Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to watch the first half of Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, the much-anticipated follow-up to Original Sin. I was a huge fan of Original Sin, so when I was offered a spot in the Summer School press junket, I jumped right on that. I had the chance to sit down and chat with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Lindsay Calhoon Bring, and Annabeth Gish for a few minutes. We had a wonderful conversation!
An Interview with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Lindsay Calhoon Bring and Annabeth Gish
Brendan Jesus: Like Original Sin, Summer School is chock full of references and homages, from a very great visual homage to The Exorcist III hallway scene to a passing comment about Randy Meeks and Scream 2. Since you explicitly mentioned Randy, I’m curious if you took any of his ‘sequel’ notes into the writer’s room.
Lindsay Calhoon Bring: You know what, in our writer’s room, if we’re ever taking a break–we had a TV in the writer’s room–one of our favorite things to do was watch a trailer or watch an old horror movie. One of the scenes we pulled up for Tabby was Randy walking everyone through the rules of horror movies. We thought it was so Tabby’s energy. Later in the season, Tabby really is our sort of cross between Dawson and Randy Meeks, she kind of walks us through a list of suspects, who they could be and why, and it definitely is in line, and tone, with that Randy Meeks energy for sure.
BJ: Throughout the first few episodes, it’s clear Imogen has sort of a crisis of character. With as much as you can go into this, did her character mirror the process of creating this season? By that I mean, did you feel like Summer School needed to exist as its own entity? To exist as its own grand idea?
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: It’s funny, you’re totally circling something Lindsay and I spent a lot of time talking about before starting the writer’s room. We definitely wanted the second season, the sequel season, to feel different, to have a different theme, vibe, and horror villain. But, we 100% wanted to continue the emotional storylines from Season 1 and to not do a hard reset. We said, whatever stories we’re telling in Season 2, we cannot forget the trauma the girls went through in Season 1. They were terrorized by a guy in a mask with a knife! Specifically that Imogen and Tabby were dealing with the shared trauma of sexual assault. We didn’t want to say, “They’re all good, fresh start.” The secret thematic story of Season 2 was these girls working through their traumas. We wanted to give them someone to talk to, so who better than Dr. Sullivan from the OG Pretty Little Liars? It was finding that balance of new story, new villain, new franchise, but keeping that emotional and thematic continuity from Season 1, which we loved doing! We loved the challenge of that.
BJ: When it comes to creating projects, reality will always differ from expectation. For the three of you, what do you think will scare audiences most? For me, I’ve already had some nightmares about the masks.
Annabeth Gish: That mask did a number on me, I’ll say. When I had to shoot that scene, and it was in that sort of floating head form, it was terrifying! And I’ve been around some horror sets. That one crept into my dreamscape as well.
Lindsay Calhoon Bring: A classic for me in horror, and we’re all such huge horror fans. It’s my sort of anxiety dream, which circles Imogen, right? We know she’s struggling with her mental health, and our villain is preying on that. But a constant anxiety dream for me is being chased. And I think there’s nothing better in a horror movie, especially a summer horror movie, than to have an epic terrifying chase. I think we deliver on that really amazingly in Episode 5 with Maia Reficco’s barefoot chase in the woods. That really turned out amazing and is pretty pulse-pounding. I hope that it will scare people!
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: To your point, and what we mentioned a little bit when we were coming up with Bloody Rose, and knowing this was sequel season, we were inspired by horror movie sequels. One of them, that really inspired the look of Bloody Rose, was the character of Julia Cotton in Hellraiser II. No skin on her face, in a blue diaphanous evening gown, wafting through a hellscape. There’s something about someone who’s had their face skin, with their face wrapped and covered in blood with a crown of thorns–that felt very apocalyptic and primal. That idea, the mother as a primal destructive force, is wrathful and terrifying.
Annabeth Gish: And pagan, almost!
A big thanks to Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Lindsay Calhoon Bring, and Annabeth Gish for taking the time to chat with me, and if you don’t have Summer School on your radar, go binge the first season on Max! You won’t want to miss this season.
