Madison Iseman joins the cast of Annabelle Comes Home as Mary Ellen, the baby sitter in distress!
The third installment in the lucrative New Line horror franchise is currently filming and The Knockturnal was able to get an exclusive interview with Iseman on set at Warner Bros studios. Iseman discusses her character, the Warrens and scary occurrences on set. Check out the interview below!
The Knockturnal: Can you please describe your character?
Madison Iseman: She is the babysitter of Judy Warren [McKenna Grace] and she’s kind of this almost perfect, idealistic girl. She’s very pure, she kind of has her whole life planned out in front of her. She’s very put together so of course when everything kind of goes wrong, she has an interesting way of dealing with it, it’s definitely not what she’s used to.
The Knockturnal: What is Mary Ellen’s objective?
Madison Iseman: Her objective is always Judy, make sure Judy’s fine and taken care of and Mary Ellen she’s very close to the Warrens so she feels too responsible, especially when everything kind of goes awry to make sure everything’s taken care of. And she takes a huge responsibility as far as taking care of everything, especially when her friend comes over as well and she feels a big responsibility for Daniela [Katie Sarife] as well. So she kind of puts on the burden of everyone else in a sense. She’s a babysitter, caretaker.
The Knockturnal: How is Mary Ellen’s relationship with Judy?
Madison Iseman: They’re more friends in a sense. Judy trusts Mary Ellen a lot, in a lot of ways and kind of uses her to lean on. Mary Ellen is also this kind of pure, spiritual person so there’s that sense of it too, especially when all the demonic stuff comes to play. They’re very close, she cares a lot about Judy.
The Knockturnal: How does she feel about the Warrens and what they do?
Madison Iseman: She’s the kind of girl who’s shut off to everything in that world to a sense. There’s more of a back story that goes more into it. It’s kind of like, if I don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist I think in her mind so when things start happening she doesn’t want to believe they’re actually happening in the first place until she finally accepts that, oh yeah it’s happening.
The Knockturnal: What are some of your favorite horror films?
Madison Iseman: I love The Ring, the original Ring, well that was like my childhood. Like I remember watching that when I was a really young girl and being absolutely terrified, that and The Grudge. I would shower, and you know the scene and I would be like, is there going to be hair in my hands, scarred me for life! Those were the two but I loved horror films growing up as well but they just scared me, but also horror films aren’t fun unless you get scared I find.
The Knockturnal: Is there anything on set that scared you or anything that you still have to shoot that’s kind of scary?
Madison Iseman: Oh there’s a lot of stuff coming up that I’m a little nervous about. As far as what we’ve done so far, nothing has gotten too much into the meat of super scary stuff. We’ve played with Annabelle some which was very creepy. We had the set blessing which was actually very nice when the priest came and made everything feel a lot better. And I wasn’t scared at all until I started talking to James and he was telling me all these stories from the previous movies, I was like wait what did I sign up for? There’s one thing too, you know it’s based off real people and real instances but Mary Ellen isn’t a character that’s real so I was like I’ll be fine, she’s not a real person and then I was like oh, it doesn’t matter there’s still weird stuff that happens. But nothing has happened to me yet and me, myself is kind of turned off to it as well so I feel like if you’re not open to it, it doesn’t happen. We’ll find out! But everything has been fine so far.
The Knockturnal: Having met the actual family, do you believe in supernatural?
Madison Iseman: I don’t know because I’m a Christian so I feel as a believer you have to believe in some other part as well, but it also scares me so bad, same as Mary Ellen. We’re very equal on this, we just choose not to think about it or if you hear something creepy it’s just a pipe or something. It scares me a lot!
The Knockturnal: Did you have a creepy doll growing up or anything scary happen to you?
Madison Iseman: One time my mom was blow drying my hair, I was maybe eight or something like that and we heard footsteps coming up the stairs and we were thinking it was my dad coming home from work and when we turned it off she was like, John… and we heard nothing. I remember it so clearly as a young child and she remembers it too and after that I slept in my parent’s room for like two years, it was not good. They were like ok, you’re going to talk to somebody, we’re going to figure this out, you gotta sleep in your own room. I used to think my house was haunted! Every time I go home for the holidays, I’m like I don’t want to sleep in my room mom it’s so scary but it’s an older house too. I don’t know, just creepy. I’m also like everything scares me, I’m a really big chicken. Yeah this movie’s been a lot of fun!
