Interview: Eli Roth & James Frey Talk Fright Krewe Season 2
ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Fright Krewe co-creators Eli Roth and James Frey about the horror series. The duo discussed making a horror series for teenagers and their love of 2D animation. The new season is set to debut on Hulu and Peacock on March 29, 202.
“As the threat of Belial looms large, the Fright Krewe and their newfound supernatural allies, the rougarous and vampires come together for an unprecedented battle to save the world,” reads the new season’s synopsis. “But with Belial resurrecting every demonic entity known to evil kind will the superpowers gifted to the teens by the loas prove stronger than the diabolical forces unleashed?”
Tyler Treese: Eli, I was very pleasantly surprised with how quickly Fright Krewe Season 2 came out. Talk to me about the production timeline. Did you guys know what you wanted to do to do already with Season 2? How was this such a quick endeavor?
Eli Roth: It actually was a decision that was made early on to make 20 episodes and split them into two seasons. They wanted to sort of wait to announce Season 2 and release them close together so that people knew that a second season was coming. Obviously, it’s not an anthology show where there are the different monsters of the week, but there’s this overall larger story that’s being told, and we wanted people to know that it’s okay to invest in it. We want you to invest in it because there’s more coming.
So when we broke out the stories and wrote the seasons, we wrote it as a 20-episode arc. Obviously, we would love to continue with further seasons, but we knew this story had to come to this portion. This character — the Belial story and the Fright Krewe — we had to resolve it by the end of Season 2. So that’s really what we were working towards.
James, you know, the first season of Fright Krewe is a great introduction to all the characters and really got the ball rolling. What was most exciting about having the second season to continue that story and have more freedom? Since you already have the introductions, you can just get into the meat of the story rather than establishing everybody.
James Frey: When Eli and I first came up with this, which is a whole bunch of years ago, we always imagined it as a multi-season, ongoing, serialized story. Obviously, we hope it keeps going, but the most exciting part of Season 2 was seeing what Eli and I had discussed … was it seven or eight years ago, Eli?
Roth: Nine.
Frey: Nine.
Roth: Years. We sat down in 2015, the first time. Like, exactly nine years ago. It’s crazy.
Frey: Nine years ago we came up with this and we had literally discussed things that are all through the show, but especially in Season 2, with the ongoing story and, and the characters coming into their own and going to do battle. And it’s amazing, at least for me, and I think also for Eli. One of the great things about working in this business and doing what we do is when we actually get to see our crazy ideas come to life and we get to watch them and we get to participate in the creation and production of them.
For me, that was the most exciting thing — literally just seeing Eli’s and I’s ideas from long, long ago coming to life in a great way. I always say this: we always need to give props to our partners — Dreamworks Animation, who has been with us on this since almost day one of our coming up with it and has been such a spectacular partner all the way through, and Hulu and Peacock have been great and the whole thing’s been exciting. But it’s been most exciting to see our ideas coming to life pretty close to what they were when we had them.
Roth: And also, to expand on what James said, first I agree with and second everything he said, but also that … when Season 1 is about setting up those relationships and the Krewe coming together, Season 2 is very much about testing those relationships. What I find whenever I write horror is it’s always friends going on a trip. It’s always friends. You all think you’re friends when things are going great, but when you’re put into those insane extreme circumstances, that’s where you see who people really are and how they react to those situations. So they’ve been through so much in Season 1, and now the secrets of the town are starting to get out and people have revealed who they really are now. We can really see how they work together, how those friendships are tested, how they lose certain powers, how the monsters get much more challenging.
It’s like the first was level 1 of a video game, now you’re level at 2, 3, 4, you’re getting closer to the final boss. So it’s going to get scarier, it’s going to get more intense. Like James said, it’s funny, because sometimes we think of an idea we came up with nine years ago, but we’ve also had an amazing team of writers and our showrunners, Kristine Songco and Joanna Lewis, they really brought so much to it. Then our incredible writing staff — someone whose grandmother had been a voodoo priestess in New Orleans. We had advisors and an amazing, diverse writers room where everybody was so, first and foremost, into such a great, scary, fun monster show. They came in with myths and legends and creatures that we knew nothing about.
So it’s great that we created a world that then everyone else can add in. “Oh, there’s this lore of this demon, have you guys heard of this one?” It’s like, “Oh, that’s incredible.” And it was really wild to see it come together and to be able to … you don’t want to repeat yourself from Season 1, so you have to ratchet up the intensity and the scares. But also, the response to Season 1 was so overwhelming. People just loved it. Especially guys our age that have kids that are in that 11, 12, 13 range — people with children that they want them to get into scary [stuff], but you can’t start at the advanced. You can’t start them at Hostel — you’ve got to have something that’s a great intro show, and young kids, older kids, everybody — everyone really loves it. And that’s Dreamworks Animation and Shane Acker, our director, just creating something that can really hold up on a 100 inch 4K television and look spectacular and cinematic.
I can’t imagine somebody’s introduction being Hostel. [Laughs].That would be a rough one.
