'Cabinet of Curiosities' Director on Creating 'Terrifying' Witch For Real

Guillermo del Toro loves creating monsters, especially if he can see them come to life for real on set. This, Catherine Hardwicke told Newsweek, was something that she and del Toro were particularly keen to do in "Dreams in the Witch House."

The Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities episode, one of two released on Thursday, is based on a short story by H. P. Lovecraft and it follows Walter Gilman (Rupert Grint) who is desperately searching for a way to bring his dead twin sister, Epperley (Daphne Hoskins), back to life.

While on his quest to do so he moves into the attic of a building known as the "Witch House" where he encounters the terrifying Keziah Mason (Lize Johnston), who begins targeting Walter and his dead sister for nefarious deeds of her own.

'Cabinet of Curiosities' Director Catherine Hardwicke on Creating 'Terrifying' Witch For Real

Keziah, in true del Toro fashion, is a nightmarish monster that was done for real with an actor wearing prosthetics, and Hardwicke described the detail that went into creating the character on set.

"We had a beautiful actress named Lize. She is tall and lean and she wore all the prosthetic, so it's her. Everything in the room is her except for, of course, the glowing eyes which we had to do those later on with CGI," Hardwicke said.

"But, Guillermo, obviously he's a master at creating terrifying characters, so he had the idea of the root witch and then I said let's put her in a Puritan garb that she would have worn back in the day during the Salem witch trials and give her that kind of accent, that Shakespearean tone, and even the rat [Keziah's familiar Jenkins Brown] had that dialect.

"Then we have this great costume designer Luis Sequeira who did Nightmare Alley with Guillermo, also nominated for an Academy Award, so he created this insane skirt of roots and branches, and he just created this incredible workshop where he made all the costumes for all the episodes.

"He had a whole room full of twigs, branches, just trying them on [the skirt] and I thought it was quite fantastic, and the creature design was just beautiful and scary, and [she had] gorgeous makeup, everything."

Speaking about the characters, Hardwicke added: "I'm pretty interested in Keziah because, even in the original short story, she was a very intelligent woman that was exploring metaphysical concepts and all kinds of things, and then of course she was burned at the stake. She was put on trial as a witch. She was just too far ahead of her time.

"So, I thought that was interesting to try to keep that layer in there somewhere but make her also terrifying because her anger probably hardened and increased over the years of her entrapment.

On Working With Rupert Grint

Since rocketing to fame in the Harry Potter franchise, Grint's career has seen him appear in horror shows like Servant. When he was offered the chance to appear in Cabinet of Curiosities, Hardwicke said the actor told her it was "right up [his] alley."

"He is really kind of a dream for a director because he's so present and so positive and he's absolutely not even one bit of drama or complains," Hardwicke said. "He's just in that character and he has a youthful, boyishness innocence in a way that is also kind of world-weary.

"It really felt like he was his character that had just never, almost maybe never, slept, stayed up almost all night researching, trying everything to overcome his guilt, so obsessed with reconnecting to his sister. He was an absolute joy."

She added: "I felt like he just slipped right into that character in 1832, this obsessive character who is endearing so you are drawn into this character, and you don't want him to do this. 'Why would you want to live in that awful Witch house?'"

Reflecting on the scenes Grint shared with Johnston, Hardwicke said: "As soon as Lize was in the witch outfit she is terrifying, but she's really a lovely person.

"I love the scene where he's in bed and has sleep paralysis and then he sees her for the first time and she's leaning over him and smelling him, and even in the forest where she's kissing him it was an outrageous visual. But of course we knew who was inside."

On Creating H.P. Lovecraft's Brown Jenkin

Keziah wasn't the only terrifying creature to be made for "Dream in the Witch House" as there was also her familiar, a rat with a human face named Jenkins Brown (DJ Qualls) who helps torment Walter. In Lovecraft's story, the character is called Brown Jenkin.

It was thanks to del Toro that the character became such a central part of the story. Hardwicke said: "In the first draft of the script Jenkins Brown didn't talk. He was a way less prominent character than he is now but then Guillermo started getting very excited about Jenkins Brown, saying 'I want to get a really cool actor.'

"I went, 'oh, wow we better add something. So Mika [Watkins, who wrote the script] and I went in and we gave him a lot more lines, more personality and Guillermo even added to that, so he became a pretty prominent character.

"That wasn't really planned, but he grew and grew and grew, it was so fun, and Guillermo has these great designers, sketch artists he's worked with for a long time who would do some concept art, and then he has these wonderful creature people that carry the ideas to the next level.

"Then, of course, even when he would see the first designs for Jenkins Brown he'd say 'Now, let's make this second model rotten, with more pustules.' He kept pushing it in a great way.

"Then the actor DJ, actually his friend trains rats for movies so he went and watched rats, and played with rats for like a day to try to become more rat-like. That was going deep I thought."

Qualls was made to look like Jenkins Brown on set, with a creature designer giving the actor prosthetics that could be "scaled up and down" to help create the final product, which is quite terrifying.

She added: "The actual actor, DJ Qualls, he's wearing all of the prosthetics. So his face is really DJ and he's doing all the movements and all the dialogue and everything.

"Then that is added to a CGI body [of a rat]. We had to have a little stuffed rat on the set, it could sit on your shoulder and could show you about the right size [he'd be], and then we recorded his lines separately and then married it together."

"That was fun," Hardwicke said of the process. "But we really wanted the body to look like a rat, so the visual-effects people actually did a lot of studies and movements of real rats, and I thought they did an amazing job. How they melded it together and then how Jenkins moves around, it's horrible." (Which, of course, Hardwicke meant as a compliment.)

Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities is premiering as a four-day horror event on Netflix until Friday, October 28. "Dreams in the Witch House" is out now.