Warning: Spoilers fromMidnight Massare discussed in this article.
It was crucial for the cameras to translate that idea.
ensure your phones are off.
Hamish Linklater as Father Paul and Zach Gilford as Riley Flynn in ‘Midnight Mass’.Netflix
And we’re just going to watch some theater.'"
He and Macy don’t prescribe to storyboarding, but their shot lists are quite extensive.
And neither actor could be framed in a way that emphasized their power.
Hamish Linklater as Father Paul in ‘Midnight Mass’.Netflix
Shoot from below and either one of them would appear taller, as if in command of the debate.
Thus, the dance begins.
“It was very elegantly choreographed that way,” Flanagan says.
Zach Gilford as Riley Flynn in ‘Midnight Mass’.Netflix
In the editing phase, the sequence would be trimmed and cut together into an eight-minute scene.
All the scenarios set in the rec room, including the AA sequences, were shot back to back.
It was the actors' jobs to just be in the moment.
Hamish Linklater as Father Paul in ‘Midnight Mass’.Netflix
He remained in that rut for the first two months of production.
It wasn’t the pandemic that tainted his spirits.
But because of COVID-19, he was unable to be present to welcome his newborn into the world.
Zach Gilford as Riley Flynn in ‘Midnight Mass’.Netflix
“I was alone without my family.
It was just me and my dog,” he recalls.
“I didn’t even fold my laundry,” he says.
Hamish Linklater’s Father Paul hosts an AA meeting with Zach Gilford’s Riley Flynn in ‘Midnight Mass.'.Netflix
“I just washed it and threw it on the floor because what’s the point?
And I do all the laundry for my whole family.
I have a folding board, so it’s all folded perfectly.
For two months, I was just like, ‘Well, it’s clean.
For better and worse, Gilford channeled his emotions into the character.
“Riley is a little embarrassed and ashamed that he needs to be in this AA meeting.
I’ll just be here.
I don’t want anyone to notice me.”
Gilford found it “weird” how he could connect to Riley.
He and his character held a similar belief system that made his scenes easier.
“I’d be like, ‘What’s that look like?
I don’t know.
I don’t believe in it.'”
As one of the leads of the ensemble cast, Gilford had a lot of dialogue to sift through.
So he put his script pages up on his walls in chronological order.
Every morning while filming, he’d wake up and orient himself around the current events of the story.
Flanagan saw Linklater take note of this.
“They’re constantly pushing each other forward,” he says.
“When that happens, it’s our job to not interfere.
I just did long walks along the beach.
I would just go and talk like a crazy person to get the stuff in.”
The first AA scene loomed over Linklater’s mind during the days he and Gilford needed to prep.
Both actors came to set with a long history together.
“The funny thing about our dynamic is he’s usually the one giving me advice.
We just swapped hats a little bit.”
As Father Paul, Linklater had a complex part to play.
This priest seems to miraculously arrive on Crockett out of nowhere, inciting a string of unexplainable events.
Linklater had many conversations with Flanagan about addiction and faith.
With the AA scenes, Linklater thinks he and Gilford “found our own correct, natural rhythm.”
“Those meetings in general are a place of support,” he says.
“That felt authentic and useful, to lean into the collegial vibe.
“I think that’s how it feels when you have an addiction like that.
This is the one place I’m not going to burst into ash.”
Flanagan remembers it more as an explosion.
“That only ever happened once that way,” he says.
“It knocked Zach back so much.
“But it is true that churches can drain communities in a certain way, if they’re misused.
I think that’s something the show has to say.
We have those debates, for sure.”
The crafting of the scene began as a “robust conversation” among the writers.
Then people started throwing out ideas.
“We encourage people to argue their ideas,” Flanagan adds.
“In particular, I have a real passion for RR [Rational Recovery].
We talked about AA, so we have to talk about RR.
And someone called it ‘AA for pirates’” another line that made it into the scene.
“It’s those lines that are really us just talking in the writer’s room.”
Flanagan feels these AA meetings are perhaps the most invested he’s been in the writing of any scene.
He began by writing fervently from the atheist perspective of Riley.
What’s there I think represents that fight.”
Flanagan’s fans know that name well.
It’s the haunted mirror from the filmmaker’s 2014 movieOculus.
Its presence in the AA scenes is one of many Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the show’s seven episodes.
It’s also symbolic of how meticulous Flanagan is at crafting scenes.
Just impossible to extricate from each other.”
Midnight Massis streaming now on Netflix.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated there were 10 cameras filming at once.
There were two cameras utilized across 10 camera setups.
