By MICHAEL GINGOLD
A familiar face from horror and fantasy films big and small, David Dastmalchian has his true breakout role in LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL, which arrives in theaters this Friday from IFC Films and Shudder. The actor digs into his influences and experiences playing talk-show host Jack Delroy below.
LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL is set on Halloween 1977, when Jack, a competitor to chat-show giant Johnny Carson, hosts a special episode of his NIGHT OWLS program devoted to the spooky and paranormal. Among his guests are sham mentalist Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), occult debunker Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss), and Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) with her teenage patient, satanic cult survivor Lilly (Ingrid Torelli). When Jack attempts to communicate with a demonic spirit supposedly dwelling within Lilly, the stage is set for a most frightening night of live television. Homaging both talk shows and supernatural-investigation series of the ’70s, LATE NIGHT has received rave reviews (including ours) from its many festival dates, and it’s a must-see on the big screen.
Growing up, were you a fan of either kind of TV show that LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL draws from?
I wouldn’t say I was a fan, I was so young, but I was influenced and impacted by things like THE TONIGHT SHOW with Johnny Carson, or LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN. I was also fascinated by daytime and weekend talk shows and shock shows that were just starting to germinate at that time, like THE PHIL DONAHUE SHOW or THE MORTON DOWNEY JR. SHOW. I also was a big fan at that time–the movie takes place in 1977, and I was not even verbal yet, but not too long afterward, getting into the early ’80s, was the heyday of made-for-TV movies. And made-for-TV horror films, for me, evoked a kind of energy and a kind of spirit that were wholly their own, and that I believe LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL really echoes. I felt films like DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW and Dan Curtis’ movies kind of pulsing through me while I was manufacturing and trying to manifest Jack Delroy. Maybe tonally LATE NIGHT is different than those movies, but there was something in that spirit that I really wanted to capture with this performance.
Once the Cairneses brought you on board, how much did you contribute to the character of Jack Delroy, or to his dialogue?
Colin and Cameron always said to me, “Please, if you have an impulse, go with it.” When we first began shooting the night that Jack launches NIGHT OWLS, I was delivering what would have been Jack Delroy’s very first opening-night monologue, and he has a joke in there. He says, “I want to thank everyone who supports me, like my folks,” and then he says they’re actually watching Johnny Carson. And I got to improvise; I said, “My folks back in Berwyn, Illinois…” Little details like that were really fun for me, especially if any Svengoolie fans end up watching the movie, because as they all know, Svengoolie lives in Berwyn. I thought, “Can I do things like that?” and Colin and Cameron said, “Oh, go for it, whatever you feel you want to just throw out there.” But the script was so well-written, it definitely didn’t require me to do any writing. It was just about saying the words and being present.
Jack is a character who could have taxed our sympathy if he was played the wrong way, so how did you approach keeping the audience on his side?
Jack has a fatal flaw, and though it may seem obvious, I don’t believe it’s narcissism, or egomania or megalomania. His fatal flaw is that he doesn’t know how to take care of himself. I believe he has so much unprocessed trauma from the grief of losing the love of his life, and so much psychic damage from spending years as a workaholic, alcoholic overachiever trying to not only receive the validation of the viewing public, but also save the jobs of all the people around him who he cares about. That was something I could get behind in motivating all the choices I was going to make as Jack, so that if you’re watching it, you’re not going to just turn off your empathy for him. I wanted to put you in Jack’s shoes.
I want an audience watching LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL to of course get the crap scared out of them, and to ooh and aah at the amazing practical gore effects we got to bring to life. But most importantly, I want them to see themselves in this, and know what it feels like to be one of those guys saying, “I know I can save this thing, I know I can honor this thing, I know I can achieve this, I’ve just got to bend my ethical compass a liiittle bit.” We’ve all been there, let’s be honest; we’ve all done it in some way or another. We just didn’t realize it was possible to unleash the forces of hell when doing so [laughs].
This is one of the best movies about a talk show host since THE KING OF COMEDY. Did you think about that film at all when you were making LATE NIGHT?
Well, thank you for saying that, that’s a great honor. I did think a lot about THE KING OF COMEDY. I thought a lot tonally and performance-wise about the films of John Cassavetes as well. I thought about trying to bring, especially in the vérité moments behind the scenes during the commercial breaks, an energy that would make the audience truly believe they were watching a real man experiencing a real night in his real life. And then with the in-front-of-the-camera stuff, I definitely wanted to evoke what it felt like for people watching THE DICK CAVETT SHOW, or even stuff like THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW. That was a wonderful inspiration.
