Following his interview with writer/director Bryce McGuire, Peter Gray wrapped up his talks for the forthcoming Night Swim with the film's lead actors, Wyatt Russell and Academy Award nominee Kerry Condon.
Based on McGuire's acclaimed short film, Night Swim stars Russell as Ray Waller, a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, who moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve (Condon) and their young children. Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home’s shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home’s past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under, into the depths of inescapable terror.
Ahead of the film's release in cinemas this week, Peter spoke to the two about their personal horror favourites, if their characters actions would mirror their own regarding the chilling mystery at the film's core, and what sound advice they've taken with them across their careers.
Based on McGuire's acclaimed short film, Night Swim stars Russell as Ray Waller, a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, who moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve (Condon) and their young children. Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home’s shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home’s past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under, into the depths of inescapable terror.
Ahead of the film's release in cinemas this week, Peter spoke to the two about their personal horror favourites, if their characters actions would mirror their own regarding the chilling mystery at the film's core, and what sound advice they've taken with them across their careers.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 - Hello, Kerry. - Hi.
00:01 - Hello. - How are you?
00:02 - Very well, thank you.
00:03 How are you?
00:04 - Doing good.
00:05 - Yes, thanks, good.
00:06 - Before I get into Night Swim, I just want to talk about horror in general, because I
00:17 feel like some actors tend to star in horror films but don't actually like horror films.
00:22 So are you actors that enjoy horror?
00:25 And if so, was there a film that was like your gateway into the genre?
00:32 - So I don't like horror films that are super scary about a murder kind of thing.
00:36 I do like a thriller kind of a horror.
00:40 So like horror feels like it encompasses a lot of different things.
00:44 But I think gateway, you know, now that I'm thinking about it off the top of my head,
00:48 Rosemary's Baby was a great one.
00:50 Like I would have loved to have been in Rosemary's Baby.
00:53 That would have been a cool one to have acted in.
00:57 And that's terrifying.
00:58 The end.
00:59 - Yeah, it's terrifying.
01:00 Great movie.
01:01 Yeah, I do like horror in the same kind of way that Kerry explained, is I'm similar.
01:12 I don't like just like slasher horror movies.
01:14 Not my jam.
01:16 I've watched a few.
01:17 It's sort of like, eh, not my jam.
01:19 But I do like, you know, my, it's sort of boring to say, but The Shining is probably
01:25 a lot of people's entry into horror.
01:29 And the great thing about The Shining is you don't even know why you feel unsettled.
01:34 And so there's this great element of filmmaking that goes into horror and that provides a
01:39 wide range of possibilities.
01:43 And it's fun to do that with good people.
01:45 It's also not fun to do it with bad people.
01:47 So you're trying to avoid that.
01:49 - Oh, that would be soul destroying.
01:51 - Yeah, it would be.
01:52 - When it comes to like Night's Woman, like one of the things that I really loved about
01:57 this was that your characters were smart.
02:01 Like especially Eve, you know, when shit starts to hit the fan, she's like, I want to, I want
02:06 to get out of here.
02:07 And like so many horror movies, the people sort of stay longer than they should.
02:12 And obviously here you're, you know, you're tethered to it, so to speak.
02:15 But like, if this was happening to both of you, would you like tail it as quickly as
02:21 possible or would you kind of want to investigate?
02:24 - That was, you know, that's interesting you brought that up because I found that kind
02:27 of hard, like trying to find the moment where Eve is like kind of suspicious.
02:32 So the timing of that was tricky.
02:34 If it was like too late, she seemed kind of dumb, you know?
02:37 So, and I agree, I agree with you.
02:39 Sometimes you're like, come on, this person would not stick around for this long.
02:42 So I had to try and play that realistic and I found that kind of tricky.
02:46 But in real life, would I stay?
02:50 Well, it depends how much I love my husband, I suppose.
02:53 Wouldn't it be?
02:54 - Yeah.
02:55 - No, it wouldn't.
02:56 - I'm very lovable, apparently.
02:57 You stuck around to the end.
02:58 Thanks.
02:59 - I don't know.
03:00 I know I'd probably leave because I wouldn't need a big house with a swimming pool.
03:07 - Yeah, I would.
