Recently, Horror Geek Life had the chance to talk with Danielle Harris, who shared what it was like growing up in the acting world, the horror genre, and her new movie Redwood Massacre: Annihilation.
Horror Geek Life: You started in this business so young, with TV work at age seven and then your first film was Halloween 4 at age eleven. When did you realize that acting was something you wanted to do, and could do, in terms of a career?
Danielle Harris: Oh god, I still don’t know if I want to do it if I’m being honest. (Laughs)I don’t really know how it all came about, I was really, really lucky. I was also older but played young because I was tiny, so that helped a little bit as a kid, kind of knowing how to behave better, I was eleven playing eight, and those couple years as a kid can make a big difference sometimes in terms of maturity. I think I just worked a lot as a kid because I was tiny, was older playing younger, and got really lucky and yeah, I’m still trying to figure out if I like what I do.
HGL: You’ve gone back and forth from television to film over the years. Do you have a favorite medium to work in or do you simply go where the work takes you?
DH: They are both totally different and amazing in their own right. With TV it’s so nice to be with a family to be with for a long period of time, if you are a regular on a series, you’re living your life with this group for nine months out of the year basically, so the consistency is pretty amazing, it’s nice to feel like you have a home. Movies are great because if you get bored as I do, you get to hop around a lot. The bad news is as soon as you start your first day on the movie you’re like ok, what’s next, because you know in a few weeks it’s over. Also, nothing really shoots that long these days, so you only have maybe twenty days, if you’re doing an independent movie, not like back in the day when you had three to six months unless you are making big studio films, then obviously you have more time. I think I’m opting for either movies, where I don’t work in every scene because I want to hang out with my kids, so local too, which doesn’t usually happen, or TV if I’m not the star, I’d like to be number five on the call sheet and work two days of the week, that would be the best job ever.
HGL: Television is going through another golden age with a huge competition between streaming services. Would you want to take a lead role on a show on a streaming service?
DH: I don’t think I want to be a lead on anything. (Laughs) You simply don’t have a life anymore, you don’t have time to do anything. I have one son about to turn two and another son who is three and a half turning four, so it’s a really important time to be with them I think. I had kids late in life so it’s one of those things where ok, I’ve spent all this time focusing on me and my career, now I just want to do things I really like, not work every day, just come in and knock it out of the park and then get to go home to my family. Also, one of the only good things to come out of COVID is being able to create your own content, see how inventive you can be, call in those favors and put things together that are sort of homegrown. I like that idea, having control over what you think your fan base would want to see. I mean, you have a bunch of creative people who do creative things for a living, and you lock us in a room, we’re going to go stir crazy, so we need to keep that side of our brain active.
HGL: You were part of one of that great action/comedy films in The Last Boy Scout. What was your experience like working on that film?
DH: Oh god, I love that movie, it’s so great. Honestly, I can’t believe I was in a movie like that as a kid. To think like holy crap, I was Bruce Willis’s daughter, that is such a trip to me. I was devastated when I heard Tony Scott passed, I had such a love and affinity for him, he was just amazing to work with. Damon Wayans I adore, Taylor Negron, also another one who has passed, I had a great time working with him. It was like being part of a big boys club, it was so fun, I really enjoyed it.
HGL: The Halloween franchise has been a big part of your career. What was it like, being part of Halloween 4 and 5 and then twenty years later coming back and doing two Rob Zombie Halloween films?
DH: I just love the fact that I played 17 (years old) 20 years after I played 10 (years old), that was really awesome, and people bought, which I thought was really cool. (Laughs) That just kind of happened and I guess I didn’t realize the massive fandom behind the Halloween franchise as much until I came back to the new one. I kind of re-sparked this whole thing I had forgotten about and other than Urban Legend, I hadn’t done a single horror movie in about twenty years, so it’s crazy to me that now over the last decade I’ve been able to embrace it, get into it, dig my teeth into it as an actor. Yeah, there was that big time gap in between, it was a trip to come again though, that’s for sure. It started something that I didn’t even know was there, which is pretty amazing.
