The Night House is a spooky ghost story that succeeds, in large part, because of the powerhouse performance of Rebecca Hall as Beth, a woman struggling with her husband’s sudden suicide. Gayly Dreadful was lucky to participate in a roundtable discussion with Rebecca Hall through Zoom and immediately dug into her performance and inspirations for her character.

“I don’t know that I had any specific influences for the character per se,” Rebecca began, “but I’m certainly influenced and inspired by certain moves in the genre that I love.” She went on to discuss the particular haunted house films she used as a starting point, like The Changeling and Robert Wise’s The Haunting, as well as, surprisingly, the black and white version of Cat People. “The sort of theme of a central character spiraling and losing their mind is quite a prevalent theme in [the] horror genre and I supposed I revisited the ones that I liked in that kind of arena.”

The conversation quickly turned to why she decided to take on the film and Rebecca mentions one of the early scenes in the film where her character Beth is accosted by a student’s parent who wants to know why her son received a “C” in her class. “[It’s] essentially an exposition scene, but I thought it revealed so much about the character because it was so brittle and weirdly funny,” she explained. “I really liked the toughness and strangeness about [Beth] and I liked her from that scene onwards…[it was] the moment I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to do this.’”

In terms of what initially called to her with the script, Rebecca said she was “naively seduced” by the idea that she would have to carry the film and most of it would be just her. She laughed and said, “turned out to be an awful lot to shoulder” but she enjoyed it immensely...even though it created some embarrassing and funny moments, such as one involving an intimate moment with a ghost. It’s a scene that could have easily gone awry since it’s essentially her pretending to make out…with nothing.

While filming, Rebecca kept wondering, “is this right? Or does this look like I’m just ten years old, in the school yard, pretending to make out with myself?” This sequence required a ton of improvising, which she thought would be “fairly embarrassing.” But she powered through it and ultimately found the scene “strangely liberating”:

“I felt like I’m doing a kind of intuitive dance or something, which was nothing like anything I’ve ever done before as an actor. And it’s nice to use your physicality in that respect.”

The physicality is something that she came back to as her favorite parts of filming. “[The physical stuff] was not something that I’d really done before,” Rebecca told us. “So trying to convey quite extreme emotions physically and throw myself around and do all that kind of stuff...whether it was carefully organized with a stunt team or essentially improvised by me, was really fun. I really enjoyed it.”

One of the more darkly humorous moments in the film was the fact that her husband’s death has left Beth with many bottles of Brandy, even though she doesn’t like it. When asked if Rebecca liked Brandy herself, she said she’s “…with Beth on that one...but a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do. My drink of preference is probably a mezcal.”

Because The Night House deals with ghostly bumps in the night and supernatural entities, we wondered whether Rebecca believed in ghosts or had any ghostly experiences. She said she’s been to a lot of spooky places but that the place that came immediately to mind wasn’t necessarily spooky, but filled with history.

She relayed a story of performing with English actor Simon Russel Beale in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at The Ancient Greek Theatre of Epidaurus. At one point, Beale was giving a speech about the oracle that was literally down the road from the theatre when all of a sudden, “…it felt like the whole temperature of the area changed and it had been completely still, and suddenly there was a huge rush of winds. And I remember that we were all very spooked, but in a sort of excited way, in a kind of wonderful way.”

But while Beth is quickly and emphatically introduced to an otherworldly and supernatural presence, Rebecca isn’t so sure about their existence in the real world.

“I’m a bit of an empiricist. So until I have hard evidence in front of me, I tend not to believe or believe one way or another. So...I don’t know. That’s my answer to that.”

The Night House opens in theaters on August 20th.