SPOILER ALERT: The following story contains spoilers from the entirety of Netflix‘s Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen. Come back and read once you’ve viewed the season.
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen — but surely not to Haley Z. Boston, whose new series premiering today on Netflix heralds her as one of the most exciting emerging voices in horror.
Visually distinctive, sonically evocative, and conjuring a visceral sense of dread, Something Very Bad is Boston’s first project as creator and showrunner — one she got off the ground at just 29 years old, after stints writing on the Netflix shows Brand New Cherry Flavor and Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities.
Executive produced by The Duffer Brothers — in their first outing post-Stranger Things — with Baby Reindeer‘s Weronika Tofilska as lead director, the show centers on Rachel (Camila Morrone), who shares a seemingly solid relationship with her fiancé Nicky (Adam DiMarco) but becomes convinced that something terrible is going to happen if she proceeds with the wedding. At first, the bad vibes she’s picking up on all seem a bit random and abstract — until she begins to pick up on signs that are undeniable.
In a spoiler-heavy conversation with Deadline — do not read on until you’ve watched — Boston explains the origins of the series, as a reflection of marital anxieties and a rare medical disorder. She also discusses her experiences coming up as a writer and ambitions in film, the challenge of sustaining horror in longform storytelling, her interpretation of the Something Very Bad finale, whether this will be an ongoing series or one-and-done, and more.
DEADLINE: Reportedly, this series came about as a result of your own anxieties surrounding marriage, as someone whose parents have enjoyed a long and happy relationship. What can you share about where the story came from?
HALEY Z. BOSTON: You’re right. That’s my origin story, is my parents being like, “Don’t marry the wrong person,” and me being like, “Ah! What does that mean?” [Laughs] Then, I always think in terms of horror. I’m afraid of everything. I was talking to my girlfriend and…every time I talk to her, I go, “That’s my biggest fear.” She’s like, “You say that about everything.” So it’s good for me, as a horror writer: I have a lot of fears. But I had this idea of, you go to a wedding. I often hear people saying their vows like, “I never once had a doubt,” and I’m like, how is that possible? You’re not thinking enough; I wish I could think less. And then the question of, how do you know if someone’s the right person for you, I was thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if you could know for sure?
That then turned into the idea of, what if, if you marry the wrong person, you bleed to death at the altar? Just blood pouring out from everywhere. And that, in part — I haven’t told anyone this — comes from the fact that I have too much blood, medically. I was diagnosed with too much blood. [Laughs] My doctor was like, “You have to donate blood every six months because your body’s producing too much of it.” And I don’t do that because I have needle phobia. So then I had thought, what if my blood just comes pouring out everywhere? So those two things put together created the idea behind the bleeding, and then as I was really considering the story, I was like, okay, one person bleeding to death at the altar, that’s whatever. That’s a short film. What if everyone at this wedding who didn’t marry the right person bleeds to death? Because I think when you go to a wedding, you’re thinking about yourself and your own relationship. I’ve never been married, but if you’re married, you might be thinking about your vows and if you held them up. So the idea of witnessing a wedding and what that does to you internally birthed the idea of, okay, actually, a bunch of people are going to spontaneously bleed to death at this wedding.
DEADLINE: Early in the series, you conjure the sense that the bad thing that’s coming for our lead character has to do with something that her fiancé’s creepy family is going to do to her. Of course, it turns out to be quite the opposite. Did this reversal come early in the process of hatching the story?
BOSTON: The original pitch of the show didn’t have a curse, and it wasn’t Rachel’s wedding. It was Portia [Nicky’s sister, played by Gus Birney]’s wedding, but she did end up getting married by the end because of Victoria’s [Jennifer Jason Leigh] illness. It was like, well, mom’s not going to be around, so actually Rachel and Nicky, who were engaged in the original version, will also get married. It’ll be a double wedding. So it was ultimately going to go there.
[In] the original pitch, that red herring about the family lasted for a long time, and then I realized I’ve seen that too many times, and if that’s six episodes, then that’s basically what the show is, and I don’t want that to be what the show is. So then once the curse idea came into play, I looked at the season as like, okay, how do I do the curse horror movie narrative and fit it into the show? And then I still wanted that to be a twist, or a midpoint shift.
