Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on March 2, 2016, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Horror history is rife with terrorized babysitters, but now it’s the sitter providing the scares in Emelie. Sarah Bolger stars in the new psychological chiller as a young woman with sinister designs on the kids she’s looking after, and gave FANGORIA some exclusive insights into the role and the movie.
Directed by Michael Thelin, Emelie stars Bolger as Anna, who is entrusted with looking after the three Thompson children while their parents enjoy a night on the town. But Anna is not who she seems to be, and while her rule-breaking attitude initially ingratiates her with Jacob (Joshua Rush), Sally (Carly Adams) and Christopher (Thomas Bair), her darker intentions soon come to the fore. The Irish-born Bolger, who also had the lead in Mary Harron’s The Moth Diaries and co-starred in last year’s paranormal horror film The Lazarus Effect, first won praise as a young girl opposite her sister Emma in Jim Sheridan’s In America, and has subsequently amassed a long résumé that includes fantasy fare such as The Spiderwick Chronicles and the TV series Into the Badlands, Agent Carter and Once Upon a Time. Fango spoke to the actress following Emelie’s world premiere at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
How did this role come to you, and what were your first impressions when you read it?
I knew one of the producers, Lizzie Friedman, who’s wonderful, and I believe Michael had seen me in In America, oddly enough! Not that the roles are in any way similar, but he loved that movie and was eager to Skype with me. We chatted about it, and it was such an eerie concept—this idea of the invasion of the home, an invasion we allow to happen all the time. While researching this film, it was crazy how many times I found scary stuff involving babysitters, or Uber drivers or other people who do things for you, and you just let them into your home or get into their car, and they sort of have your life in their hands.
Have you ever been a babysitter yourself?
Never! I’ve never been. I started acting when I was 5, so that was my pocket money.
Since you had that experience as a young child actor, did that impact the way you worked with the kids in Emelie?
You know, it didn’t. It did with their moms, and their guardians on set, but I was never meant to be their friend, and I thought it might be hard for them to see me as a friend off camera and then be scared of me in our scenes—especially the little guy, Thomas, who was so good. So I kept myself isolated from them, which was very difficult, because they’re the nicest children in the world.
Were there any moments when they seemed to be actually scared of you while you were shooting?
Yeah, there were a couple of moments, and then I was like, “Damn, I don’t want to upset them!” A couple of times when I was screaming, it really freaked them out, which was a positive for me as an actor, but as a human, my heart was breaking. There was the bit where I dragged that girl into the room, and I had blood on me, and the little guy was just freaking out because he thought it was real blood. I had be intense and pretend to hurt one of the kids, and again, Thomas was just going crazy. He couldn’t understand why this was happening, and it was so hard to do. I felt like I was gonna give him nightmares.
The gun scene seems like it would have been another very disturbing one to film.
That one wasn’t, oddly enough! They were great with that scene. I think it’s because he got to be happy, and as soon as we were asking them to be terrified, and I had to scare them, they got terrified fast.
Did you console them later, or did you keep your distance?
Yeah; especially at the end of the movie, I was like, “You guys were great, and you killed it,” and I was so grateful that they still wanted to stand next to me after I had scared the crap out of them.
Thelin has said that the kids were not actually on set when you did some of the more intense stuff. Was it ever difficult to act without them there?
It was. I have, fortunately, done a lot of CGI work, and nothing’s there when you’re doing that sort of greenscreen stuff. But in this case, I wanted their reactions, because that’s what’s pushing Anna forward; she never does anything unless there’s a reaction, like, “If I do this, how far will I get?” So it was difficult sometimes having to have them leave; we ran out of time with their schooling and hours and just had to do it without them.
One of the interesting things about the film is that Anna’s not simply a crazy person; she’s basically damaged, and trying to compensate for that.
Yeah, I never saw her as crazy. She came from a tough background, she lost a child, and there are all these little buttons and switches in your brain that can make you turn. I don’t think she’s insane, I just think her moral compass is completely off.
I was curious about your partner in crime in the film. You never get too much of a sense of what he’s up to, so I was wondering if there was anything in the script or that you shot that didn’t wind up in the film.
There was; it was a scene where we met in a mental institution, a prison of sorts, and he has a mild obsession with me, and that sort of got left on the cutting room floor, sadly. I think that might have explained better why he does what he does for me. Anna has a plethora of people at her fingertips to sort of move in whatever direction she needs, and he’s one of them.
The Lazarus Effect is a very different kind of horror film from Emelie. What was that experience like?
I loved it. David Gelb, who also directed Jiro Dreams of Sushi, is super-talented, and Olivia Wilde is crazy; she’s the coolest woman I’ve ever met in my life. That was true horror, and I’d never been involved in an honest-to-God horror movie before. On set, they’d turn off the lights and I’d have to be afraid and screaming, and the atmosphere on that set was so palpable, compared to Emelie, where we were creating an ambiguity about my character.
Ray Wise gets up-front billing in Lazarus Effect, yet only appears in one scene. Was there more of him shot that got cut out?
There were no more scenes with him; that was it, there was just the one. I think David just loves him, from Twin Peaks and so forth. The ending was originally different, though; [the one we first shot] was, my character kills Olivia Wilde’s, and the police are called. I’m hauled out, because there are a lot of people dead, obviously, and I’m brought out to a police car, and Olivia Wilde’s body is on a gurney. And then I think the dog comes running out of the place, and it had previously been dead, so it’s like a realization that Olivia will be able to come back; the Lazarus serum doesn’t ever get out of your system, it reincarnates itself over and over. That was the biggest change.
Emelie is your first truly villainous role; had you always wanted to explore the dark side in your acting?
I think so; I believe there’s a dark side in all of us! I just had to bring her out. I mean, she doesn’t do any cliched “villain” stuff, she’s just not all there as a human being. She’s not a complete person, so she needs to complete herself all the time, and this is the way she does it. I’d been searching for a long time to find a character who is so unique. Creating this warped human was very cool for me. I’m very proud of the film, and I hope people enjoy it.
