The upcoming Disney film from director Justin Simien of “Dear White People,” hits theaters later this month.
“Haunted Mansion” fans are in for a treat. In just a few weeks, the upcoming film, inspired by the classic Disney Parks attraction, will hit theaters with an all-star cast, including LaKeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson and more. TheGrio caught up with the two leads, breaking down their experience making the project, the bond the cast formed while on set and how the story expertly explores and navigates the various ways in which we process grief.
From director Justin Simien (“Dear White People”), the upcoming film is Disney’s second inspired by the popular Disney ride, as theGrio previously reported. The first, starring Eddie Murphy, premiered in 2003 and while only a “moderate” success at the box office, has become a bit of a cult classic.
The current “Haunted Mansion” film is not connected to the first, and tells its own, brand-new ghost story for audiences to sink their teeth into. Dawson and Stanfield are joined by some heavy hitters in the upcoming film, like Tiffany Haddish, Jamie Lee Curtis, Owen Wilson and Danny DeVito, to name a few.
For Dawson, who recently appeared in dramatic roles, “Haunted Mansion” felt like a breath of fresh air. “I feel like I manifested,” Dawson explained. “I really was just like coming out of darkness it felt like … a lot of ugly crying on ‘DMZ’ and very heavy lifting on ‘Dopesick’ which was really important, a storytelling I was so grateful to get into but I was like, I need a comedy or I need a vacation!”
She spoke to how grateful she was to share the set “every day with these remarkable talents” she was “super obsessed with,” and specifically for her connection with Chase W. Dillon who plays her son in the story.
“He is so dynamic,” she gushed. “What a remarkable young talent, and actor and spirit … I felt so blessed every single day being on set, playing his mom and interacting with all these people who were our chosen family to help us all. It felt really, really fun.”
Stanfield also spoke to the casts bond, specifically highlighting Dawson’s “light” she brought to the set. He said, “It’s this beautiful energy that made everything all feel so light and fun.” He added, “It’s a treat to work with all these really funny people.”
While the story certainly leans into the comedic talents of the actors, it also demands heavy emotional lifting as well as each character deals with their own relationship to loss, an aspect that certainly drew Stanfield to the project.
“It’s tragic, it’s funny, it’s fun, it’s hard, it’s all of these different things,” he said when addressing how the film reflects our own lives. “It’s like the ride … life is a ride, really. The reason why we like rides is because they’re dangerous, it’s because they’re scary … us interacting with our own mortality is sometimes fun to think about, strangely. I think this movie takes those concepts and puts them all together and makes this fun, thrilling, strange, weird, big, loud, beautiful and sometimes slightly terrifying movie.”
“It’s interesting when grief is a part of something,” Dawson said. “It is something we all grapple with, it’s something everyone is touched by. The way that it was approached and because it was approached by several different characters, I think you get a really healthy sort of expression of what that really is.”
She added, “Whether you believe in ghosts or not, or you’re spiritual or not but what that truly is to love someone and to mourn them. The beauty of that, the celebration of that, the sadness of that … the spectrum of emotions that we get to feel because we are alive.”
“Haunted Mansion” premieres in theaters July 28.
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