The New Daughter : Behind the Scenes /Kevin Costner, Ivana Baquero, Samantha Mathis,Gattlin Griffith

hey everybody I'm gin Griffith and you're at the set with The New Daughter [Music] [Music] the Genesis of the story was um was really in that fascination with childhood a lot of the books that I've written I've written about 10 novels now uh a lot of them have featured children and have been about children because I'm quite fascinated with with childhood uh I wrote a book called The Book of lost things and the little quotation that I put at the start of it was that in every every adult lies the child that was and every child lies the adult that will be and I find that really interesting I find children interesting because of the little displays of adulthood that you see that are already there and you meet kids sometimes and you think you know you're going to be the worst jerkiest adult ever because you're a jerky kid and I can see it in you and then you meet adults and you think you're probably horrible as a child you know you're horrible now you know your mother hated you I hate you um so so I was interested in all of those things throughout my work and I think the new daughter was just one very kind of short potent expression of that because you short stories and novels are very very different I know that seems like a redundant phrasee but you know there are people who don't read short stories at all and they don't really get what short stories do and short stories are the equivalent of a hit of espresso you know you take it you get one kind of Two Shots two mouthfuls and you get this Kickback whereas a novel has a much longer effect you know that's like drinking the whole pot slowly over the course of an evening um so it was interesting to look up at the same material in a slightly different way to see if I could make it very potent and very unsettling but do it in the space of two and a half thousand words going to be no I I read the script uh and you know as ever we did a bit of work on it and got it to the point where I thought it was pretty kind of compelling and pretty original and poent and very relatable um what I like about it is is that at the heart of it it's it's a story about a parent and a child and I think that resonance hopefully uh uh enhances how terrifying it is because the father's trying to deal with a personal dynamic as well as uh a terrifying situation that that that arises uh as a function of that Daddy I just found it the most difficult scene to write for me um was uh the scene in the living room uh where John is holding a shotgun and he's aiming it at Louisa uh knowing that uh if he does doesn't pull the trigger him and Sam are going to be eaten alive I'm the last chance they love me I love you I love you honey don't do this D please honey do not don't dad well John's a rider and um and he has just uh found himself in a really uh awkward spot a spot that no one wants to find themsel in but we all too often do he's divorced and and uh for him it was from his version of it he was really blindsided by it we don't delve into everything where that's concerned but what happens is he finds himself suddenly with his two children a 14-year-old and a seven-year-old you going unpack tomorrow hun how are you going to do this do what be our father we don't have much practice I guess um I guess will'll find out and they're uh they're not happy about obviously about their parents being a part but we find oursel out in the country why will simply put uh their mother didn't want anything to do with them and I was uh For Better or Worse not going to keep them in the same town so they're feeling very displaced and so a lot of the the the the the warning signs that come in the movie I attribute to my daughter just being angry at me and not really maybe that something else is taking over over so we find oursel in a new house in a new town um with a and basically a family's been broken they're we're unhappy and we're trying to make the best of it and I'm not completely equipped because I'm I'm not really that you know you know I wasn't the one that was doing their laundry and making the food and now that I am I'm not so great at it [Music] it is good to make a hero movie but what I really love from John James is that he's a Accidental Hero if you can call him a hero which I think that he is so he is I mean this is a movie about normal people so and how they face normal and Supernatural things so [Music] Luis is a great listener and he brings a lot of uh brings a great force of will to what it is he wants to do and I'm excited about his vision not mine I just um again as an actor try to let Lis know what the possibilities are inside a scene that I see and we make sure that that that we we are thinking about things in the same way we have a language barrier and so we have to go slower sometimes I think the thing that uh interested me most about the story was the fatherdaughter um uh interplay um it's you know it's about a man who um is kind of thrust into the situation where all of a sudden he has to be um uh the soul caregiver and he's not uh he's un unsure of himself he doesn't he never really had to do that before Daddy we have to go to school Louisa damn it D I'm sorry honey we're going to be late it it's it's very hard for me especially hard for him with uh Louisa because um she's becoming a woman and she's dealing with the the abandonment issues uh with her mom uh leaving them and so him and Sam the father son thing it's pretty easy he knows how to do that but um it's him and Louisa with her age and her being a girl it's just so much it's so much harder for him and that's what really drew me to the story I mean the the the scares um I loved and the the mound was uh a brilliant idea and it was just something that I had no idea what it was we try to do a couple of things with the creatures we try to think of them as being possibly real in other words their Mound dwellers we tried to think of we looked at all sorts of different creatures that actually are underground dwellers and we tried to construct a creature that was humanoid but uh was geared towards uh an organism that had lived underground for generations and yet the challenge was to also find a way to make are you brilliant as usual it scary so uh we spent a lot of time designing and redesigning the creature working with Todd Masters who we did Slither with um and I think we ended up with something well we're very happy with with where we ended up it feels real uh and not a cartoon is there anything about this that you need to r on or is it pretty easy the most fun of it as a person first I I think it's being able to share this movie with great actors such as Kevin and a great director such as Louise and I think these were the most important things for me meeting new people being able to explore myself as an actress and get Scaled and then as Louisa what I most liked about this movie was the fact that she gets to be in different places she gets to be in the house it's what I said um she gets to walk around she gets to lie on the floor to get money and I think all of that is is fun not the fact that she's all the day logged in a house which maybe I I wouldn't enjoy as much and I also liked when we were fil filming in the school um there were lots of kids I got to hang around because after all it's all adults and you know sometimes I need to be with my friends for example please please honey don't I love you honey one of the first movies I saw and was responsible for a nightlight in my room for I don't know the next 15 years was Hush TR sweet Charlotte so every time it got dark I got really uncomfortable so I wonder if somehow this movie is going to be the same for someone [Music]