How Halloween Star Landed Her Role as Laurie Strode’s Granddaughter

Halloween director David Gordon Green reveals how star Andi Matichak landed her role as Laurie Strode’s granddaughter. Green’s revival of the long-running horror franchise released in 2018 to both critical acclaim and box office success, encouraging Blumhouse Productions to greenlight two sequels. The first of those follow-ups, Halloween Kills, is set to release on October 15 after being delayed a year due to the pandemic, while Halloween Ends is slated for October 14, 2022.

Though John Carpenter’s 1978 original remains a classic of the horror genre, its many sequels have been less well-received, and Green and co-writer Danny McBride embraced this state of affairs when pitching their take on the franchise. Halloween picks up 40 years after the events of the first film and ignores every other installment, effectively creating an entirely new continuity for the filmmakers to play with. A key part of the success of their reboot-quel involved exploring the impact of Michael Myers’ killing spree on three generations of Strode women: the first film’s survivor, Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), her estranged daughter Karen (Judy Greer), and her granddaughter Allyson (Matichak).

At a recent Q&A at Beyond Fest, where Halloween Kills had its U.S. premiere, ComicBook.com shares that Green says Matichak’s casting was a long time coming. The director had seen her audition for another of his projects while he and producer Jason Blum were in early talks on Halloween, and he knew he wanted to save her for what he was working on next. The experience, he says, struck him as particularly meaningful:

I had auditioned her for a project… In the early stages of Jason and I talking about making this come together… And the audition went something like this, ‘You’re not right for this. Let’s hang on to you for Halloween.’ … I’d never even met her, but I’d just seen an audition tape. And something about that struck me in a way, that she felt of the lore and the legacy that was right for this. And so it was awesome to see her interpretation of the character when it came fully realized. To realize that there is some sort of cosmic energy that can plant seeds early in the game, in a different process, in another arena entirely, and then come to fruition in here.

Casting Allyson was certainly important for Halloween, as the character occupies a pivotal role in the project. In terms of the character dynamics, it is through her relationships with her mother and grandmother that the audience experiences the lingering, multigenerational effects of Laurie’s trauma, though she herself doesn’t carry the same burden. Instead, she is thematically reminiscent of the youth and promise Laurie represented in Carpenter’s original, a reminder of what was lost when Michael first attacked. That’s a lot for one actor to carry, and miscasting Allyson could have been seriously detrimental to Green’s attempt to revive the franchise.

Thankfully, Matichak proved up to the task, and 2018’s Halloween hit that sweet-spot of homage and reinvention in part due to her performance. Her job in Halloween Kills is even trickier, though, as Allyson has now endured a significant trauma of her own – like her grandmother before her, she survived repeated attacks by Michael but had friends brutally murdered, and even lost her father. Fans don’t have long to wait to see how Matichak’s character handles everything being thrown at her, but if the Halloween Kills trailers are any indication, she responds with more fight than flight.

Source: ComicBook.com

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