Roth: Yeah, someone said — I don’t know if it’s true, but someone told us we’re DreamWorks Animation’s only 2D-animated show. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s pretty cool. 2D is something that we grew up on and I know James and I talked about our love for Scooby-Doo. So to be able to draw a 2D animated show that has the beautiful rich cinematic texture of 3D animation is really a pleasure.
Eli, one thing I wanted to ask about was the serialized nature of Fright Krewe and specifically being on streaming, because I feel like if this was on TV years ago, it was harder to do serialized because you missed an episode and then you’re like, “What is even going on?” With streaming, you’re going in the right order all the time. Do you have more freedom from that, where you don’t have to do a “monster of the week” thing?
Roth: We definitely do. I mean, I think in the old days, it was appointment viewing. If you got home after school and it was like three o’clock to watch your favorite show … but if you had to stay after school or you had a a little league game, you missed it and you were behind. Or if you had homework that night and you missed an episode of something, everyone was talking about it in school the next day.
But that’s another world. We don’t live in that world anymore. Anyone can watch it and they can start from the beginning and it goes around their schedule. I think that knowing that we’re going for streaming with it really allowed us to tell this kind of a story. Once we knew, we were like, “Okay, this is going to be DreamWorks Animation, we’re going to sell it as a show for streaming.” It allows for much more longer form. So the entire season is one piece. You can burn through 20 episodes in order and follow one continuous story.
James, I love Soleil as the lead here. Obviously she has her own love for and interest in horror and hauntings, which is a fun vessel for viewers. What made you decide this character would be the focus of Fright Krewe and where you’d tell the stories from?
Frey: Well, when Eli and I first started dreaming this thing up — I have two daughters, one of whom is now 19 and one of whom is now 14. I also have a son who’s 16, and Eli has a son.
Roth: Yeah. My son’s 16 now.
Frey: We decided, “Let’s make something that they would watch,” right? “Let’s make something cool,” and we just thought having a girl protagonist would be awesome, right? And certainly, it was influenced by me having two daughters, but it’s also like … we live in a time now where girls can be badasses as much as boys can be. We just thought it would be interesting and cool to have our baddest of the badasses be a New Orleans girl. We also liked having her be descended from Marie Laveau , almost like multiple generations away, but the heir to Marie Laveau. It just worked, the creative process. And Eli and I have done a lot of work together over the years. We’re very close friends and good buddies. It’s always just a conversation and we arrive at what we think is the best idea. And in this case, it was, “Let’s have a badass girl protagonist.”
Roth: And also that there’s such a large audience for horror that are female. I mean, they say that’s what drives slasher films. I’ve certainly seen it with my movies that the audience is very split male/female. And when we were growing up, it was very male-heavy protagonists, but we hadn’t seen a character in an animated show of a young girl that’s really into horror. And that’s like my niece, who’s just obsessed with blood and guts and gore. I mean, there are so many kids, male or female.
And it’s also like … you want to think about what gives you the most interesting possibilities for storytelling, is really what it comes down to. I think it was really inspired by James going, “My daughter’s 10 years old and she’s watching — why don’t we create something for her?” Of course, back then, we thought, “Oh, she’s 10. This will be on the air by the time she’s 11, 11-and-a-half.” We didn’t realize she’d be in college by the time it came on, but the other one is now the teenager. So it really was inspired by James’ daughter, “Let’s do something for her.”
Frey: One thing I will say that’s super cool that Eli just brought up is my 14-year-old loves the show. She also loved Thanksgiving, right? [Laughs]. Eli’s last film. I texted Eli. My daughter’s like, “Dad, I watched Thanksgiving. Your friend made that right?” And I was like, “Yeah.” So I think it’s great to have one of the things Eli and I talked about, making this introductory horror show, right? A show that that 10 and 12 and 13-year-olds who might not be ready for some of the hardcore horror can get into because it doesn’t condescend to them. I think it is legit scary at times.
Roth: The characters get in real danger and there are consequences for that danger. We really wanted to make that too. We didn’t want to make it so safe that you weren’t scared that something could really happen to anyone at any time.
Since we last spoke, Thanksgiving came out and it was such a success and they announced the sequel. So I was curious if we could get an update on the writing process. How is that going?
Roth: Well, right now I’m taking a break to talk to you, but as soon as I get off this call, I go back, I sit down and I stare at a blank wall and I throw a rubber ball on it thinking of all the different possibilities. I’m in it. It’s like driving in the fog and then you’re like, “Oh, there’s a dead end. We’ve got to back up — beep, beep, beep.” And then you go to, “Oh, this is cool — whoop chasm.” It’s just this process.
Look, you can write anything and have 90 pages of something done, but you never get any greatness that way. I just sit there and I play the movie until it doesn’t work. It’s like a “choose your own adventure” book. You go, then you die . We go this way until you kind of make your way at the end you’re like, “Oh, it’s so clear.” It’s like you look at a board game, you go, “Oh, that was the path I made it through.” So I’m like right in the middle of it. James is a novelist, so he can tell you far better than I can. He’s the true writer of the two of us.
Frey: I don’t know about that. We work in different mediums. Eli is for sure the better screenwriter than me. [Laughs].
Roth: James is brilliant.
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