Dan Stevens’ Abigail Character Inspired by Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave Sketch

Abigail is the next movie by Scream VI directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet, and they and star Dan Stevens have revealed the unique inspiration behind some of his character choices. In addition to Stevens, the movie stars Kathryn Newton, Melissa Barrera, Alisha Weir, and Giancarlo Esposito, and features one of the final finished performances of Angus Cloud. It was written by Guy Busick (Scream VI, Ready or Not) and Stephen Shields (Tim’s Tactical Tips, Zombie Bashers).

Stevens, Bettinelli-Olpin, and Gillet discussed the creative freedom actors had on Abigail to make characters their own—and how that led to Stevens taking inspiration from Tim Robinson’s sketch show I Think You Should Leave (specifically the season 2 episode “Baby Cries”), a show the three frequently quoted and joked about during production. Stevens also revealed that the original version of his character, Frank, was written as a very different person, which allowed him to more fully craft his performance.

Related: “Ready Or Not On Steroids” – Abigail Stars Detail The Most Gory Movie Ever

“There’s more than more than meets the eye to most of the characters really,” says Stevens when chatting with our own Rob Keyes recently about the film after only having time for a brief chat when visiting the Ireland set of Abigail last year. Stevens continues:

And we ultimately learned that there’s a reason why they’ve all been specifically chosen and why this sort of Mad Motley group has been brought together. So there’s definitely a bit of mystery behind every one of them, including Frank, you know, why are they there? And how did they end up here? And in terms of the look, that was that was a sort of a collaborative effort, really, with costume designer and directors and myself and just sort of an interesting shopping trip in Dublin one day, just to kind of see what we could pull together for him. Again, I think the role originally had been written for sort of a 60-something Italian American. And because of the demands of the role, I guess, or other reasons they didn’t find somebody of that casting so they came to me. So we sort of had to, you know, amend quite what sort of a cop this guy had been and what his background was. But, yeah, we took particular inspiration from I Think You Should Leave, you know, “the slicked back hair.” That seemed to make us laugh. Yeah, so that definitely started from that.

Here’s what directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett had to say on what Dan Stevens brought to the look of his character codenamed Frank.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: Dan came in with the slicked back hair and wanted these glasses with–

Tyler Gillett: “Real piece of s***.”

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: A real piece of s***. That’s a Tim Robinson joke. But when we first met Dan, just as an example, the character on the page was a 70-year-old, grizzled New York cop or something to that effect, right? And Dan was like, “well, I’m definitely not that. So how can I make this work?” And you know, he found a way to really make it work that we were just in love with. And those glasses, which are so important to the character, they just define the character in such a weird but simple way. It’s really hard to shoot with glasses, because you get reflections of everything. But it was this thing where we kind of because again, everything was just out of a cannon, that within like, what, three days before we were starting, we had to decide, okay, can we do the glasses or not? F*** it, let’s do the glasses. They make this character really specific and really special. And Dan can have a lot of fun with them. And he does. And that’s true for everybody in every role in this movie. They all brought something that just makes that character really, really unique and special.

How Abigail Can Continue The Funny Horror Movie Trend

The Abigail trailer suggests the movie will be an enjoyable blend of comedy and horror that continues down the path of movies like the meme factory M3GAN and the holiday slasher Thanksgiving. Although the aforementioned movies live firmly in the horror genre and don’t make light of it in the same way that full-out horror/comedy movies do, they certainly make the most of an over-the-top premise. Abigail certainly has that, as its story revolves around kidnappers who discover that their young victim is a bloodthirsty vampire.

As stars hype up the amount of fake blood in Abigail, it seems that the filmmakers have chosen to lean into the absurd and overwhelm audiences with a gruesome spectacle that may have them laughing as well as screaming. Thanksgiving took a similar approach, with director Eli Roth earning an R rating through gory scenes that used explosions of blood as a punchline to a suspenseful setup. Abigail seems primed to carry on that tradition, with its titular vampire already shown to be covered in blood.

M3GAN’s viral dance is one of that movie’s most memorable moments, and Abigail seems to carry on that torch as well. Abigail is dressed as a ballerina in the movie, and trailers show her spinning her way toward her victims. It’s another humorous element that, paired with the goriness of a grindhouse flick like Thanksgiving, seems to set Abigail up to follow in the footsteps of some of the most financially successful horror movies of the last two years.