It was a lonely fall night looking for new and frightening content on the television, alas to no avail and about to resort to some horror classics, my on demand channel sprung up with the caption " recommended for you", and for the first time ever, I witnessed the Syfy channel original TV show poster for Channel Zero: Candle Cove. My reaction, like many, was that of curiosity, puzzlement and sense of darkness. Depicting the image of the tooth child full center, this looked like something mysterious and terrifying that I needed to check out. I was luck enough to jump on the pirate ship episode 1 and veer into the dreaded bravery cave with all my fears brought to cinematic life. Season 2 of Channel Zero titled: No End House, will debut this year, to no doubt deliver a spine-chilling dose of nightmare euphoric insanity. Season 1 is available for streaming on most cable networks, and syfy.com, please watch and enjoy. I recently sat down with show creator Nick Antosca to talk about the creation of candle cove, the creepypasta lore, actors, set and more.

The interview is as follows.. turn down the lights, and venture with me to the dreaded seas of Candle Cove.

First off I want to thank you for taking the time to answer some of my questions, I am a huge fan of the show, this is without a doubt my favorite TV show ever next to the original Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks. I spread the word of your work any chance I get, i hope there will be some cool merchandise coming out soon so I can rep this brilliant series even further.

RM: This is some brilliant work and it is my mission to let the people know just how amazing this project is. Being a writer myself, i am drawn to this beautiful dark majestic nightmare art.The cast in this series is simply amazing. Every performance is done pure, raw, and on point to fit the tone of the scripts. With leading role played by Paul Schneider, and not to mention the fantastic and erie performance given by Marina Stephenson Kerr as Mrs. Booth, how involved were you in the casting process and did you get to work with the cast to relay any tones or specific emotions that you wanted to see in the show? Was any improv captured by the actors that really captured the feel of the episodes that was used in the final cut?

NA: We were fortunate with our cast. Paul and Fiona just responded to the script, and I've loved Paul's work since I saw Assassination of Jesse James. They were both such a pleasure to work with and they did get involved in creating their characters. They're super meticulous and prepared and full of ideas, and they always brought something extra to the characters. They would suggest lines that often ended up onscreen.

And we were able to find great local cast in Winnipeg like Marina and Abbie Pniowsky and Luca Villacis. The show depended so heavily on them -- we would've been totally screwed without them. Marina Stephenson Kerr was the very first audition I saw for any role. I was amazed because I was more worried about casting that role than any other. I didn't think we'd be able to find someone that good locally. But she just came in and blew us away.

I was involved in every step of casting, as was Craig. Frankly it was one of the most challenging parts of process, because you enter a kind of labyrinthine bureaucracy where you're suddenly dealing with all these departments and executives who aren't involved in any other aspect of your show and don't necessarily understand the characters or the style of the show. And sometimes they try to cast your strange art horror show like it's a blue sky USA show from 2005. But ultimately Syfy was very supportive and let us do things like cast Luca to play both twins.

RM: Speaking on the cast once more, I can not believe how talented the kids were in this series, I have not seen such outstanding performances from younger children in horror in many years. Abigail Pniowsky deserves a award for her performance, how did you end up finding her for the role, and will she as well as any of the other cast members be returning for season 2?

NA: Abbie does appear briefly in season 2, playing the young version of our main character played by Amy Forsyth. She's a local Winnipeg kid who auditioned, but she's already on her way to bigger things. She's in Arrival playing Amy Adams's daughter, and she's got a bunch of other cool stuff coming up. A few other local actors will reappear in season 2, but it's mostly a whole new cast.

RM: The sets in this show are another ingredient that I feel adds to the tone, and scares, the cinematography and colors really bring you into this world of Candle Cove that you have created. What studios was the sets designed on? and how much input did you have with how these sets would look on set? And how amazing was that skin taker room aka the bacon room? was there any spooky incidents that happened on these sets that frightened the cast and crew?

NA: Ha, the bacon church. Yeah, we didn't have a lot of money for sets and production design, so we had to plan. Our production designer Elisabeth Williams and art director Rejean Labrie deserve the credit for that -- as well as Robb Mills and his team, who designed the Candle Cove puppet worlds and sets. Craig and Noah and Elisabeth came up with a color palette for the show to make everything cohere. The look was something that Craig and I spent months talking about and planning.

The thing that freaked people out on set was Olivier de Sagazan. If you see the puppets or Tooth Child on set in real life, they look charming and silly. It's only on camera and in editing that they look scary. But Olivier with his clay nightmare makeup on always looks disturbing. And the night he set himself on fire was genuinely tense and awe-inspiring. There's no CGI or camera tricks there, he's really setting his head on fire and he's a few inches away from Paul and it's one take.

RM: As the series and mystery progresses, I felt there was a sort of puzzle involved within the story and cut scenes, almost reminded me of a hitchcock or David Lynch type of story telling, both of those directors / writers I adore, can you share some of your influences writing and visually for candle cove, and as a writer in general?