So I was thinking about it in terms of the first half of the season, Rachel believes the threat is coming from an outside force. And then at the midpoint, she learns that the threat is coming from within. We talked about it in terms of, first four episodes, the house is haunted — and I mean that metaphorically. But last four episodes: no, I’m haunted. So that’s how that structure came into play and why there’s a bunch of red herrings in the first couple episodes.
DEADLINE: Could you talk a bit more about crafting the character of Rachel and what you wanted to express through her?
BOSTON: Rachel is fascinating to me as someone who believes that she is haunted and ends up being right about it. I mean, that is a horror trope, but usually a woman who believes there’s something else going on and no one believes her, and then she’s right. So that was sort of the beginning of Rachel. And I’m always very satisfied by that narrative because I want her to be right. I find it annoying that other people don’t believe her, which was also part of why I wanted to hide the ball a little bit on the fact that [Nicky] doesn’t believe her and make him feel hopefully like he’s still likable, even though he’s a bit misguided.
But yeah. Rachel, I took her emotional journey first and figured that out. And ultimately, she goes from someone with a lot of doubt to someone with a lot of faith. She’s looking for certainty — that’s what she thinks she needs all the time. And that’s why she’s eavesdropping, and that’s why she’s following these paths. Maybe a normal person wouldn’t have stayed at that dive bar and waited for the guy to approach her, and maybe she wouldn’t have gotten out of bed when she hears a weird sound at night. But she needs answers; that’s who she is, and ultimately, she learns that there is no certainty in any decision you make. You have to just take a leap of faith.
So Rachel doesn’t drink the magical concoction. I refused to call it a potion when we were in the writers’ room and one of the writers came up with that idea and called it a potion. I was like, “Nope, it’s a substance or a concoction.” But she doesn’t drink it because I wanted her to stay in reality. Once you take a character too deep into the mythology, I think you lose that relatable sense. So I needed her to say, “F*ck all this, and I’m going to take the leap of faith.” Because that’s what it is.
DEADLINE: Did it take a lot of time to settle on the rules of the world, when it comes to this series?
BOSTON: Yeah, that was quite challenging. But my goal was, again, I have this emotional story. The curse is a representation of doubt, and I want to make sure that every piece of that is connected to Rachel’s emotional story.
Once you become aware of a doubt, it’s hard to get rid of it, and I think if she didn’t know about the curse, she would have been fine. She wouldn’t have overthought it. The witness coming up to her and saying “Are you sure?” is like, “F*ck! Oh my God, am I sure?” And that spirals her, and then she gets all caught up. And that’s part of Nell’s [Karla Crome] grounding advice. She says, “Just go back to who you were when you said yes.”
So yeah, it’s all a metaphor for overthinking and doubting. But it was the right thing for Rachel. She needed to understand what she needed, and she needed to be seen, and she ultimately thought she was, and she was wrong. And then she chose not to betray herself. She chose herself, and she became free at the end.
DEADLINE: What did the process of developing and selling this show look like? Did you start out with a spec? How did the project land at Netflix?
BOSTON: I wrote the pilot, and then I wrote a pitch. My team was kind of like, “I don’t know. Should we pitch the show with the pilot?” Because the pilot was really unorthodox, and the one that I pitched especially, [Rachel and Nicky] don’t meet the family at all. It’s just the two of them because [it’s] prologue. I decided to pitch it with the pilot and I pitched to, I don’t know, 12 producers, and took it in to several streamers. The Duffers brought it to Netflix, and it was clear that that was the best home for it.
DEADLINE: What were the Duffers like to work with? Do you recall any specific notes that were particularly helpful in elevating the material?
BOSTON: The show originally had a bit more of an esoteric vibe to it, and working with the Duffers, early days we did a few Zoom calls and talked through the mythology. That was a big part that they wanted to drill down on and make sure that it was solid, and that was really helpful to me. But ultimately, they were mentors to me and their whole perspective was like, “We see you, as the creator. Obviously, this is your show, and we want to help you make the show that you want to make and stay true to your vision.” They were shooting Stranger Things, and they read the scripts and watched the cuts. But I would call them sometimes and just be like, “Everyone’s telling me that I should do X story thing.” And they were always like, “You have to stand behind every creative decision. So if you don’t believe in that, then don’t do it.” And that was great advice. They really empowered me to be the leader and the showrunner. Sometimes I joke that that was irresponsible because I didn’t know what I was doing. But I learned a lot and I’m very grateful that they let me run with it.
