Kate Siegel on Directorial Debut in V/H/S/Beyond, Working With Flanagan | Invesloan.com

• Kate Siegel is known for her roles in Netflix’s hit series “The Haunting of Hill House” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
• She often collaborates with her husband, horror auteur Mike Flanagan, who wrote and directed both.
• Siegel has now moved behind the camera, making her directorial debut in the franchise “V/H/S.”

If you’re any kind of horror fan, you know Kate Siegel.

She’s starred in some of Netflix’s biggest hits of the genre, from 2018’s “The Haunting of Hill House” to the critically acclaimed 2021 series “Midnight Mass” and last year’s wildly fun, Poe-inspired “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

For Siegel, who made her acting debut in a 2007 direct-to-video horror movie called “The Curse of the Black Dahlia,” where she played a marketing executive being haunted, an affinity for the genre came naturally. She’s always had a vivid imagination, which she credits as a key component of her acting.

“I had a skill at imagining the most insane thing crawling toward me and being able to react to it organically,” Siegel told Business Insider.

“I could picture my true love burning to death in front of me on a rowboat and react organically to that,” she joked, referring to her character’s most memorable scene in “Midnight Mass,” a Netflix series about a town that experiences odd occurrences after a priest’s arrival.

Despite her impressive horror pedigree, it wasn’t a no-brainer for Siegel to take on her first directing gig. In fact, it was initially a “no, thank you” when the team behind “V/H/S” and its horror anthology films sought her out.

Siegel turned down the chance to direct when the offer first came her way.

Siegel was already a longtime fan of the “V/H/S” franchise when she was approached to direct a segment for the latest installment, “V/H/S/Beyond,” now streaming on Shudder.

The franchise, which started with a 2012 film and has since spawned seven movies, is unique in its format. They’re anthologies comprised of multiple short films, each directed by a different filmmaker. “Beyond” takes the franchise beyond horror, entering the sci-fi realm.

The “V/H/S” franchise is credited with helping to launch the careers of prominent directors like Ti West (who later wrote and directed the acclaimed “X” trilogy), Adam Wingard (who’d go on to direct two “Godzilla v. Kong” blockbusters), and Radio Silence (the team behind hits like “Ready or Not,” “Abigail,” and the rebooted “Scream” franchise).

Siegel particularly admired how the franchise allows individual directors to flex their creativity, providing the right combination of freedom and structure. All that said, she still didn’t feel like doing it.

“I am tired. I have young kids, and it feels like a lot of work,” Siegel recalled of her initial reaction to the offer.

She asked her manager to gratefully pass because she didn’t feel she was ready. They didn’t take no for an answer, however, and with some extra encouragement from her manager and her husband, Siegel agreed to take the leap.

She credits Josh Goldbloom, the producer responsible for rebooting the “V/H/S” franchise in 2021 after a seven-year hiatus, with changing her mind. “He changed my path as an artist,” she said.

It was particularly important to Siegel that the “V/H/S” team was open to her ideas.

“I had thought about writing it myself. I had thought about doing a Muppet version of something. I had thought about doing a musical version of something,” Siegel said.

In the end, though, Siegel realized that, though she’d written before, her tendency to bite off more than she could chew might prove to be too much when making her directorial debut. So, she enlisted help from her favorite creative partner: her husband.

For their latest team-up, Siegel took the reins while Flanagan provided support.

Siegel’s husband, the horror auteur Mike Flanagan, is best known for his smash-hit Netflix shows, including those aforementioned that launched Siegel’s own scream-queen status.

The five series that Flanagan has helmed — “Midnight Mass,” “The Haunting of Bly Manor,” “The Haunting of Hill House,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Midnight Club” — have collectively netted millions of viewing hours for the streamer and cultivated a passionate fan base for both Siegel and Flanagan.

(Flanagan and his Intrepid Pictures producing partner Trevor Macy have since left Netflix for a new deal at Amazon Studios. The value of the deal was undisclosed.)

Collaboration comes naturally for Siegel and Flanagan. According to the actor, the couple are already collaborating their way through life.

