Rob Letterman and Hilary Winston are taking their R.L. Stine-based hit show in a new direction withGoosebumps: The Vanishing. Letterman, whose history with the franchise goes back to directing the 2015 Jack Black-led movie adaptation of the horror novels, co-developed the show with Nicholas Stoller, whose filmography ranges from helming the fan-favorite comedyForgetting Sarah Marshallto co-creating and directingthe acclaimed Apple TV+ comedy showPlatonic. Winston, whose producorial career took off withMy Name is Earl, was a co-showrunner with Letterman and Stoller on season 1 and is now sole showrunner on the new season.
Goosebumps: The Vanishingshifts the focus awayfrom the season 1 finale and to New York City, putting its focus on botanist and single father Anthony as his twin teen children come to stay with him for the summer. Anthony, having been focused on discovering the answers to his brother’s disappearance when they were teenagers, gets a piece of evidence back from the police as they officially close the case. However, when his investigation into the evidence brings with it horrific results, supernatural chaos ensues.
Every Goosebumps Book & Inspiration Used For Disney’s TV Show
2023’s Goosebumps reboot might not be a straightforward anthology, but the horror comedy does adapt and borrow from some of RL Stine’s famous novels.
David Schwimmer leads theensembleGoosebumps: The Vanishingcastas Anthony alongside Jayden Bartels as his daughter Cece, Sam McCarthy as his son Devin, Ana Ortiz, Francesca Noel, Elijah M. Cooper, Galilea La Salvia and Stony Blyden. Delivering even more chilling twists on Stine’s iconic horror novel franchise while also balancing it with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and coming-of-age storytelling, season 2 capitalizes on what made season 1 a hit.
In honor of the show’s return,ScreenRantinterviewed Rob Letterman and Hilary Winston to discussGoosebumps: The Vanishing, why they elected to move away from the season 1 cliffhanger ending in favor of an anthology story, how they landed onStay Out of the Basementto be the main throughline of the new season, why they thought Schwimmer was the perfect choice to lead the new cast of characters, and how they found the rest of the ensemble.
Letterman & Winston Have A Specific “Justification” For Going The Anthology Route
“God forbid, R.L. Stine would never let that happen…”
ScreenRant: I’m so excited to chat with you both forGoosebumps: The Vanishing. I loved season 1 and season 2, from what I’ve seen so far, is just an absolute treat. That said, I do have one question, which isGoosebumpsseason 1 ended on such a big cliffhanger, and in a way, it feels true to the books not to go back to that, but was that the thinking of why season 2 is an anthology rather than a continuation of that ending?
Rob Letterman: It’s a thinking, and it’s sort of our justification of why it works. I think, ultimately, that’s how the books tend to end, where it opens a big door and a big twist, and it’s kind of what we love about the material. It just never panders down. The characters are flawed, it doesn’t tie itself up into a nice little bow with a happy ending and a moral at the end. God forbid, R.L. Stine would never let that happen, so we embraced that, and the books were an anthology series of books. It was just a really interesting idea to do anthology seasons with the Goosebumps world.
Hilary Winston: And our characters don’t always make the right choices. Margot brings Isaiah back to life using the magic that they’ve been fighting against the whole season. People don’t always do the right thing.
Stay Out Of The BasementBecameThe Vanishing’s Basis For A Few Key Reasons
I’d love to hear how you came up with the throughline for this season. It’s a similar sort of formula of teen kids discovering this past haunted event, but I’d love to hear about landing specifically on this one, especially sinceStay Out of the Basementis the big throughline for the whole season.
Hilary Winston: Yeah, we love Stay Out of the Basement. It’s just such a classic, and the cover art is such a classic, and I think anybody who read them as a kid, that stuck in their head from being at the Scholastic Book Fair. Some people wouldn’t even read it because the cover was scaring them too much. But we love that idea of having a title like Stay Out of the Basement, where everybody has to know what’s in the basement. You automatically are going in that basement, you want to know what’s in the basement.
