Pet Sematary Interview: Jete Laurence

In Pet Sematary, Jeté Laurence plays Ellie Creed, the daughter of Louis and Rachel (played by Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz).  In the film, Ellie will face the biggest changes out any other member of the family in this new iteration of the famed Stephen King novel.  We got the chance to talk to her during SXSW, the day after the film premiered.

So, Jeté…Hi!

Jeté Laurence: Hi!

How are you doing?

Jeté Laurence: Good!

Good. Good. Welcome to SXSW! Enjoying it so far?

Jeté Laurence: Yeah.

Awesome! Now, after the screening last night, was anyone afraid to talk to you?

Jeté Laurence: I think…not really.  People like.. people definitely saw how scary I was but I don’t think they were exactly like scared of me because saw it as pretty much fantasy.

Yeah of course, it’s a movie. You did a great job by the way!

Jeté Laurence: Thank you.

You’re welcome. So my first question is before you got hired to do this movie have you ever hear of Pet Sematary or Stephen King?

Jeté Laurence: I saw IT and it was really scary so I knew Stephen King wrote that. I didn’t see the movie or read the book (Pet Sematary) because, I think like, when I’m acting I think my imagination kinda takes over and I think if I saw the original movie or the book I think I might not have as may creative ideas.

That makes sense. You wanna make your own ideas when you play your version of Ellie. You gotta do some pretty gnarly stuff in the movie.

Jeté Laurence: Yeah defi…

Was there any specific scene you were really excited to do when you read the script?

Jeté Laurence: Well there was this really funny scene…there was like this fight scene with Amy, and she like pushes me off the bed. And it was really funny, cause there was this one scene where I popped up and looked like…and for like a really quick second where I’m just like…I see what’s gonna happen and I just jump for it and see it beforehand. I think that was really funny.

That was really funny…yeah that was pretty funny, It as like scary but I can how it was fun too. What was your reaction when you saw what you were gonna look like POST death. When you saw yourself in full makeup and full costume….

Jeté Laurence: Well the make up was really elaborate and it was really cool cause I had these like spidery veins all over my arms and I think it was really cool to see how the make up artist did it and they were really great.

How did they do that thing with your eye?

Jeté Laurence: Um…they put like prosthetic on it so it like dragged it down I guess.

Because it looked like one eye going up….the other going down?

Jeté Laurence: Yeah!

Nice. Any favorite memory you can think of on set while working with Jason, or John or Amy?

Jeté Laurence: Umm…there was this really active fight scene with Jason and it was really cool because I remember in between scenes we would push ups and like burpees together to get like ready and pumped up for the scene I guess. And that was really fun.

How many burpees did Jason have you do?

Jeté Laurence: I think as many as we can do before we start rolling.

So basically you’re like….one, two, three oh we have to roll?

Jeté Laurence: Yeah!

Nice. Yeah that will get you pumped up and stuff. Ok, I think, I got one more question for you…how do you think Ellie will do against Pennywise from IT?

Jeté Laurence: I’m not sure…I think like Pennywise is very like sneaky and he kind of pops out of nowhere….but so does Ellie? So..I mean…they would either work together or get like really mad at each other.

I didn’t think of that. They’d probably would team up wouldn’t they?

Jeté Laurence: Yeah!

That makes sense. Thank you very much by the way.

More: Jason Clarke & Amy Seimetz Interview for Pet Sematary