“The act of storytelling and story creation goes hand in hand with, ‘Did we feed the kids dinner?’ or ‘Who’s going to do songs and back scratches tonight?’ versus ‘Do you think this character would behave this way?’ or ‘Will you read my first 10 pages?'” Siegel said.

The two initially talked about the kind of story Siegel wanted to tell. Flanagan disappeared for about 20 minutes and returned with a fully fleshed-out treatment for “Stowaway.” The body horror-tinged short film, about a woman who leaves behind her child to investigate mysterious, possibly extraterrestrial lights spotted in the Mojave Desert, would become Siegel’s segment for “V/H/S/Beyond.”

“The man’s a genius in terms of creating structure,” Siegel said of Flanagan. “He also wanted to support and protect me in a way where he could create a script that was accomplishable. He could create something that would really allow me to have the space to shine.”

“I was very grateful for the boundaries and structure that Mike’s experience gave me because I swung for the fences on his script. I can’t even imagine what I would’ve taken on if I had written it as well,” she added.

Siegel is well aware of the perception a certain segment of the horror fandom has of her, namely, that she gets work because of her husband. “I think everybody has a reason to have imposter syndrome, and the only thing you can do is move past it,” Siegel told BI.

She’s also often called Flanagan’s “muse,” a less insulting but still slightly eyebrow-raising comment.

“There are so many ways to call somebody a muse. Is it an insult? Is it a compliment? It says more about the person saying it than the person receiving it,” she said.

Still, the “V/H/S” team had no expectations that Siegel and Flanagan were a package deal.

“Josh Goldbloom has said, and I’m grateful for it, that it was always, we want Kate, just Kate,” she recalled. “It was never, maybe we can sneak our way to Mike through Kate.”

Even within the script’s structure, Siegel flexed her own artistic muscles with “Stowaway.” For instance, it was her idea to film parts of the segment in infrared to make the spaceship feel alien with a limited budget.

It was a tough sell.

“The problem with infrared is that there is no example of it. ‘Dune’ uses it a little bit, but they add a bunch of post-production to it. ‘Nope’ used it a little bit, but they added it on top of day for night,” she said, referencing the Denis Villeneuve and Jordan Peele films.

Siegel had to convince “a lot of people,” including Flanagan, that shooting in infrared was the right move. “A lot of people started that conversation with, ‘That sounds terrible, don’t do that,'” Siegel said.

But she was intent, providing camera tests as proof of concept and even consulting with an ophthalmologist to confirm it was safe to shoot with it on set.

One by one, she convinced everybody it was the right move, and the proof was in the final product: a dizzying and utterly horrifying accidental trip to space.

Siegel plans to keep directing and already has more projects lined up.

Now that Siegel has her first directing credit, she’s caught the bug. She already has multiple projects lined up. One is in the early stages (“I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about it yet, but I’ve had a very positive reaction to what I’ve done so far, and I think that that will bear fruit”). The other is a collaboration with another horror icon: Stephen King.

Siegel has created a series of animated horror shorts — that could work as an entry to the genre for kids — called “Dark Corners” to be released later this month. The short Siegel is directing is based on an original story by King. She’s also written another of the shorts herself.

“I’m thrilled to be working with Stephen King in that capacity. He’s a hero of mine, and so to get to direct his words is a real coma-dream moment,” she said.

Siegel’s husband is known particularly for many of his adaptations. “Hill House” is loosely based on the 1959 Shirley Jackson novel of the same name, and he’s directed three separate King adaptations. As for the dream IP, she’d love to get her hands on, Siegel had an immediate answer.

“I have a very interesting take on ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ that I’ve always wanted to do,” Siegel said, referring to the seminal 1892 short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, credited as one of the most important works in early feminist literature.

So, would it be a horror movie? Siegel said not exactly, but she’s envisioning a feature-length film “starting from that place of isolation” that delves into “birth and the fourth trimester.”

“I think it’s a feminist thriller, which is a weird genre that immediately makes most executives go ‘Delete!'” Siegel said. “But it’s what I like to make.”