So, we felt like that’s such a compelling thing of like, “Now, let’s figure out, let’s discuss, let’s pitch on what’s in that basement.” And we loved the story of Stay Out of the Basement, which is about a dad who’s a botanist, but we wanted to, like we did in season 1, come up with our own stories and characters and world and expand that out, but from that seed of, “Okay, what is down there? What is happening to their dad?” and that being the origin of the whole season story. And then, also just the heart of the whole season, and the episodes all going back to this basement.
So, that brings me to my next question, which is how do you go about landing on which stories you wanted to adapt in each episode? Do you find that comes organically from where you land on the throughline? Or do you find that you’ve gone into each season so far with, “Well, I really love this story, so I want to find a way to make it work in this season’s storyline.”?
Rob Letterman: I think it’s a bit of a mix. It’s getting easier and easier, because we have this pattern that works so well for us. But once we had Stay Out of the Basement and that side of New York that nobody really sees that much, then it was really figuring out the characters. And once we had the characters worked out, we go to the books and say, “Okay, which book maps nicely to the characters that we’re thinking of?” And then it just kind of all flows pretty quickly at that point.
Casting Schwimmer Was “An Obvious Route” For Winston & Letterman (Despite 1 Concern)
“…it seemed ridiculous to even call him up.”
So, another thing I love about season 2 is that it also continues season 1’s unique trend of casting a comedian as a potential villain for this season. Obviously, Justin Long had a horror genre history before, but this is really very different for David Schwimmer. So, I’d love to hear from both of you what the thought process was of reaching out to him and then wanting him to play this part.
Hilary Winston: Yeah, going with a comedian was such an obvious route, because — Rob and I talk about it all the time — comedy and horror are so linked, you know? They really are two sides of one coin. So, I think that when somebody can do comedy and has that timing, they’re going to have the horror timing. So, we knew we wanted to go after somebody. Honestly, I was like, Schwimmer seemed like such a big name, I think I laughed at the idea. [Chuckles]
Rob Letterman: Yeah, it seemed ridiculous to even call him up.
Hilary Winston: Yeah, when somebody has dominated something like, so much — but the thing is, Schwimmer is so amazing. He is so talented, he’s so thoughtful about everything he does with his work. He really wanted to dive into a character, and was really interested in doing something in genre, and had so many great ideas, and just became Anthony. There’s just no Anthony without David Schwimmer.
Rob Letterman: It was fun to go with somebody unexpected, like, you just don’t expect him to play this character. That’s just the best. It’s really great, it gets dark. [Laughs]
Hilary Winston: And dramatic. Seeing him in some really dramatic scenes and just being like, “Wow, he dominated half-hour comedy, but he could have just easily been George Clooney on ER at the same time.” [Chuckles]
I’d love to talk about, then, the parallels between him and his son this season, because his son is also coming under the influence, let’s say, of the main threat this season. What can you tell me about how that’s going to play out in terms of, will it be a sort of two-hander villain story, or will there be a little more of a tragic coming together near the end?
Hilary Winston: All the characters will have an opportunity to kind of have their episode, just like Rob was talking about. So, even though you’ve seen Devin’s episode, Cece is gonna have an episode, and Alex and CJ. We’ll start to see how all of them get tied into this mystery, and it becomes a more consolidated group of teens.
Rob Letterman: And it’s a very weird way to heal a broken family, ultimately, is the story. A bizarre roadmap to healing. [Chuckles]
Hilary Winston: Yeah, the weirdest family therapy. [Laughs]
Bartels & McCarthy’s Sibling Dynamic Came Through Right Away
“I was calling it an actor’s obstacle course.”
I’d love to hear about building the rest of the cast for that family, at the very least, if not the rest of the teens. Because the teens are obviously just as, if not a bigger, part of the storylines than maybe David is.
Rob Letterman: It was a big audition process. Hilary can speak to it, but we craft the characters, make some fake sides, basically, and audition a ton of people.
Hilary Winston: I was calling it an actor’s obstacle course. We call them dummy sides of scenes that aren’t actually in the show, so that they have to go high, low, be angry, be soft, be understanding, be whatever. They’re the worst written scenes ever, just to kind of put them through everything. [Laughs]
Rob Letterman: And we have an amazing casting team.
