Christine Taylor: It's All Jan's Fault

Many people don't know that the girl who played Marcia Brady is also that mean bitch who loses her hair from The Craft and the blond chick in Campfire Tales and Night of the Demons 2. Now Christine Taylor, star of Zoolander, Dodgeball, and wife of Ben Stiller, returns to her roots (they were blond back then, too) by starring opposite Jerry O'Connell in the new film Room 6. A Hospital Drama, with scary monsters, and that hot guy Shane Brolly from Underworld, and the director of House of the Dead II: The Apology = good movie (I think). Even if the movie sucks, Christine Taylor is fun and cool and I can't wait to see where her career goes. Hopefully she'll stay in the realm of horror a bit longer. Not only is she a huge fan, she's also so good at playing a bitch. Yay Bitch.

Thanks to Brad and Bloody Disgusting on this one...

So Christine, are you a huge horror movie fan?

I want to say that the first one that I remember seeing was Halloween. That, still to this day, is my all-time favorite!to me that film still holds up. It scares the!.and I was a young girl like everyone else! I had to babysit, and then there's the Exorcist, and every Friday the 13th, all the Halloweens. My brother and I, I remember, we got our dad to take us to see Friday the 13th, The Final Chapter. I grew up in Pennsylvania and it was this big deal, for us to see this movie. My poor dad had to endure it. But we knew it was all fake, even though it scared us!. All the summer camps, and everything obscure, I had to see. It wasn't that we ever thought there was real blood or anything, we got that it was fake. My dad would edit out all the sex scenes in the horror films we rented, because we were so young! Forget about the axe in the head, which was fine. But a guy and a girl taking a shower? It would just go to snow for the next 30 seconds until the scene was over!.then the horror would come back on.

So, you're 5 months pregnant and you have a kid at home!would you let your kids watch Room 6?

It is so hard these days! It was almost easier to control when we were younger. Now with satellite TV and all of the channels, already my daughter, she's going to be 3 next month, she knows how to use the DVD player. She's like, 'No mommy, press THAT button.' Just how savvy they are at an earlier age. It will certainly be hard to control. I don't know that I am gonna introduce her to the Horror Channel, or something, lol

How old are your kids going to have to be before you let them see Room 6?

It's funny, cause if you talk to my husband, he's got a slew of movies, he's got the embarrassing moments in the comedy, he says, 'I can never imagine Ella seeing There's Something About Mary. I never want her to see her dad in those situations. The zipper, etc.' I'll see how she's progressed and I will start to prepare her. I'll tell her that monsters aren't necessarily real.

In horror flicks, do you identify with the girl running away with the monster or beating the crap out of the monster?

Oh, Both. You always put yourself in the scenario!ok, what if that happens. Jaime Lee Curtis, she protects the kids first and then she hides. I think your imagination runs wild. For me it's a combo of both. It's the way to run away from the stalker or the creature or whoever is coming after you, and then how to conquer them!I think it's strange. It's from years of watching these movies! I have recurring dreams of Michael Myers. My husband is like, 'Are you crazy?' People do that when they're 14 or 15! not now.

We joke about it. But now, when I have those dreams, I know how to get out of it. I know I am going to be okay.

The name of your production company is Red Hours. Star Trek geek Much, Christine?

That is more than deliberate. I wish I could take any credit for it. But my husband is a star trek fanatic. Most people say, 'What is Red Hour films?' everyone who is a star trek fan knows that. The same with Mugatu. I never knew that until these questions came up when we were doing some interviews. Ben will slide star trek into any project he's working on. I see what passion he has for it, and he grew up watching it, and just saw how cool William Shatner is. I watch them now cause I didn't grow up watching them thinking how cool William Shatner is. I watch it now and I just, say, 'He was in on the joke, right?' and Ben will look at me and say, 'What do you mean? Look how cool he is!' he always seems like he's at a loss for how to stand or what position to move his hands. We have so much fun watching these episodes. You know, William Shatner was in Dodgeball and he's become a friend of ours. To Ben that's just the coolest thing ever, to hang out with Captain Kirk.

Tell us about waaaay back when you did your first horror flick!

