Flashback Weekend 2017: Katharine Isabelle, Ken Kirzinger, Paula Shaw, and Jesse Hutch Look Back on FREDDY VS. JASON

From August 4th through August 6th, Flashback Weekend Chicago Horror Con took over the Windy City, and Daily Dead was on hand for all the horror-fied festivities. Throughout all three days, this writer served as one of Flashback’s co-hosts, and brought back some highlights from several of the panels held over the course of the convention.

Next up are these panel highlights from the Freddy vs. Jason reunion, which featured Katharine Isabelle, Ken Kirzinger, Paula Shaw, and Jesse Hutch. They chatted about their respective characters, the pressures of living up to the fan expectations, working with Ronny Yu, and both Isabelle and Hutch discussed their death scenes in Freddy vs. Jason as well.

For Katharine and Jesse, I would love to hear from you about what it was you saw in these characters, because they’re kind of the worst couple ever, but I say that lovingly. But initially, what were your thoughts about them coming into the film and how did you guys play up that confrontational dynamic? Was that all in the script?

Katharine Isabelle: It was all written in the script. We were the worst characters. We were terrible people. Yeah, that was all there. We didn't have a lot of improv-y stuff. I mean, they gave me actual menthol cigarettes to smoke, which I thought was sort of unnecessary. I was like, “Do they have to be menthol?” Ronny said, “It says menthol in the script, right?” 

So, Ronny was very committed to that script [laughs].

Katharine Isabelle: We were all very committed, especially Ronny [laughs].

Jesse Hutch: That was easy for me to say those lines. Honestly, just to act like such a dickhead was kind of newish for me, I suppose. Then it sort of just kept happening. Probably for like 10 years. Bring that guy in, he's the dickhead. Yeah, I just played the mean guy for a long time after that.

Katharine Isabelle: I actually auditioned for Monica Keena's role and they were like, "That's great, that's great. Can you come back for the slutty, bitchy best friend?" I don't know what they saw in me [laughs].

For Ken and for Paula, coming into this movie, you guys are both playing iconic characters that have already existed for decades. Was that daunting at all to portray those characters that fans had been so attached to for decades at that point?

Paula Shaw: Well, first of all, I'm an actress and it was a job, so that was really that. One of the things I did during my audition for Ronny was scream. I can really scream! Really loud! So it was that scream that probably got me the job. That, and apparently I seem really enraged and evil, too.

Ken Kirzinger: I was just too dumb to know what a big deal it was. I went in for the stunt coordinating job, and they offered me the Jason job, and I thought to myself, Sweet, that's easier. I didn't really figure it out until later on when I started promoting the show with Robert [Englund], where we would go into a radio station and do a little deal there and we'd come out and there would be fans waiting for us outside. I turned to Robert one day, I think we were in San Diego for Comic-Con, and I said to him, "Wouldn't this be cool if it was number one at the box office?" And sure enough, it was for two weekends in a row. I really didn't know what a big deal it was to play Jason until after the fact. I just had fun with it.

Paula, your version of Mrs. Voorhees is a little more intense than we had seen before, and I know a lot of it has to do with the surrealistic nature of your scenes. How was it working with Ronny on that performance? Did you ever feel like you wanted to pull that character back a little bit or was it just a lot of fun to unleash that kind of ferocity in this film?

Paula Shaw: An actor likes nuance. You always like to give humanity to your character whenever you're playing a character, but it wasn't like that with this. This seemed black and white. This was not about showing her human side because there really wasn't a chance in the script to do that. Of course, you could say that I did get a chance to show my love for my son, so that meant I was playing a mother who has a sense of vengeance to her, a vengeance that a lot of mothers would also have in the same situation. So in that sense, I could justify everything.

Katharine, a big part of Freddy vs. Jason is the relationship between you, Kelly [Rowland], and Monica [Keena]. Did Ronny give you guys time to hang out a little bit and get that camaraderie going?