Hilary Winston: Yeah, Jeanne McCarthy and Nicole Abellara and Tara David.
Rob Letterman: They were nominated for an award, yeah. But, we bring them all back, we do chemistry reads, we bring them in, and they read with each other. And then, you get to this point where you have Sam and Jayden becoming the characters that are in our heads, and you’re like, “There it is. Done.”
Hilary Winston: Yeah, and their chemistry read was just amazing. Sam and Jayden just have a brother-sister relationship, literally, automatically, even over Zoom. I think Jayden was like, “That’s not your line.” [Chuckles] It was hilarious, and they were just really like that. And then, at a certain point, it’s our job to kind of sit back and let these actors show us who the characters are, write towards their dynamics, what’s working, what’s not working.
We have to give up some of the stuff that’s in our head, because, for a true collaboration, somebody comes in, like Galilea, who plays Frankie, and she had a lot of ideas of, like, “I’m feeling like Frankie wants to be this.” So, we really adjusted her wardrobe, and we changed what her room looked like, because the character started to change as Galilea became Frankie.
Letterman & Winston “Just Got Lucky” Putting Together The Season’s Directors List
“…spending a lot of time and work finding the exact right people for each episode.”
So, you mentioned that it’s a different side of New York that we don’t normally see. And I love that, in general, the visual palette does feel very different from season 1, as we shift towards a more urban setting versus the coastal setting. What is it like working with the rest of the directorial team to really find a sort of unified look, but also one that allows each of them to really do their own things?
Rob Letterman: We had a really great set of directors. We just got lucky.
Hilary Winston: We got lucky by spending a lot of time and work finding the exact right people for each episode. [Chuckles]
Rob Letterman: Yeah, with TV, you kind of set up the look of the show in the first episode.
Hilary Winston: Which Rob did in directing the first two episodes.
Rob Letterman: Yeah, and we’re very location-based. That’s just how we do the show. We don’t have a ton of money, so we try to get our production value out of just being in the real world as much as possible, so that becomes the look. So, there’s certain things that are [key], the look is set, and the style is set, and then casting the directors the way we cast the actors.
Like, “This is the story. This is this episode. It’s going to be a found-footage episode, so who would be the best found-footage director we can get? Oh, how about the guy who directed Blair Witch Project? Yeah. Okay, that makes sense.” [Chuckles] And suddenly we’re on a Zoom with Eduardo Sánchez.
Hilary Winston: Yeah, Zooming with Eduardo Sánchez and telling him our idea for the episode, and he’s giving us ideas back.
AboutGoosebumps: The Vanishing
Goosebumps: The Vanishing begins when twins Cece and Devin Brewer are sent to spend a summer in Gravesend, Brooklyn, with their divorced dad. A threat is stirring, and they quickly realize that dark secrets are among them, triggering a chain of events that unravel a profound mystery. As they delve into the unknown, Cece, Devin and their friends — Alex, CJ and Frankie — find themselves entangled in the chilling tale of four teenagers who mysteriously vanished in 1994.
Emmy Award nominee David Schwimmer leads a brand-new cast as Anthony Brewer, a former botany professor who has immersed himself in science and mystery, alongside Ana Ortiz as police detective Jen, Jayden Bartels as Cece, Sam McCarthy as Devin, Elijah M. Cooper as CJ, Galilea La Salvia as Frankie, Francesca Noel as Alex, and Stony Blyden as Trey.
Nicholas Stoller and Rob Letterman developed Goosebumps: The Vanishing, along with showrunner Hilary Winston. All three serve as executive producers alongside Neal H. Moritz, Scholastic Entertainment’s Iole Lucchese and Caitlin Friedman, Pavun Shetty, Conor Welch, Erin O’Malley, Karl Frankenfield and James Eagan.
Goosebumps: The Vanishingis now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu!
Goosebumps
Cast
R. L. Stine’s horror book series receives its second television adaptation with the 2023 Disney+ series Goosebumps. The new series brings in the creative minds behind the first two Goosebumps films and centers on five teenagers who haphazardly unleash evil supernatural forces on their town. As they attempt to send them back to where they came from, they learn that their parents harbor similar secrets from their younger days.
