CASTLE ROCK at Comic-Con: Live-Blog

With CASTLE ROCK just one week away from debuting, the cast and creative team hit up Comic-Con to tease the new Hulu series. Follow along for our live-blog!

1:41: “J.J. Abrams, our overlord and sponser and boss…is the king of mystery boxes,” co-creator Sam Shaw said. “Trying to figure out the balance of two different kinds of [storytelling]…We tried to chart a course that is driven by some mysteries, and also answer some questions perhaps earlier than the audience might expect.” Co-creator Dustin Thomason said there will be answers to a few big questions involving Bill Skarsgård and Melanie Lynskey’s characters, as an homage to the way King writes.

1:43: With three of the actors in prior “It felt like Stephen King,” Sissy Spacek said. “It felt like we were in that world. I never even thought about that because these guys [and the writers] were so good.”

“IT became my bible,” Bill Skarsgård said. “You do an investigation work, like, ‘What do you mean, Stephen King? What do you mean?’ I did the same thing with this: ‘What do you mean Sam and Dusty?'”

1:46: Which King books does the team love? Jane Levy responded to Carrie, which terrified her, but she also cites On Writing as an important book. Lynskey chooses Pet Semetary. Skarsgård has a few, including IT. Spacek picks Carrie. Thomason loves The Stand: “It’s a big, sprawling weird novel…it may be the longest book I’ve ever actually finished.” Shaw says he’s indecisive, so he picks “Different Seasons.”

1:50: “I love Ruth Deaver,” Spacek said. Thomason credited Spacek for helping craft the character. “She allowed us to understand who the character was and what her relationship was like to this place. Sissy was instrumental to picking the production design of her character’s home.”

“She’s someone who is stuck in the same cycle of doing the same thing every day…making the best of things and hoping things are going to get better somehow,” Lynskey said of her character, Molly.

1:53: “I play Jackie and she’s the town taxi driver and the town snoop,” Levy says of Jackie. “She’s really turned on by the macabre. She’s like a fan herself. That’s really fun. I think this show has really great women roles, and these are two of my favorite actresses [in Melanie and Sissy].”

1:54: “When you do a great Stephen King re-read…it’s interesting to go back and look at the books anew as you get older,” Thomason said. He pointed out a lot of books appear like they’re one genre, and then they end up in another. “It’s that sense of the unexpected…we wanted to make that season into that.”

“He’s a writer who returns to the scene of the crime,” Shaw added. “You wonder who the fuck lives in this town in 2018. There are these motifs and images and relationships…he loves stories about the trauma of childhood…part of what was interesting about the writing process was trying to figure out what makes a Stephen King story a Stephen King story.”

1:58: Which other roles would the actors want to be in the King universe? Levy wants to be Jack Torrance; Skarsgård wants that for her. Someone suggested Lyskey do an Annie Wilkes origin story which she’d be up for. Spacek said she wants to be in the next King project.

And that’s the end of the panel!

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CASTLE ROCK, Series Premiere, Wednesday, July 25, Hulu

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