Katharine Isabelle: No, he really didn’t. Kelly was like, “Girl, you're going to come over to my place, and I'm going to make you fried chicken, we're all going to hang out, and we're going to go get sushi and just hang out together as much as we can.” The three of us were doing that all on our own. Both Kelly and Monica were staying at a hotel fairly close to where I was living at the time, so it was easy to just go and hang out. We mostly ate. That's what we did.

Jesse, your death probably is the most vicious of the entire film.

Jesse Hutch: I deserved it [laughs].

Yeah, you definitely deserved it. Can you talk about your experiences creating that scene? And Ken, how involved were you, since you were working in this scene, but from the other side of things?

Jesse Hutch: When I booked the role, it actually wasn't very clear because in the script it was like, my character's in the band, and he gets killed, so that was cool. But then I showed up one day, and they were like, "Okay, so we're doing full prosthetics, which means we're going to make a replica of your body.” And I was like, "Is that legal? [laughs]."

So, we went ahead and did it, and it was an 18 and a half hour process, which we had to do straight. They wanted to break it up, but I just wanted to do it and get it over with, so we got a bunch of Mountain Dews and Red Bulls, and me and six dudes did this full body prosthetic process. It was so weird to see that, because when you look in a mirror you see a reflection of yourself, and you're used to that. To go up and see yourself how everyone else sees you, it was so bizarre.

We also went through all these tests, and ultimately the dummy looked too floppy, so they had to go half-real, half-fake body. We did three or four days of tests on this in some warehouse over and over, where it’s me dying, and the effects guys are filming it and showing Ronny. Finally, it all came together, the blood and the crunching body, and Ronny was very happy about how it came out.

Ken Kirzinger: I just remember the first time I read it, because it didn’t tell me enough to know what to expect on the day we were going to shoot it. When I was stabbing Jesse, I was actually dipping the blade into a bucket of blood and spraying that and I thought, That looks great. That's so cool. Then, when I knew we were going to fold the bed, I just knew it was going to be such a cool kill.

Again, I didn't realize until later on how important good kills are in these kinds of movies. You grow to appreciate that. When Jesse and I worked on Joy Ride 3, the opening to that has a great kill sequence, too. Whenever I get asked, "What's my favorite kill in the movie," it's that one. Nobody is expecting Jason to fold that bed. It was a bit with the timing and stuff, but it just came off so well and I just loved it and knew people were going to love this, too.

Katharine, I always feel so bad for Gibb’s death, because she's passed out and things are happening around her that she doesn't know about. And beyond that, she's also being terrorized in her dreams. Did you have fun shooting the dream sequence stuff, especially because that set was so creepy?

Katharine Isabelle: Oh, yeah. So there was an abandoned mental institution in Vancouver called Woodlands. There are two, actually. There's Riverview, which is like the fun one. It's still possessed. But Woodlands was really not the fun one at all. It was really, really scary. I worked all night on a different film about heroin-addicted prostitutes called On the Corner in the really bad part of Vancouver until 7:30 in the morning. Then, my call time for Freddy was 9:00 in the morning, so I worked all night, took off my crack scabs and my junkie arms, and drove to the mental institution. I walked into my trailer, and there was a bouquet of flowers and an 8x10 black and white headshot of Freddy Krueger and it said, "For Katie. My favorite victim. Love and death, Freddy."

I was crying when I saw that. It was the most surreal thing in my career at that time. So here I was, already sleep-deprived, and when you're sleep-deprived, it’s hard to do this scene where you're sleeping, and that's when Freddy gets you, and then you're in the boiler room with Freddy, and I was just like, “Holy shit, I really don't know what's happening here, exactly,” [laughs]. It was great. That led to my terror because I was exhausted and strung out. But they tore that place down, and they built condos on top of it, and now for some “reason,” people cannot move out of there fast enough [laughs].

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In case you missed it, check here to catch up on all of our coverage from Flashback Weekend 2017.