INTERVIEW: Annette O’Toole returns to her horror roots in ‘We Go On’
Photo: Annette O’Toole and Clark Freeman star in We Go On, which is now available in a remastered edition on Blu-ray. Photo courtesy of Lightyear Entertainment / Provided by Foundry Comm with permission.
Annette O’Toole has built a diverse and distinguished acting career, tackling so many roles on television and film that it’s almost too many to count. She’s best remembered for Smallville, Superman III, The Punisher and the current Netflix hit Virgin River. Genre fans are also still in love with her performance as the adult Beverly Marsh in Stephen King’s It miniseries from the early 1990s.
In 2016, O’Toole offered her considerable acting talents for a starring role in We Go On, which has recently been released on Blu-ray in a remastered version from directors Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton. She stars alongside Clark Freeman, Giovanna Zacarias, Laura Heisler and John Glover. Some members of this creative team were around for Holland and Mitton’s first feature, YellowBrickRoad, a horror film from 2011.
“I was very kindly asked by one of the writer-directors, Andy Mitton, if I would read the script,” O’Toole said about her inclusion in the project. “I guess he had me in mind. I don’t think he had me in mind when he wrote it, but he got me in mind for it before it was given out to be cast. I was a fan of his wife’s. She is a wonderful actress, who is in the film, Laura Heisler. So through her, he sent it to me, and I loved it. And they actually asked my husband, Michael McKean, to play the role that John Glover ended up playing, and Michael loved it and wanted to do it, too. But then he became unavailable, so I asked John if he would do it. I loved the script. I like certain horror films. I like that genre, if it’s not too scary, but this had so much else going on. It had this relationship between a mom and son, which was so interesting to me, and to be put in this type of film, it was so unusual. So I immediately said, ‘Yes, I would love to do this.’ They were going to shoot it in L.A., which was a big plus for me. Right now I’m in Vancouver working on something else. I’m normally not at home when I’m working, so it was nice to do something in the Los Angeles area.”
Freeman plays the character of Miles Grissom, a young man who is terrified of dying, so much so that he offers a reward to anyone who can prove an afterlife or ghostly existence, according to press notes. O’Toole plays Miles’ mother, Charlotte, who is fiercely protective of her child.
“I didn’t know Clark ahead of time, but I had worked with his sister, Cassidy, on Smallville,” O’Toole said. “He’s such a lovely guy, and he grew up or went to school with Andy and Jesse, too, I believe. And they had worked on YellowBrickRoad together, this other movie, and so they were a well-oiled machine. And it was very easy to walk into it. There was no problem. They came to my house, and we did a read-through of the script and talked about it. And then we just hit the ground running because in L.A. with these independent films, anywhere that you do an independent film, it’s usually pretty quick. You had to get to the real meat of the scenes right away. I like to work that way anyway, and I guess from working so much in television, you have to cut to the chase. So we felt similarly about the scenes, and it just fell into place. It was one of those happy accidents.”
Early in Charlotte and Miles’ life together, tragedy strikes, and the mother character feels responsible for what happened. This causes her to withhold the truth from her son and become a protective parent.
“You always have to go back to the character and why people do things,” she said. “She does want him to go out. She comes to town to say, ‘This thing that you want to do, find out about the afterlife, invest all your money into this crazy idea, that’s nuts. You can’t do that. You’ll waste all your money.’ So she’s protective in a good way, but she’s also been protective in a way that’s been damaging to him and may be responsible for the way he is. There’s a lot going on. There’s guilt, and there’s protection. That’s what I loved about it. It’s so complicated.”
O’Toole added: “It’s been a while now since I worked on doing it, so I don’t remember all the ingredients that went into this soup. But the outcome is the main thing. It’s hard for me to watch myself on film, but I actually love watching this one. I had to do it recently with Clark and Jesse because we recorded the commentary, which is part of this new package that’s coming out, and that was really fun. It was fun to remember things about it and the different scenes.”
Personally speaking, O’Toole admitted that she is very hopeful that there’s an afterlife, but she was quick to point out that nobody knows for sure what comes later. In her life, she tends to stray toward optimism and hope, so she’d like to think that what Miles is looking for is, in fact, real.
We Go On was not O’Toole’s first foray into horror. That early 1990s experience in It is still a beloved genre staple for so many fans, and she has fond memories of that time in her life, working with Tim Curry as Pennywise the clown and a talented cast of actors trying to stop his malevolence.
“When you’re doing it, you’re not really scared,” she said of working on It. “You’re hanging out with a bunch of really funny, smart guys, and I was the only girl for most of the time. So I really enjoyed it, and we did it up here in Vancouver, where I am right now. I have such wonderful memories of that time, and I had read It. I love Stephen King books, love them. I loved It, and I had just done a TV movie with John Ritter called The Dreamer of Oz, which was about L. Frank Baum, who wrote The Wizard of Oz. And so we were looping that movie, and I knew that he was going to do It. I was so excited for him. I said, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re playing Ben. That’s so neat.’ I said, ‘Who is playing Beverly?’ He said, ‘Nobody yet,’ and he just kind of looked at me. I thought, oh. I don’t know whether he called or was instrumental, but I think he brought me to the attention of Tommy Lee Wallace, [the director]. We had just done this other movie together, and we hit it off. I loved Stephen King and all that stuff. There I was. I don’t think I ever auditioned or anything for It. I think I was offered the role, and I was so excited.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
We Go On: Remastered is now available on Blu-ray from Lightyear Entertainment. Click here for more information.