NA: Peter Straub, Thomas Ligotti, Shirley Jackson, Brian Evenson, Stephen King -- all of these writers influenced me. And for sure David Lynch.

RM: Is there any additional puppet footage that was shot for the Candle Cove television scenes? I did see a short puppet scene on bloodydisgusting.com, but was there anything additional that was not used that we as fans might see in the future? It must have been a interesting experiencing writing for those shots based on the creepypasta stories, and figuring out how to adapt those to actual puppetry scenes and fleshed out characters.

NA: We spent a day shooting footage, so there is definitely some that's on the cutting room floor and the Avid bins. Maybe it'll show up on a Blu ray? There isn't a lot, though -- we mostly shot what we knew we needed.

Adapting the puppet show was exciting. We tried to stick close to Kris Straub's description from the story.

RM: Are you a fan of the creepypasta Candle Cove?, who chose candle cove to be the story for the first season of Channel Zero, and was it important to stick to the lore as much as possible while adapting this to a full six episode series?

NA: I'm a huge fan of Kris's story. Max Landis had optioned the story, and I was approached to see if I could figure out how to adapt it for TV. It's sort of impossible to stick exclusively to the short story if you're turning it into multiple episodes just because of the nature of the story. So I had to expand it and build out the world. It's not meant to be Candle Cove "canon." It's large-scale fanfiction -- like Hannibal the show was a kind of Thomas Harris fanfiction. I wanted to stay true to the tone and mood of Kris's story while being inspired by it to bring new elements and create fleshed out characters.

RM: Can we look forward to a Channel Zero: Candle Cove DVD and Blu-ray? Do you know if it will feature deleted scenes, extra content etc.?

NA: I certainly hope so.

RM: How long did it take to create the tooth child? I heard from a previous interview this character was played by a 19 year old, do you know if the costume was easy to remove between scenes?

NA: I am not sure where the outdoors scenes were filmed, but I could imagine the actor may have got hot in that suit.

The suit is not comfortable. Cassandra Consiglio, the actress, could wear the body for an hour or two, but could only wear the head for about twenty minutes at a time. It's pretty claustrophobic and constricting, and basically leaves you blind. The suit took months to make!

RM: Did the creepypasta author for Candle CoveKris Straub have any creative input for the televised adaptation?

NA: I sent Kris the pilot to get his approval before we moved forward. He wasn't too involved during the process but I stayed in touch with him. I invited him to visit the writers room but he doesn't live in LA and never came. He's a mysterious figure to me -- I've never met him in person!

RM: Did producer Max Landis get involved in the writing ? Will you or Max Return for Season 2: No End House?

NA: Max has been pretty busy producing his movie Bright and running his show Dirk Gently, so he wasn't involved in the writing or production. I haven't seen him in almost a year. Steven Piet (our season two director) and I spent most of the fall in Winnipeg shooting No-End House and we're literally sitting in the editing room at this moment working on it. Candle Cove and No-End House were written at the same time and produced back to back so I was doing both at once.

RM: In season 2, and I am not sure how much you can or want to reveal this early in the beginning stages, but will there be 6 episodes in the next season also, ? The preview for No End House stated there will be 6 rooms, I thought perhaps it was made to be 6 instead of the original 9 in the story due to the series being 6 episodes.

NA: Yes, it's also six episodes. There are six rooms in the No-End House of our story just because going through nine rooms onscreen would start to seem repetitive. It's not one room per episode though. It's more about exploring what happens when you think you've left the house but start to suspect that the world around you is no longer the same.

RM: After completing the series ( spoiler alert) It struck me as a tale of parenting and the influence it has on children, specifically the tale of two mothers made to make a choice, one sacrificing one for their own purpose. Mrs. Booths purpose was to give her son to grow eddies powers that in her mind gave her purpose and was in fact helping everyone as opposed to assisting in horrible murders. And miss Pier suffocates Mike as he requested which in turn she sacrificed her son to prevent the evil and that would be her and mikes purpose.

I could be totally off the wall in this theory, but I would be curious to hear what your thoughts on the overall ark and ending of the show was.

NA: Yes, absolutely -- there is very much a mother versus mother story in Candle Cove and the character of Mrs. Booth is a nightmare version of a "good mother" in contrast to Marla Painter's flawed, damaged, complicated mother figure. In a way Marla's story is about how she has a chance to redeem herself as a mother by saving her son, which ironically means doing the hardest thing a parent could do.

RM: Any additional projects you would like to plug?

NA: I'm pretty focused on Channel Zero: No-End House right now! Look out for it in 2017.

RM: Thank you again sir, its a honor and the highlight of my writing career to speak with you, I can not wait to see what projects you have in the future, and I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions and for doing this interview.

NA: Thank you, I appreciate it!

RM: Thank you.

Sincerely,

Ryan McKern ⚜

Please check out Channel Zero: No End House on the syfy network in 2017, stream season 1 on sufy.com and follow nick on Twitter @Nickantosca.

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