20th Century Studios and 21 Laps present “The Boogeyman,” a horror-thriller from the mind of best-selling author Stephen King.

High school student Sadie Harper and her younger sister Sawyer are reeling from the recent death of their mother and aren’t getting much support from their father, Will, a therapist who is dealing with his own pain. When a desperate patient unexpectedly shows up at their home seeking help, he leaves behind a terrifying supernatural entity that preys on families and feeds on the suffering of its victims.

Entertainment Affair recently joined actors Chris Messina (“Will Harper”), Sophie Thatcher (“Sadie Harper”), Vivien Lyra Blair (“Sawyer Harper”), David Dastmalchian (“Lester Billings”), Director Rob Savage, Producers Dan Levine and Dan Cohen for the films global press conference. Check out a few highlights of the event below.

David Dastmalchian on the pressure of bringing Stephen King source materials to screen

“Such an immense amount of pressure, definitely, from, you know, the fact that you’re bringing a character to life from the imagination of the king. But also, because the place that Lester’s coming from is just one of those corners of the human experience that nobody really would care to ever spend time in. And so, the challenge of even having the courage to be willing to go there was the first challenge for me. I think it was just, I didn’t feel like I had the capacity, probably, to embody Lester in a way that would do justice to the film that Rob was going to make.”

“I have a long-time friendship with Dan, who we were talking, you know, in prep for this. And I was just like, “I’m scared.” And he’s like, “Well, I want you to meet Rob and I think he’ll help you get the courage that you’ll need,” and it worked.”

Chris Messina on acting in different genres

“You know, I’ve been so lucky to work on the different genres. And you get to learn every time out, and certainly from these people, I learned a ton. I don’t think, for me, I worked on ’em all the same, in that you just try to find out how you can service the story. How I, you know, can be there for the people in the scenes with me. This was a lot of fun because I had never really done, and I didn’t do a whole lot of it here, but some, green screen stuff.”

Vivien Lyra Blair on playing Sawyer Harper

“I think Sawyer is this really complex character because you start the movie seeing her as, like, this little girl who’s terrified of the dark and is just a little bit of a scaredy cat, to be honest. And then, as you really get to see how her character grows, she’s going through so much, and no one believes her about it. And she has every right to be scared. And you realize that, like, once you start to see, like, you actually start to see The Boogeyman. And you know, I’m trying to put this as best I can without spoilers. But, like, in the final, like, I like to call it “the boss fight [laugh] in the basement,” I think Sawyer really gets to come through as this courageous, heroic little girl who goes through so much in this period of, like, a week. And she comes out stronger for it. And it’s just such an incredible character arc. And she’s just one of my favorite characters I’ve ever played.”

Sophie Thatcher on the horror genre and developing her character

“Yeah, I feel like for horror, it’s just really important to build empathy for the character, or else you’re not gonna want to follow them on their journey, or nothing’s gonna feel earned. But I think for Sadie, just starting off with her, she’s in such a distinct stage of grieving and just dealing with that and making it feel real and her relationship with her father feel tense and really complicated. And [makes noise] how hard it is that she’s been having to, like, take care of her younger sister. So, I think you kind of build empathy for her early on. And I definitely did reading it for the first time. But just to make her grieving feel lived in and real because everybody grieves in different ways. There’s no specific way to grieve.”

The filmmakers thought it was an R-rated movie until two weeks before they shot it

Dan reveals, “Yeah, it’s interesting ’cause we always thought of this as R, but we knew we had a PG-13 rating. But when I watch it, I think it’s R. So, I don’t think that it plays like PG-13, but we definitely push the limit, and we thought we could get a lot more pushback on things to trim back on, but luckily, we didn’t get those calls.”

Rob adds, “I think I thought that it was an R-rated movie until two weeks before we shot it. Nobody told me. And we just had to go through and cut out all the F-words. And everything else stayed miraculously.”

Director Rob Savage explained the process of designing the creature

“The thing that I was really aware of, is that we didn’t want people to leave the cinema thinking like, ‘I’ve seen The Boogeyman. He’s not all that scary’. Obviously these guys have to fight the boogeyman at the end, so you had to show him. We had to create a creature which felt like it made room for everyone’s personal interpretation of the creature, that kind of spoke to the short story. I won’t ruin it, but the short story has a nightmarish ending.”

“The Boogeyman” opens in theaters nationwide June 2, 2023.