Let The Right One In Cast Talks Tackling Vampires Through The Lens Of Addiction In New Adaptation
Inspired by John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let The Right One In comes a new television adaptation through Showtime that expands the original story and tackles vampires through the lens of addiction. I spoke with the cast of Let The Right One In at New York Comic Con about the themes and challenges of this new project.
Showrunner Andrew Hinderaker expressed why he was so interested in adapting Let The Right One In for television. “It’s one of the most extraordinary films ever made and […] it is probably the most moving horror film ever made. I've tried to pay tribute by simply reading the novel dozens and dozens of times and same with the film […] because I really loved them both,” he shared with me. “Then it gets to a point where that novel and that film are imprinted in your DNA almost and then I got to start to imagine what this story might be and to let the novel and the film inspire me.”
While he loved the original novel and films, he was more interested in expanding the world than doing a literal adaptation. “I think what can happen in a lot of adaptations is you try to be desperately faithful to literal story points. The characters, the setting, but the truth is this novel has the most beautiful precise adaptation in the film,” said Hinderaker. “So for me the question was, in a long form like television, how can the novel and the film and really even the American adaptation that Matt Reeves directed […] inspire me to tell a story that's entirely its own thing?”
Demián Bichir takes on the role of Mark, a man who has been desperately trying to find a cure for his daughter Eleanor who was turned into a vampire 10 years earlier. “When I read the script and I saw this beautiful assortment of new characters and new subplots that made the whole thing richer that's when I thought, ‘I will watch this,’” said Bichir, calling the role “physically exhausting and emotionally draining.” “I'm going to make it, but I will watch it too because you don't see many stories where a father has to do anything and everything that is in his power to keep his daughter safe and alive and well fed.”
Hinderaker’s take on the source material digs deeper into vampirism as a parable of addiction. “There’s an extraordinary moment in the film where the child vampire attacks someone and then after it's over she doubles over and cries. It felt to me [like] watching somebody struggling with addiction, the sort of shame and sadness that follows,” he shared. “That idea of wanting to explore that theme in all of its manifestations in the series includes that there is a literal drug in our show that has people behaving suspiciously like vampires. [It] creates a really thrilling mystery for our characters to solve, but it also allows the show to explore what is it to be addicted to this highly destructive drug and what does it do to not just the people in it, but to the city at large.”
Anika Noni Rose, who plays mother and homicide detective Naomi, called it a “really interesting time” to be looking at this story through the lens of addiction. “We're in the middle of another epidemic in our country, the first drug epidemic that came with empathy, which is really interesting. I think it'll allow people to have a sense of connection to this because […] when we look at addicts it's very easy to label them as monsters, right?” she shared. “But if we're the parent of that addict, is that a monster or is that the child that we brought into the world? Is that the person we love? There's always a different viewpoint and a different way to understand what is happening, so when you see these monsters in our series and you know that […] they don't want to be monsters.”
While other stories show the appeal when it comes to being a supernatural vampire, Let The Right One In tackles the harsh realities of it. “Most are about a romantic love and connection between a vampire and a [human] that they meet. This one is very different because it’s got that unconditional [family] love […] and that’s where the love story is,” said Jacob Buster, who plays teenage vampire Peter. “It’s really about loyalty versus morality. Obviously you’re loyal to your family and to the people around you that you love, but are you so loyal to the point that you would give up your morals to save them? I love that it asks those questions.”
In the first episode of Let The Right One In, Grace Gummer’s character Claire serves as our eyes into this world of vampires as she learns that not only is her late brother Peter still alive — he’s a vampire. “My character starts out […] in a very different world, in a very different life, and then has to make the decision in a matter of hours whether to completely upend her entire life to save her brother who she thought was dead for 10 years,” she shared. “We see her completely fall apart and then be rebuilt and make a series of very morally ambiguous decisions that come at a cost.”
“There were so many challenging moments,” said Gummer about the Showtime series. “That was really hard going to those dark places of my mind, but […] it's also tricky to not completely let go of it, especially if I’ve got to do it again the next day. […] I would have to come home from work and really have to meditate or take a walk [to] remind myself that I’m not in that amount of pain. It was also hard to do a lot of these scenes with special effects. A lot of what I was doing was reacting to a blank wall or a piece of tape that would be eventually be a monkey, but it was literally air.”
Hinderaker thrived off of the challenging aspects of the production. “I genuinely mean it when I say any moment that might have been challenging was challenging because it was ambitious and those challenges are thrilling,” he shared. “What I will say is there is an image in the first episode where something pretty dark has just happened. Demián [Bichir]'s character reaches down his hand and Madison [Taylor Baez]'s character — his daughter — reaches up her hand and they take each other's hand. What I always try to remember and what I let our writers know is whenever you feel lost look at that image because that's the show. That moment […] really emblemized what the show is about.”
New episodes of Let The Right One In drop Sundays on Showtime.
