HOW SCARY IS TOO SCARY?
Taissa Farmiga reveals why she hasn’t seen her sister Vera’s film The Conjuring yet as she takes on the fifth instalment of the horror franchise, The Nun, releasing this weekend in the UAE
James Wan created such an amazing universe with the Conjuring movies and also the Annabelle spin-offs.
Taissa Farmiga
I never had any aspirations to become an actress. Now I can’t live without it.”
Taissa Farmiga
FIVE YEARS AGO Taissa Farmiga was filming American Horror
Story: Coven (20132014) in New Orleans when she got a text from her sister, actress Vera Farmiga. “She told me a fun fact she learned researching a film called The Conjuring (2013) and how there is this witching hour, around 3am, when very bad things can happen,” recalled Farmiga, now 24 and then only 19.
The youngest of six children, Taissa Farmiga always has had a rocky relationship with things that go bump in the night. “I came home from the set around 2:30am, fell into a deep sleep and then woke up at precisely 3:09am,” she said. “Honestly, I felt like someone was in my room, walking around my room, pulling the covers off of me. I whipped on the lights and saw … absolutely nothing!”
Farmiga laughed. “In that moment,” she said, “I really wanted to text Vera back and say, ‘Thanks for being so sisterly and telling me about your work!’”
These days Taissa is the Farmiga who’s working in the Conjuring universe, starring in The Nun, a spinoff of The Conjuring 2 (2016) that will open this weekend in the UAE. Directed by Corin Hardy and written by James Wan and Gary Dauberman, the fifth installment in the Conjuring series revolves around a priest (Demian Bichir) with a haunted past and a novitiate named Sister Irene (Farmiga) who is about to take her final vows. The two are sent by the Vatican to Romania to investigate the death of a young nun who has taken her own life at a cloistered abbey.
It turns out that there is more to the case than meets the eye, and it involves a malevolent force known as the Demon Nun (Bonnie Aarons), a threat not only to human lives, but also to human souls. Origin story Set in 1952, The Nun is an origin story for the franchise, which began in 2013 with Wan’s The Conjuring and continued with The Conjuring 2, both of which starred Vera Farmiga as real-life paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren. It was in the latter film that the Demon Nun put in her first chilling appearance.
“James Wan created such an amazing universe with the Conjuring movies and also the Annabelle spin-offs,” Taissa Farmiga said, speaking by telephone from a hotel in Mexico City hours before The
Nun was to premiere.
“I think they’ve been so successful because he finds actors who can really emote and create a connection with the audience. With these films, you go in for the scare and the adrenalin rush. You love the feeling of fear coursing through your body. But these films make it a bit worse if you’re someone who scares easily. Once you start to care about these characters, you’re doomed.”
Farmiga laughed again. The actress described Sister Irene as “a woman of faith who is on a path with true dedication. She’s pure and holy. But she is also questioning and looking for answers. All of her life she has been having visions and wonders why. She wants answers.”
The film was shot in Romania, at Castel Film Studios in Bucharest, at Corvin Castle in Hunedoara and also in several castles in Transylvania. “We were in places that were so beautifully dark and gothic that, as an actress, I was transported,” Farmiga said. “There were times in small corridors and basements where I didn’t have to act fear. I was already beyond creeped out. One day we were filming in Romania in a war tunnel where weapons were stored. I’m on the ground and a demon is trying to attack me. All around me it was so moldy and muddy. I looked and my beautiful nun costume, which started out the day so pristine, was covered in dirt. It was frightening and so real.”
Fortunately she had a Conjuring veteran on speed dial. “Vera said, ‘Don’t open yourself up to these dark thoughts,’” Farmiga recalled. “She said, ‘Don’t bring work home with you. Leave it on the set.’”
Supernatural beliefs
Easier said than done for a young woman who isn’t sure if she believes in the supernatural. “Honestly, I don’t know what I believe,” Farmiga confessed. “I don’t want to know what’s out there.” She’s had plenty of opportunities to consider the question during filming of American
Horror Story: Apocalypse, the eighth season of the FX horror-anthology series that will premiere on September 12. Besides Farmiga, the returning cast includes Kathy Bates, Connie Britton, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, Dylan Mcdermott, Sarah Paulson, Emma Roberts and Gabourey Sidibe. Joan Collins also is joining the cast.
The new season is a crossover, uniting the casts of the show’s first two seasons, Murder House (2011) and Coven. “So far I’ve only been given one script,” Farmiga said, “but I can’t wait to see where it goes. The best part is being on the set and talking to actors who feel like family.”
A regular in the show’s first and third seasons, Farmiga has made only a couple of brief appearances on American Horror Story since then. To get back in the mood, she spent a week rewatching Coven. “I was blown away,” she said. “I sat
there saying, ‘Look at the clothes, the hair, the set design.’ It was five years ago, and I kept turning to my boyfriend and saying, ‘Do you remember this … Wait, you weren’t in my life then.’”
She laughed. “I did cover my eyes during the Kathy Bates parts, which were really dark, scary and gory,” she added.
Farmiga admitted to being a bit of a fraidy cat when it comes to horror movies. “I haven’t seen too many horror films in my life, thanks to my brothers and sisters,” she said. “I won’t use the word ‘forced,’ but they encouraged me to watch this movie with them about a demented doll named Chucky. Remember that one?”
That would be Child’s Play (1988). “I saw only 15 minutes of it, when I was 9, and ran out of the room crying,” she said. “Of course my parents weren’t home, and the older kids were up to shenanigans including scaring me. Chucky bothered me so much that I sat on our basement stairs thinking, ‘He’s coming around the corner to get me.’”
Wait. Basements are the worst place.
“I know, I know, I know,” Farmiga said, laughing. “My 9-year-old brain thought it was a good idea. What do you know at 9?” Don’t blame Vera Farmiga for the Chucky incident: She’s 21 years older than Taissa, and wasn’t even living at home by that time.
Now both Farmigas are movie stars, but they don’t necessarily see each other’s movies. “I have never seen the first Conjuring,” Farmiga said. “Vera invited me to the premiere, and I politely declined.”
“I did babysit her kids, which was a good thing,” she explained. “If I (had) seen The Conjuring, I would have been screaming the entire time in panic. Babysitting with all the lights on was the far safer choice.” Cindy Pearlman, The New York Times Syndicate