Jack Delroy is a very different person in front of the camera than he is behind the scenes, so was all the on-camera stuff done first and then the behind-the-scenes or vice versa, or was it alternated throughout the shoot?
It was kind of alternated throughout. The schedule they made for us was pretty spectacular, and we definitely had one of the best 1st ADs I’ve ever worked with in my career. He structured in a way that made sense, because often you have to shoot things out of order when you’re making a movie, because of the way setpieces move around, because of the way schedules work. But he was able to find some progression emotionally that helped make a lot of sense for me. And it was really nice to get to shoot some of the public Jack, the Jack-the-host scenes, which were their own challenge, and then that same day, we’d slip in one of the behind-the-scenes moments where I’m falling apart and losing my mind.
Can you talk about your co-stars?
It was an embarrassment of riches of talent in this movie. Something that’s shocking when you think about it is the fact that Laura Gordon, who plays Dr. June Ross-Mitchell, was a replacement casting. We made this movie during COVID times, and our actor who was supposed to play that role couldn’t do it because of COVID issues. So all of a sudden, Laura Gordon had two days to prepare an entire performance. Ian Bliss, who plays our skeptic Carmichael Haig, also had two days to prepare for his role, because he was supposed to be playing D’Abo, but the guy who was originally cast as Carmichael had to drop out at the last second. So Ian stepped in, learned all of the sleight-of-hand magic in about 12 hours and delivered an incredible performance. Rhys Auteri, who plays Gus, had never done a scripted performance in his life; he only had experience doing improv. And Ingrid Torelli, who plays Lilly, literally gives Linda Blair a run for her money with her performance. She’s fantastic, and I was so impressed–and I was genuinely scared of her.
She does all these small, subtle things in the movie’s first half that hint at what’s going to come later. Were those scripted, or did she come up with them?
I think she was in the moment. There was some stuff scripted, some looks to the camera, but… Colin and Cameron are such encouraging directors, and they’re such students of the genre. These guys were raised on Cronenberg and Carpenter, and they spoke the same language as me. And they knew that if we were going to get the scares we really hoped to get, our audience was going to have to believe in and care about these characters. So they were very encouraging to all of us actors to follow through with creative impulses and organic reactions that we might have to the given circumstances. They gave Ingrid permission to really lean into the duality of this young woman who’s a trauma survivor, and at the same time has something wriggling around inside of her that’s just screaming to get out.
How was it working with the makeup effects, especially the ones that had to play in real time, as they’re presented in the movie?
When you’re on a very tight budget, and you know you’re not going to be able to clean things and manipulate things with the expensive technology of visual effects postproduction, it heightens the stakes in a way. And the makeup artists we had on set doing real-time practical effects–latex bursting open as eyeballs are being split and throats are being slashed–all of that was so beneficial, performance-wise, to get to watch in real time. It was just like, what a gift, man. There is something to be said for shooting a film that’s on greenscreen or where they say to you, “We’re going to do this in post.” That’s fine, because I love using my imagination, and having a background in theater, I’m happy to do so. But when you actually see a guy with fingers going into his guts, and worms come pouring out of them, it’s like, holy shit, this is what I got into this for.
You know, originally, my dream was to be a horror makeup effects artist. I’m a kid who was raised on Friday-night NIGHTMARE THEATRE, and was obsessed with classic horror cinema, and if I was going to be an actor, I thought maybe I’d be like Dick Miller or somebody like that, and just get to do cool, weird roles. But I really wanted to do makeup effects.
You have done some cool supporting roles in recent horror films like THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER and THE BOOGEYMAN, so how was it jumping into the lead in LATE NIGHT?
It was very intimidating. I’ve been able to play bigger, juicier roles in some much smaller films, like ANIMALS, ALL CREATURES HERE BELOW and TEACHER, but starring in LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL, and knowing that the success of my performance was going to be key to making this thing work, was a lot of pressure. And sometimes when I would feel the anxiety of that pressure building in me, I tried my best to bottle it up and utilize it as fuel for playing Jack, because Jack is somebody who knows that if he doesn’t knock it out of the park every night, the show is over.
Is there anything else you’d like to say about LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL or your role before we wrap up?
I’d like to just extend my love and thanks to all the monster kids, and all the horror hounds who know that we are still just scratching the surface of what is possible in the world of genre cinema. And the fact that we are going to hopefully keep making movies for eons to come, taking chances and watching small, independent films like this, giving us an opportunity to help you suspend your disbelief and go on this ride with us, means so much to me. I look forward to hearing what people think about it.
