Abigail stars Alisha Weir and Melissa Barrera discuss their new vampire horror movie including fake blood, stunt choreography, and on set pranks.
After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure in Abigail, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.
Abigail is the most fun you will have in theaters this year, and we were thrilled to speak with stars Alisha Weir (Abigail) and Melissa Barrera (Joey) about their new vampire film. They reveal how much fun it was to film the movie, as well as how dance helped with the stunt choreography. They also discuss on set pranks and their favorite vampire stories.
Alisha Weir & Melissa Barrera Talk Abigail
Tessa Smith: Abigail is my favorite movie of the year so far because it is so much fun. Was it that much fun to film as well?
Melissa Barrera: I think you can tell that we had a blast making it. I genuinely think that the real fun that someone has making a movie can be felt by an audience. It makes it even more enjoyable to watch. Every day was a blast making this film.
Alisha Weir: I one hundred percent agree. You can see how much fun it looks on film. And that’s exactly what it was like, every day. It was crazy and exciting and surprisingly enough, getting to be covered in blood was actually quite fun. I enjoyed it.
Tessa Smith: What was it like getting to be a vampire?
Alisha Weir: Amazing. It was such an incredible experience. It doesn’t come around every day. You don’t get to say often that you’ve played a ballerina vampire. So when it did come around, I was so excited. I couldn’t believe it and getting to wear the tutu and the teeth and the eyes and everything that made Abigail was so exciting for me and I couldn’t wait to do it.
Tessa Smith: There’s some incredible stunts in this I can only imagine with you have a dance background it helped with the stunt choreography.
Alisha Weir: It definitely did. In dance you do routines and in stunts, you learn a routine, you learn a fight sequence. So that definitely did help in a way and having acro as well, getting to do flips, that definitely helped too. So yeah, it was so exciting. And we had a good few months of rehearsing for the end final fight sequence. I was so excited. I loved getting to do the fight sequence. I learned so much, so many new things, that I didn’t know how to do before.
Melissa Barrera: Do you remember that joke that they played on you? She is so committed. Like, she’s so cute and so professional. She’s down for anything. She’s just fearless. The stunt team were teaching her that sequence, and they were teaching her by herself, so Dan and I weren’t there. And they told her that Dan was going to slap her in fast motion and she had to [move her head back and forth quickly]. They have it on video when they told her it was a joke.
Alisha Weir: I didn’t understand what they were saying. When they said it’s a joke. I was like, Wait, we’re not doing that? I like that.
Tessa Smith: Do either of you have a favorite vampire story?
Melissa Barrera: I mean, there’s so many. One of my favorites, because this was one of my favorite movies growing up, is Van Helsing. The main villain is Dracula in that movie and I just thought everything about the way that the mouth would expand all the way down — it was so scary and cool to me. So that’s something that’s deeply in my head. And then, if we’re talking about more the thing that marked my teen years was Twilight. I literally was of the Twilight age group. I those movies. They were very important to me growing up.
Alisha Weir: I hadn’t seen any vampire thing. I’d only seen Vampire Diaries before filming Abigail, so I didn’t know a lot about vampires. From watching that show was all I knew about vampires. And so I got to learn a lot about them, which was really, really exciting.
Tessa Smith: Now Abigail can be your favorite vampire.
Abigail dances into theaters on April 19th.
NEXT: Abigail Review: The Most Fun You’ll Have All Year
About Abigail
Children can be such monsters.
After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.
From Radio Silence—the directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett behind the terrifying modern horror hits Ready or Not, 2022’s Scream and last year’s Scream VI—comes a brash, blood-thirsty new vision of the vampire flick, written by Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground, Zombie Bashers) and Guy Busick (Scream franchise, Ready or Not).
Abigail dances into theaters on April 19th.
Tessa Smith is a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer-approved Film and TV Critic. She is also a Freelance Writer. Tessa has been in the Entertainment writing business for ten years and is a member of several Critics Associations including the Critics Choice Association and the Greater Western New York Film Critics Association.