Bridget who convinced her dad to take Annabelle: Creation, the first horror movie of his career.
“All the work I’ve ever done, she couldn’t care less,” LaPaglia chuckles. “Then she heard me on the phone, in the early stages, talking about Annabelle. When I got off the phone, she was like, ‘Are you talking about the movie?’ I said, ‘Yeah’. She said, ‘Oh I love that movie! Are you doing the sequel?’ I said, ‘I think it’s a sequel’ — I didn’t know much about it. She said, ‘You have to do that movie’. She got really excited.
“Now she brings her friends over and she’s like, ‘Here’s my dad who’s in Annabelle’. I’ve become an exhibit.”
Maybe she can start hiring Dad out ... “For kids parties? That’s already happening,” LaPaglia laughs. “I have a whole second career.”
In Annabelle: Creation, LaPaglia plays doll maker Samuel Mullins. Fellow Aussie Miranda Otto plays his wife, Esther. Grieving over the loss of their young daughter, the couple make an unwise pact to bring her back in the form of a doll lovingly crafted by Samuel.
Years later, they take in a handful of girls from a local orphanage that is closing down, hoping they may bring a little light back to the household. But when one of the girls figures out what’s behind that door Samuel keeps locked, the doll is out of the closet.
Having never done a horror film before, LaPaglia says his biggest challenge was understanding the rules.
“Every genre has its rules. For me it was figuring out what the right tone was.”
On that front, the actor had the two levels of the Mullins household — a very realistic set built on the Warner Bros lot — to help him.
“That physical environment did a lot of the work so I could afford to bring the performance down,” he says.
He hadn’t done any green-screen filming previously either.
“You’re really acting to nothing and yet you’re supposed to be terrified at some demon coming through the wall. That was the scene I was most concerned about — how the hell am I going to do this?”
He’s pretty sure he projected his terror in the right direction: “Hey look,” he says, “the special effects made me look good.”
Stephanie Sigman — who plays Sister Charlotte, the nun in charge of the girls the Mullins bring into their home — says the Annabelle: Creation cast was 90 per cent female.
“I don’t know how Anthony felt,” Sigman laughs, “but I’m guessing it could be quite intimidating to be surrounded by girls all the time.
“He was trying to keep a very creepy attitude for the kids, for them to actually feel scared and creeped out about him, because I think that’s the way he works. But with me he was a sweetheart, he was always really friendly.”
LaPaglia says he maintained that intimidating distance from the young girls playing orphans to give his character more shades of grey: “I wanted the audience to sometimes think that he might be involved with what was going on.”
As the father of a 14-year-old girl himself, he figured getting too chummy would kill that vibe.
“They were really nice girls, so I thought it would affect my performance — that I would start to be a bit too kind. So made the decision that as soon as the take was over, I would disappear. Now we’re doing press junkets I’ve got to know them really well and they’re kinda fun. One of them said to me, ‘Oh you’re not that scary. I thought you were scary!’,” he laughs.
Sunshine, the limited series set to air on SBS in October, also teamed LaPaglia with a cast full of teenagers — this time South Sudanese migrants in the suburbs of Melbourne, playing young basketballers LaPaglia’s character is recruited to coach.
While the Annabelle girls were “seasoned pros, I mean, they’re better than I was in my 30s, in terms of their professionalism,” LaPaglia laughs, the boys on Sunshine were all first-timers.
“That was more of a situation where I could pass on some of my knowledge if they wanted it — and I was quite happy to,” he says. “I enjoyed working with those boys, it was great. A totally different experience though.”
Making Annabelle: Creation wasn’t the end of LaPaglia’s first horror experience. Another rule of the genre? One must plug the horror film at Comic-Con.
LaPaglia, Sigman, a couple of the girls and director David Sandberg took their creepfest to the fan fest last month.
“Comic-Con was a whole new world. It was a commitment to the genre that I hadn’t encountered before. It was pretty intense,” LaPaglia admits.
“I’ve never been particularly comfortable around that stuff, but it’s part of the job now. It’s a contract that you have with the movie, that you’ve gotta go support it. It’s something I wish I learnt earlier in life, but I’ve learnt it now, so ...”
ANNABELLE: CREATION OPENS TODAY
Originally published as Australian star Anthony LaPaglia faces horror in Annabelle: Creation and in the US
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