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HGL: When did you realize you wanted to work in the horror genre? Were you always a fan or was it more about the opportunities that came your way?
DH: The things that I always loved about horror movies was being able to be cast as a lead and not having to be famous, not having to be a movie star, for lack of a better term. Especially me, who’s sort of the every girl, I’m just sort of me so I think to have that opportunity, to have those hard and challenging roles as an actress….if I think about the roles I’ve been able to conquer, you don’t get those opportunities unless you’re a movie star in big studio movies, so these small indie horror films are being written by real fanboys, who are fans of mine and other horror actors, and directed by these same fanboys or girls, and are creating these wonderful opportunities for us to flex our acting abilities, so there’s been a considerable amount of challenging scenes in movies I’ve done as an actor that I don’t think I’d been given in any other platform, that’s for sure.
HGL: Somewhere along the way you were given the title ‘Scream Queen’. As an actress, was this something that made you uncomfortable or did you embrace it and try to enjoy it?
DH: No, it’s great. I’d never bite that hand that feeds me, that would just be f*cking stupid. (Laughs) That’s an amazing title, I mean Queen anything, unless it’s ‘Queen sh*t’, that would be bad but other than that, I’ll take it. The fans have supported me having a career so I really dove into it and really found something I love about it and it’s such a small little group. I work with the same people, in front of and behind the cameras, we all know each other, we’re all friends, I don’t know where that happens…unless you’re super famous or part of Adam Sandler’s crew, they’re all together all the time, so we’re sort of the horror version of the Adam Sandler crew. You’ve got me, Kane Hodder, Tony Todd, Dee Wallace, there’s this group of us that just keep working together over and over again, I love it.
HGL: You’ve been in this business for a while now. Would you say women are finally getting better roles, both in front of and behind the camera, or do we still have a ways to go?
DH: We definitely still have a ways to go. The good and bad part is I think women are being asked to step up more and are being hired more because it looks good on the production company’s resume, more so than some of these women are actually qualified to do the job. You know the old saying, fake it to you make it, I just want to make sure everyone that is signing up for the work can bring it, that people that are hiring aren’t doing it just because we are women, we can do this. I’ve been hearing that often the last couple of years when I started directing, oh we need to get you to meet so and so because they need to put women on their rosters, and I don’t really want to be part of that. I want you to want me because of me, not because I don’t have a penis and it makes you look good, so we still have a ways to go to make things equal. It’s still an uphill battle, and imagine being a woman of color in this industry, I mean, I don’t know how we get past this. I just really think it’s time to move on.
HGL: Ok, so let’s talk about Redwood Massacre: Annihilation. What got you interested in taking this role, being in this movie?
DH: Well first of all it was shot in Scotland, I’d never been there before and I’m always looking to get myself into these situations where oh my god, I’m leaving in two days, with two kids, what am I doing? (Laughs) I definitely love putting myself in situations where it’s full speed ahead. Scotland was the first thing, also, the character kicks some really cool ass, and it was a similar character to the part I had done in the Hatchet franchise and I haven’t come back in that one, so I was missing playing that kind of female and I like that stuff so I was like yeah ok, I’ve got this. My family is also Scot/Irish, I had never been over to that side so I said ok, I’m going to do it. I grabbed my baby, my girlfriend came and took care of him, and we went for almost a month. I worked in some of the most insane places but had an amazing time. It’s one of the situations where the physical situation is so uncomfortable, we were filming in an underground bunker that was probably thirty-five degrees and it’s just a miserable feeling. I had like five layers of clothes on which is why I was all bundled, I didn’t care how I looked, I don’t need to be sexy, I’ll kick some ass and I’ll be warm. It was a lot of that really, the location, and I had such a great time because the cast and the crew were just so much fun and they really make or break those movies, when they are that physically uncomfortable, so yeah, I had a great time.
HGL: The atmosphere of that building, the bunker, it gave the viewer a sense of dread and suspense. As an actor, regardless of how many horror films you’ve done, is it hard to get that sense of dread across, or do you rely a lot on the other actors and directors for help?
