Interview: Talking PYEWACKET with Writer/Director Adam MacDonald and Co-Stars Nicole Muñoz and Laurie Holden

Out today in limited theaters and on various VOD platforms is writer/director Adam MacDonald’s stunning occult-fueled thriller, Pyewacket, which is centered on a teenager named Leah (Nicole Muñoz) and her mom (Laurie Holden), who have been coping with a recent family tragedy in very different ways. Their inability to communicate drives a wedge between them, with Leah utilizing the dark arts as a coping mechanism, and as you can probably guess, no good can come from the angsty teen summoning demons to do her bidding.

Daily Dead recently spoke to MacDonald, Muñoz, and Holden about their experiences collaborating together on Pyewacket, and the trio also discussed the real-life inspirations behind the project, how they were able to inject a bit of their own experiences into their performances, and how much they enjoyed collaborating on Pyewacket as well.

Laurie Holden: Hi, Heather. Before we start, I wanted to thank you again for that unbelievable review. That really touched us so much. I know I can speak for everyone in saying that, because it’s clear you so got our film.

You're gonna make me cry and that's a terrible way to start the interview, because I’ll be blubbering the whole time [laughs]. But thank you. I didn't always have the best relationship with my mom growing up, and this story really resonated with me because it just makes you realize now, in retrospect, that all these things that might be going through your head when you're a kid, are just awful. You never fully understand your parents at that age, so it really just hit me hard. I loved, loved, loved this movie, and I thought both you and Nicole were just fantastic.

Adam MacDonald: I'll just say, Heather, that I was touched by your review when you made it personal to yourself because I don't say this often, but Nicole and Laurie know that the film is very much from my own life too, so that's where I drew a lot of that stuff from. When someone can connect with it, it means a lot to me. Some people have this misconception that with mothers and daughters and mothers and sons, it's always perfect or unconditional love and all this stuff, but it's more complicated than that. So, I appreciate it.

Well, I appreciate that, too. Adam, can you start off by talking about blending those real-life experiences you've had with the real-life folklore of Pyewacket? Because once I started doing my own digging into it, I was really intrigued by everything I was reading.

Adam MacDonald: Well, Pyewacket came from reading William Friedkin's biography. I forgot that he did a movie called The Guardian that I saw in the theater in 1990, but I hadn't seen it in a long time, so I bought it. When I watched it, I forgot that the nanny in the movie mentions the name "Pyewacket," and I was blown away by how powerful that name was. So, I just dug deeper into the folklore. And, yeah, it's from Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins in the 17th century. He came across a coven of witches and they heard the name "Pyewacket," the form of a nymph or something catlike or whatever, but I had this stroke of inspiration with that name and I was just looking for the right story because I wanted to go with the occult and it just made sense, it all pieced together.

So, I also used a bit of my own life. My mother moved me up north at that same age during high school. I wasn't into witchcraft or anything, I just used that as a backdrop, a metaphor for the relationship and how tumultuous it could be. But my mother saw the movie at TIFF and I thought, "Oh wow, what's going to happen?" And she loved it, I think because the mother's the victim, right? I don't know [laughs]. But I just drew a bit from my own life to anchor it, and that was really it.

Nicole and Laurie, the relationship that your characters have on screen is so real and it feels so grounded. When you were looking at this script, what was it about these characters that spoke to you in terms of wanting to dive into this very complicated dynamic that they share?

Nicole Muñoz: Reading the script the first time, all I could see was my behavior as a teenager. And it really mirrored my own feelings at that time, the frustration and isolation and not being listened to and having a parental figure—whether they mean it maliciously or not—holding things over your head, so that you feel powerless and frustrated. I really related to a lot of those things, and grief was a big part of my upbringing as well. So, it was really personal to me, too, and when I talked to Adam about it, and found out it was personal to him as well, I knew we were doing something really special, where we could speak a lot of truth and send that out into the world.

Laurie Holden: I related to this character because I, too, have experienced an inordinate amount of loss in my life. I fully understand the five stages of grief, and I think that part of the reason this film resonates with so many people is because they can relate to it, too. I think that loss, longing, and relationships that are complicated and imperfect are universal experiences. People can relate to it from every walk of life and all over the world. I just loved the authenticity and the realness of who these people are and how they related to one another, told against the backdrop of a dark fairy tale.

You mentioned truth, and there's such a brutal honesty to the interactions between both of you. Adam, did you give them a lot of time to find that chemistry and that back-and-forth, or was it all just something that came together because of the people that you were able to cast in this?

Adam MacDonald: It was a bit of both, actually. With Laurie, I'm a huge fan of The Walking Dead and her other work. I told her I saw that scene where her sister dies in front of her and she just went so deep and so far, that I knew someone like that I could go to war with. I could go to Mount Everest with this person.

And Nicole, her audition was so strong. She's the only audition that made me emotional, that made me cry when I watched her audition, and I was looking for that. I just knew putting them together, it would be something interesting. They're both so raw and so talented. They have different ways of working, for sure, but they spent their own time together. I encouraged it anyway, but they would hang out all the time. They did a bunch of things together, which they can talk about, but they found their way and they developed their own relationship, so when we started shooting, it was a joy to watch them work because they were more than prepared on many levels. And plus, I let them play. I didn't want to stifle any of that creative energy they were sharing, which is important to me, so I was lucky.

Laurie Holden: Well, we were lucky too, Adam, because you were our biggest cheerleader and you really just allowed us to creatively fly. You let us take our time, which is unheard of on an independent film at this level where we're shooting with time constraints and everything. But I felt so supported, and I know Nicole did, too, and every day when I looked at you behind the monitor, and you would kind of tear up or well up or cheer and get excited, we just wanted you to be happy. We could tell when we were hitting beats and when the story was really resonating with you by just looking at you behind the monitor, and it meant so much and it was really a collaborative team effort.

Nicole, for you, so much of this movie is seen through Leah’s perspective, and there's something incredibly engaging about your performance. She's so relatable and even if she's doing these sometimes terrible things, you still feel for her and you empathize with her and understand where she is coming from. Was it hard to find those different beats and walk that fine line with Leah as a character? That's not always an easy thing to achieve.

Nicole Muñoz: Well, I played her reacting to her circumstances. I'm happy people are relating to her, but I didn't really plan that, I just played with what was coming out of me and what I had experienced and my interpretation of who she was in these circumstances. I wanted to portray it through a really frustrated and sad and lonely teenage girl vibe. And I'm happy that people are empathetic and can understand the things that go on behind it, and maybe why she's driven to say things that she says and why she does things that she does, too. All this occult stuff is just her coping mechanism, it's her suppressing that panic that is constantly in her chest, and just her way of dealing with all the things that have been thrown at her in such a short amount of time.

Adam MacDonald: It is hard to enlist it to pathos, right? Because acting is such an exterior-like thing, you want to display the emotion where audiences can really feel it. Nicole has that, for sure. One of my favorite shots in the film is when Leah is feeling guilty, there’s so much guilt built up inside of her, she doesn't know what to do with it. She's just lying there in her bed looking up, and a tear comes down. I didn't ask for that tear, Nicole was just in the moment and allowed us to watch her. It's beautiful, it wasn't an acting thing, like, "Watch me cry now," it was so organic.

---------

In case you missed it, check here to read Heather's 4-star review of Pyewacket.