03:10 - Part of what was good about the movie is that there's an element of like, yeah, they
03:15 do love each other.
03:16 She loves her husband and wants to believe a little bit somewhere that something else
03:22 is, that it's not, this thing isn't taking him over.
03:26 He's oblivious.
03:27 I mean, I'd say Rey is being possessed and doesn't know what's taking him, slowly been
03:34 taking him over as he breathes in the demonic pool fumes.
03:41 And so, but in real life, if it were me, I mean, yeah, I'm the same with you.
03:45 - You just move in.
03:46 - I'll burn it, move it.
03:47 I'll move into an apartment for a little while.
03:48 - You live in a van.
03:49 - I live in the valley in an apartment on like Roscoe and 73rd.
03:52 - Nobody knows where daddy's in the other country.
03:56 - I know, but it sounds valley-ish.
03:58 - I feel like I've heard that in a movie somewhere.
04:02 - Yeah.
04:03 - And because one of the things that I really love about horror is that it so often they
04:07 can, you know, there's always like this great emotional, like core to horror films and they,
04:13 you know, it's grief, trauma, like it can be such a great basis for something.
04:18 And then here, you know, you've got Rey diagnosed with MS.
04:21 So like, why, was there research into how to specifically, like organically portray
04:26 that?
04:27 - Yeah, we talked to a friend of Bryce who's been diagnosed with MS and took snippets away.
04:38 What we wanted to avoid was, you know, this isn't a movie about MS.
04:43 So it was important that it was involved and that it was in the early stages, but MS is
04:50 like the very, very wide array of, you know, early onset or the onset of MS to late stages.
04:57 Like there's everything in between.
05:00 So it wasn't like we wanted to hit it too hard because that would have taken away from
05:06 the actual story.
05:08 It was just a way in.
05:09 And so we feathered that in there.
05:13 - And you said like, you know, obviously the pool is going to be one of the main sort of
05:17 sets for this.
05:18 And like, there were some shots, I think it was like when Kerry, when you're like really
05:23 far down in the water and you're looking up and you can just see like the square opening,
05:26 like how much were you encased in water in this film?
05:32 - Well, it was a very deep swimming pool, you know, but I like swimming and I'm not
05:40 really nervous about being in deep water.
05:44 And also if you go down really deep and touch the bottom, you know, to get back up, you
05:48 can just spring off the bottom.
05:49 So like, there's a say, I felt a safety with being very far down because you can get back
05:54 up very fast sort of.
05:56 But those were kind of the things about it that I liked about the movie that sold me
06:00 on the movie.
06:01 It was kind of like a comic book aspect to it almost.
06:06 And the visual, like I knew it was kind of the cell really at the end.
06:10 It was like, if that's done really good, like it kind of, that'll be a really big cell because
06:16 bodies decomposing in the water had been like in that movie, Dead Calm, actually it's not,
06:22 I think it's Australian movie.
06:23 Do you remember that movie?
06:24 - Yeah.
06:25 - Billy Zane and Nicole Kidman.
06:26 - Yeah.
06:27 - Yeah, and then when she opens one of the things, all these dead bodies come out in
06:31 the water and they decompose.
06:33 And that, when I read the script, that was a memory.
06:35 It was like, that was scary to me when I was a child.
06:38 I remembered that visual of the bodies in the water.
06:42 So I was looking forward to that.
06:45 I thought that was what made the movie really unique actually.
06:49 - And speaking of like, 'cause obviously we know that there's something in the water and
06:53 we like, it sort of teased throughout it.
06:55 Like when you, like, were you aware of, I guess, how scary that creation was going to
07:03 look like?
07:04 Was it a case of when you finally saw the film, that's what it looked like?
07:06 Or that was what it would look like when you were filming it?
07:08 'Cause obviously that image of it, the head coming out of the water was like enough for
07:12 me.
07:13 - There's just elements of things that you're putting together.
07:17 So when you're making the movie, just, it's very difficult to tell.
07:22 You can see good shots and go, "Oh, that's creepy."
07:25 But if it's not put together well, and timed correctly, then the creepiness, creepy factor
07:31 can totally be changed.
07:32 And you have to trust.
