[Interview] Laura Gordon Talks ‘Late Night with the Devil’ and Halloween
The must-see Halloween horror movie of the year, Late Night with the Devil arrives on Shudder today, and we could not be more excited to continue our coverage by welcoming Laura Gordon to talk about playing Dr. June Ross-Mitchell, author of Conversations with the Devil in the film, and her earliest impressions of Halloween in American while growing up in Australia.
Written and directed by Colin and Cameron Cairnes, the film is set in 1977 and stars David Dastmalchian (Batman: The Long Halloween, Oppenheimer, Dune, The Boogeyman) as a nationally syndicated late night talk show host Jack Delroy, who, under pressure from execs after the recent passing of is wife, is about to put on one hell of a Halloween episode. The name of the show is Night Owls, and guests on this Halloween special include a psychic, a hypnotist who is also a supernatural skeptic, and a parapsychologist (played by Gordon) with her ward, Lilly (played by Ingrid Torelli), who she alleges is possessed by an evil entity, as viewers witness the chaos behind the scenes of the live production.
In our video conversation last week, Gordon said that much of what she knew about Halloween in America growing up were more warnings that enticements when she was young in Australia, where Late Night was shot and here the holiday is not celebrated as big as it is in the States.
“When I was growing up, you know the thing I remember?” she said. “I don’t even think it’s my parents who said this, but it was just this, ‘Oh no, in America they do trick or treat, and people put razorblades in the apples’. We were like, ‘Yeah, don’t go knock on people’s doors’. So that’s kind of the memory that sticks out to me. I don’t remember anyone doing trick or treat, except for maybe like four households would get together and those kids could go to those four doors. It was kind of like that.
“But I was in my home town last Halloween, and my nieces were doing it and they were super into it. Then I went down to the little playground where I used to play, and there was a whole festival, there were pumpkins. It was a thing.Â
“Also the other thing was we would hear about if you didn’t have treats you’d get rotten eggs on your house or toilet paper, so everyone was like, ‘We’ll just put something out just in case’.”Â
Laura tells us that she was originally going to play Delroy’s deceased wife Madeleine in Late Night, and only learned that she’d instead have many more scenes as Dr. June Ross-Mitchell just days before filming was scheduled to begin.
“I maybe had a week,” she said, “but then I got Covid, so I couldn’t be part of any of the rehearsals. I was on Zoom doing the table read, and meeting David and the directors on Zoom. It wasn’t until I think a little fitting the day before I filmed, but my first day on set was meeting everybody, which is kind of good because I would’ve felt like a fish out of water as June. She’s not from that world. She’s not a talk show host. She’s very much coming into this world.Â
“And I got to spend time with Ingrid on Zoom, kind of building that relationship, and David as well, because we do have a prior relationship that we did want to kind of flesh out a little bit. But Ingrid, our relationship was the one that had a significant backstory that we really wanted to kind of work on before we met.”Â
We also discussed Gordon’s favorite memories from the set, the day Dastmalchian introduced the all Australian cast and crew to Chicago style pizza, and much more about the making of this acclaimed new movie.
You can watch our full exclusive interview with Laura Gordon below.
Late Night With The Devil is available now to stream on Shudder or you can own it on Digital here.
[Related: Watch our interview with Ingrid Torelli on playing Lilly in Late Night with the Devil here.]
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