CraveOnline: How soon did Jennifer and Sylvia Soska call you for See No Evil 2?
Katharine Isabelle: Pretty soon.
They had to be vague at first but they told me they wanted all their favorite cast members back.
Yeah, we’ve promised to always work together on everything from now on.
How different a character to Mary do you get to play?
Very different.
Something I always wanted to ask about Ginger Snaps is did you have to wear mouthpiece for most of that movie for the teeth?
Yeah, a dentist made me a set of fangs but it gave me a lisp so I had to ADR most of the movie.
That was my next question. So you did have to redub your lines.
Yeah, because there would be lines like, “Ask Sam, he’s the expert” and I’d be like, “Why don’t you athk Tham, he’th the ekthpert.” It’s really not scary when you have a giant lisp and sound like Sylvester the Cat.
Were you happy you got to do two sequels to Ginger Snaps?
Yeah, they were fun. I’m generally not a fan of sequels but they were definitely fun to shoot and I always like to work with Emily Perkins. She’s awesome.
How much do girls come up to you and talk about that movie and say how much it impacted them?
A lot. Lots of people do. Not just girls. Girls, guys, everybody. It’s amazing that 15 years later people are still, and kids that weren’t even born when it was made. I guess it really struck a chord with people. Emily and I really liked it when we read it and when we were making it, but this was before werewolves or vampires were the popular thing. We were doing this weird Canadian independent movie about menstruation and werewolves.
It was dark and funny, we thought it was cool but Emily and I also think we’re both totally weird. So we were like, “I don’t know, maybe no one’s going to watch this. Maybe they’ll hate it and we’ll never work again.” We thought it was good, but when you’re making something like that, you’re just like, “I don’t know. Maybe we’re the only ones.” Thankfully people really got got on board.
It’s definitely lasted the test of time and I think that’s one of the perks of practical effects and no CGI. If we’d been using 1999 CGI, it would’ve looked like absolute crap and no one would have ever watched it past two years later. Because it’s all really well done special effects, practical effects, Paul Jones did the first film, it looks really good and you can still watch it. It still looks up to date. It doesn’t look totally dated.
Since it’s that time of year, what are some of your favorite horror movies?
I don’t watch horror movies. I like classic horror movies, like I like Jaws and Apocalypse Now is my favorite movie and it’s fairly horrific although it would not be characterized as a horror movie per se. I really don’t watch them. I’m scared. I’m already scarred for life by being in horror movies. I can’t walk through an underground parkade with high heels on. The click click clacking, by the time I get to the door, I’m in full blown panic. I’m out camping in the woods and I hear a twig snap, I’m like, “Fuck it, going back. I want no part of it.” So I don’t need to be any more traumatized by horror movies than I already am.
Since a lot of people have seen American Mary by now, and we can put a SPOILER WARNING just in case, I did want to ask you about the ending of that movie. Do you consider it a happy ending for Mary?
Yes. I don’t think there was any other way that it could’ve ended. She was her own masterpiece. She was vindicated in the end by what happened to her. I think she was satisfied with that. She’d gone down such a path and she really wasn’t a bad person to begin with. I think it needed to go that way.
How good did you get at suturing for that movie?
I was definitely taught briefly. I think people think there’s a lot more actual gore and surgery in that movie than there really is. If you actually watch it, there’s really not that much. Suturing a turkey at the very beginning was part me and part someone else. That was kind of all I did. There was really not a whole lot of suturing that I had to do.
Now, if I’m at a party and someone gets too drunk and hurts themselves, I convince them that I’m a nurse and I know what to do. If it’s only a superficial subdermal laceration, they’ll be fine if they just stop screaming. I’m pretty sure I could stitch someone’s hand back up if they stayed still long enough. I wouldn’t recommend it.
Was the milkshake scene Mary’s most vulnerable moment?
Yeah, of course. It’s the only moment she actually smiles during the movie. It’s the only moment that you see her have a real genuine relationship with anybody, with Lance. Everything else is fake and superficial.
If you’re scared of horror movies and it sounds intense even to do them, was Freddy Vs. Jason as intense, or was that just a fun wild romp?
That was really fun. We had a good group and Robert Englund is so sweet. I actually watched my first Freddy movie in the trailer on set for that.
Which one, the first one?
Yeah, the first one. My brother had been traumatized for life when he was a child by Freddy movies, and I somehow managed to avoid them, so it wasn’t like a lifelong holy shit thing. It was just like, “This is really fun. Okay, this is going to be awesome.”
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