DH: Well they put me in these places and locations that are in general, pretty gnarly, so it’s definitely not hard to act creeped out or freaked out in the locations I find myself working in fairly often. They are for the most part haunted or creepy places to begin with, very rarely do we have money to build a set, you can’t build stuff like that on a shoestring budget, but I really don’t need a director yelling “get scared!” as most of the time is just kind of happens.
HGL: You mentioned the kick ass part of your character. Was the physical part, the beginning, and end especially, always in the script, and did you embrace that part of the character?
DH: Yeah, it was always part of the script. I actually took Krav Maga when I was younger, I had a fitness studio for a couple of years, so I do like boxing and mixed martial arts stuff. I have form but I haven’t really worked out since I’ve had my kids, since I’ve gotten pregnant (laughs), so it’s been four years since I really hit it hard. Also, I’m working with Damien, who is like a superstar f*cking MMA guy, he’s been in championships all over the world and I have to fight him, no one is going to believe that I can whip your ass, teach me how to whip your ass! There were stunt guys too and so we worked really hard at choreographing that big fight scene at the end. Also, I was terribly sick, I had a horrible chest infection and a terrible cough and we shot that scene all day, a ten-hour day, so imagine doing ten hours of that fight scene in thirty-five degrees. What you do for your craft, I guess. (Laughs)
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HGL: The good news about the horror genre is it has an amazing fan base. The bad news is there is just so much content out there now. How will Redwood Massacre: Annihilation stand out and not get swallowed up by all the other films?
DH: Hopefully my fan base, I have great devoted fans, they will get the word out there about the movie. We’re doing the film festival circuit, we’re making the rounds, I’ll be talking about it with fans, I’ll be promoting it and just supporting because I should, it’s a great little movie. I mean word of mouth, that’s really what this community is about, and most good things are word of mouth, so hopefully, people are spreading the word as we speak.
HGL: COVID has thrown the whole world into chaos, including the entertainment industry. Saying that, have you been able to get back to work or do you have some jobs out there are in limbo, either to start or to be released?
DH: I just finished a movie, tentatively titled Host right now, that is actually about the pandemic, it came to me last minute because the actress who was cast fell through. My good friend was doing it so I said I’d step in, so I had to get my COVID test and wait for the results before I could work. We worked on it for just over three weeks and it was really scary actually, to be honest. It was a skeleton crew, maybe ten people, a lot of people are doing three or four jobs that aren’t equipped to handle that work, you can only have a limited amount of people on set. For me, we were working in the heatwave in California weeks ago, so it was one hundred and twenty-one degrees and we’re filming in a garage, all day, every day for a week and it was just really, really miserable. Everyone was wearing their masks, we have a COVID supervisor on set but the scary thing is the actors, including myself, aren’t wearing masks during our scenes. We are not five or six feet apart. Even though we are tested every other day there is still that day in between where when that person goes home you don’t know who they are around. It’s scary but we have to find a way somehow, we all need to get back to work, rip the band-aid off. I don’t know what the solution is, to be honest.
On a more positive note, I have been doing my own content. I have a show called Common Terror, it’s a play on 90’s DVD commentary, something from back in the day we don’t really do anymore. It’s actually filmed and it’s me watching films I’ve never seen before with my friends that are in the movie. For example, the episode I have premiering this week is me and Dee Wallace watching Cujo together. I’ll have three versions available, a little teaser up on YouTube and then I’m launching Patreon this week, there will be thirty minutes of the episode available on Patreon, and I also do a full ninety minutes of it. I’ve done seven episodes so far and have another six lined up for this week and I plan to release one each week. I’ve known some of these people for twenty or thirty years, so my relationship with them, what we talk about, is very different from what you would get if you interviewed them yourself. It’s great, I get to watch films I haven’t seen before and found out why my friends are famous. [Laughs]
Redwood Massacre: Annihilation will be released on DVD and On Demand by Uncork’d Entertainment on Oct. 20.
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