07:34 That is a full, full trust job for the filmmakers that are doing it.
07:40 Like you have to really let that go when you're doing, especially when you're doing horror.
07:45 So that's an out of my hands.
07:47 I consider that totally out of my hands and trust.
07:50 - Yeah.
07:51 And then when I saw the movie, the visual effects hadn't been completed.
07:55 So I was like, "Well, they better be goddamn good guys, 'cause they certainly aren't good
07:59 now."
08:00 So, but anyway, so they are good apparently.
08:02 But I didn't need that though, like, because, you know, I had my imagination.
08:08 I could use my imagination.
08:10 That was sort of enough for me.
08:11 And then I did see the people who did the bodies and stuff.
08:16 But I looked at that more from like an artistic standpoint, as opposed to scary.
08:20 It was more like, "Oh, wow, that must have taken you ages to do the veins.
08:23 And that must have taken you ages to..."
08:25 You know what I mean?
08:26 I was more intrigued from an artistic point of view than a scared point of view.
08:31 - Yeah.
08:32 And like Ray and Eve here, like the solid unit, they're always there for some sound
08:37 advice.
08:38 So for you both personally, was there a piece of advice or any words of wisdom that's been
08:44 like passed on to you that have like stuck with you for your careers?
08:47 - Oh, for our careers, not just this movie.
08:50 - Yeah.
08:51 - Yes.
08:52 - Tell me.
08:56 - You won't like this one.
08:57 - Oh, no.
08:58 - The circus.
08:59 I don't know if you like it, you won't like it.
09:01 I think you might agree with it.
09:03 The circus at home has to be more fun than the circus away.
09:06 - Well, why, you know, I don't like that.
09:08 - I know, I know, I know, I know.
09:11 - The circus away is everything.
09:17 - But here's the thing.
09:19 That was my choice was to have a family and I was part of a family that was in the business,
09:25 obviously, and that was my choice.
09:27 And so when I made that choice in order for me to have the best life that I could and
09:33 continue to be inspired to do things that are new and different, once you make that
09:38 choice to have a family, that is, I think, something that is good advice.
09:43 - It is good advice.
09:44 - If you don't choose to have a family, it's obviously different.
09:49 - But it is good advice because otherwise you're just like not going to be calling your
09:52 wife, you're going to be out with the crew after work.
09:54 - Yeah, you're a bad husband and a bad father and it leads down bad roads.
09:58 Don't want to do that.
10:00 - Yeah.
10:01 - I don't know, I bloody wish somebody gave me advice.
10:03 Honest to God, nobody bothered their arse to give me advice.
10:06 I just had to learn everything the hard way.
10:09 So I don't really know, no advice.
10:12 I don't really have any advice, no.
10:15 I didn't need any.
10:16 - I feel like women, stronger than men, they learn things on their own, so that's all good.
10:23 - Aw, thanks.
10:24 I mean, I probably did.
10:25 I'm sure there's loads of people who I know.
10:26 - You have so many good directions, Martin.
10:27 - But they didn't give me advice, like life advice or anything.
10:28 - Maybe.
10:29 But what about, did Martin ever say something that maybe was an advice that stuck with you?
10:36 You know what I mean?
10:37 Not advice, just like something that you're like, "Oh, that was an interesting thing."
10:40 He didn't even mean to say that, but this is what I took from it.
10:44 - No, I can't remember off the top of my head, no.
10:47 I just think like, I suppose not advice, but people that I, most of the great people that
10:52 I've worked with tend to be, not think that they're great and always want to be better.
10:57 And I always noticed that in really great people.
11:00 Like really great actors weren't cocky and thinking like, "That's it, you got it, that's
11:06 a great one."
11:07 They were always trying to be better and they were always trying.
11:09 So a little bit of like not being 100% sure of yourself, to me, seemed like a good thing.
11:14 It made you think you could always be better.
11:18 So yeah, I can't think of, isn't that desperate?
11:22 I can't think of any advice.
11:23 I bet you you'll finish the interview and I'll remember a bit of advice.
11:26 - Oh well.
11:27 - That's okay.
11:28 They'll give you something to think about, but thank you so much for taking the time
11:31 out.
11:32 It was such a joy.
11:33 - Thank you.