Nooo! I did The Craft and Night of the Demons 2. Night of the Demons 2 was the first one that I did. I have told this story before. At the time I had lived in L.A. for about a year, I was 20 years old, or something. I had just gotten carjacked, in broad daylight, at gunpoint, the day I got Night of the Demons 2. And again, being a horror movie fan I was so ecstatic. It's got a big ensemble, a lot of the kids getting killed!I had gone through a really scary real life incident and I got to have this outlet onset, running around screaming having fun with kids my age, and we had a blast! It was not necessarily something I'd like to put on the top of the resume, when targeting employment elsewhere, but I had a blast doing it. And then I did another one called Campfire Tales, which I think was straight to video or straight to some cable channel. It was another urban legend type movie, kids sitting around a campfire talking about urban legends. There's nothing more fun than going into this fantasy world and making the room really dark and screaming.

Why did you decide to do Room 6? Aside from the hot guys (Jerry O'Connell and Shane Brolly) being in it, yum?

When I read the script, it stood out to me. I think a lot of typical horror films have a female driven lead that is supposed to run and get away! The interesting thing about this one is that it's not necessarily all that its cracked up to be when the film starts. You know she's having these dreams, and there's something off in her world. She thinks she's seeing these demons, but she blinks, and she realizes that she's just seeing a normal person. You're not quite sure if something tragic happened to her and she's seeing these things, or they're real. Its funny, because on shoots that are so short, like this one, at least for me, the anchoring and performance with the director Mike, it has all the horror movie elements the scares, but there is more to it. There's a deeper level and a deeper layer that makes my character!there are surprises and twists and turns. And it caught me off guard. I have definitely seen a lot of these and read a lot of these, and it wasn't exactly what I expected it to be. Which I love.

What's your character Amy like?

It's so much of a blur. Its only 18 days of a shoot!when you're shooting these kinds of films you put your trust in the director. For me the running joke is just that I think I might of had more screaming in this movie than any other horror movie. For some reason I just perfected the screaming and yelping. Nope, nothing specific I picked dup on her in the script. As we've gone one, she's just sort of completely confused throughout the movie and doesn't know how much of it is real and how much is fake!her trying to find that balance is her thing. It's been fun!She spends a lot of time looking with Jerry O'Connell who plays the Lucas character, for her fianc? played by Shane Brolly. He befriends her because they are in a similar situation. He's looking for his sister. They were all in the same car crash together. Yet she doesn't know him well enough to know if she should trust him or not, and there are always little things like that. Is he the good guy? Is she the good guy?

You did a cool stunt in Room 6 where a chick attacks you in the chapel. Tell us about doing stunt work while pregnant!

I was 5 ½ months pregnant during that, so we had to be careful during all that. The stunt crew was fantastic, my stunt double looked just like me. I saw it on the monitor, and they have a shot of an old woman reeling, and it happened so fast that I forgot that it wasn't me. She did it a lot more willingly than I did!. When the script came my way I didn't know I was pregnant. But as we got to talk about the specifics of it, I had to tell him. I didn't want to compromise his vision of what this film should be because he had a pregnant actress on the set. With something like this, with a certain time limit and budget, there isn't a lot of leeway. There was very little I couldn't do because of the pregnancy. I got pretty lucky. It'll be interesting to see how this little one is going to come out with all the screaming. I asked my doctor, and he said, 'You have no idea how many parents actually scream and fight during a pregnancy, and those kids turn out ok. So you'll be fine!'.

That scene of you in The Craft was way creepy.

I know! People don't like seeing me with my hair like that. My character starts out so mean, she is just a terrible, uncool girl, who definitely has her own issues, and is mean to everybody. She's racist and nasty. But when people get upset is that moment in the film where she's actually losing her hair, you start to see the tables turn, and you see her become pathetic and weak. It actually looked horrible! I was practically bald, my hair falling out, but it was fun one to do. I have fun doing those kinds of things.

You must have a comment on Marcia Brady?

The role I was born to play. I have heard it all my life growing up. I couldn't be more grateful, because the success of that film has opened up so many doors and given me so many opportunities. To this day if someone tells me that they liked my performance as Marcia Brady I don't roll my eyes, I am so proud.

Has Maureen McCormick, the O.G. Marcia, ever commented on your portrayal of her?

I met her at the premiere of the sequel. She was so complimentary. But at the end of the day I put my own spin on it, and I was basically doing an impersonation of her, and the kids on the show were the first to admit that they were just playing themselves. She could not have been more complimentary!

Some cool trivia:

I was offered the role of Marilyn in The Munsters as well. I never really grew up watching The Munsters!Maybe we don't need to recreate any more of those 60's characters.

Room 6 just wrapped the week of March 15th and will be out in 2006! you heard it from Christine, here at Pretty/Scary firsthand...