DEADLINE: What are we supposed to take away about the relationship between Rachel and Nicky, and Nicky as a person? Rachel seems done with Nicky by season’s end, but it seemed to me like you might see Nicky a bit differently than your character does.
BOSTON: I think that Nicky was doing the right thing for him, and I don’t hate him. I think he’s just misguided. In the writers’ room, we talked about, we’re on this journey with Rachel. We’re so with Rachel, watching her spiral and try to figure out what to do, that we almost forget that Nicky is a whole other person with his whole emotional journey going on.
So we called it the Drag Me to Hell ending, where at the end of that movie, she does everything right, but [it’s] one little mistake that blows everything up. Nicky saying no at the altar was like our button moment in Drag Me to Hell: Rachel did everything right, and then there was this other piece that we forgot to consider — we, meaning Rachel — which is that Nicky is a person, as well, with his own emotional journey.
So I think what Nicky says in his argument is very fair. He’s like, “I don’t believe in this sh*t.” And he didn’t see a lot of it. Rachel’s the one who met with the witness and saw the tape of her parents. She didn’t try to get him to understand it. So why would he believe in this curse?
I hope that people do take his side, and I hope it’s an argument. I think the story obviously favors Rachel, but Nicky’s got a point.
DEADLINE: Do you view the show as optimistic in the end? There are glimmers of hope — primarily, in the relationship between Nicky’s brother Jules (Jeff Wilbusch) and his wife Nell (Crome), who we realize by the end are, in fact, soulmates, even if they were considering splitting up early in the season.
BOSTON: Absolutely. I view this as a breakup story and I view the horror elements as a metaphor. Ultimately, Rachel decides not to betray herself for this family, and why should she? And she is reborn and gets a second chance. So it is a hopeful ending, for sure, for Rachel.
And then Jules lives. I wanted to make sure that the messaging was not, “Marriage is evil and romance doesn’t exist.” The real point, and what I’m trying to say, is that the sin is marrying someone who isn’t the right person for you. That’s what causes the death of the soul, the death of the self. So that’s what it is. It is still hopeful and, I think, romantic.
DEADLINE: Did you intend this to be an ongoing series? Or one-and-done?
BOSTON: I mean, it could be. At one point I thought, what if it’s Jude’s [Sawyer Fraser] wedding in however many years, and Rachel’s still Rachel because she’s immortal? Or Nicky’s next wedding, which she has to come with witness.
But I do view it as a complete story in and of itself, as well. So it could go on, and it could just be what it is.
DEADLINE: This show marked your first experience as showrunner — you’re now one of the few who can say they got a series off the ground while still in their 20s. How did you prepare yourself for that leap? Who did you talk to in advance? And how hard was it?
BOSTON: It was crazy. I have been in writers’ rooms for the last six years. I did the showrunner training program through the WGA. I developed another show with John Wells, so he’s a mentor of mine, and he’s obviously one of the best showrunners around. So I learned a lot from him. Nick Antosca is another mentor of mine who I reached out to a bit.
But a lot of it was just learning by doing, and I had a great team of people. I joked at the premiere that it takes a lot of trust to get on a plane with a pilot that’s never flown a plane before. I had a lot of confidence in myself, but it was tricky.
But one thing I really love about showrunning is that you have a different core creative group throughout the whole process. So the writers were my core confidantes, and we went down all these paths, and god, it was exhausting. We really turned over every stone, which was so helpful, to then take that into prep, and suddenly I had this new creative team — the director and production designer, costume designer, the actors — and that then puts everything in a new perspective, and I loved that.
One thing I learned was that I have to have a North Star, and my job is to make sure that things don’t go off the rails. Even taking new people’s ideas and perspectives in, I have to understand how that fits into the larger path. And then you get into post, and I have editors who are my new core creative group. What’s so great about it is that we’re talking about the same scene like a thousand times and I’m constantly figuring out, is this scene still what it was? Is the intention still there? And if it’s not, then what is it now? You’re pulling back the layers, figuring it out, which is exhausting, but it’s very creatively fulfilling.
DEADLINE: You nailed a tricky tone with this show — all of the elements gel beautifully, including the music and visuals… Talk about getting there.
BOSTON: Yeah. I mean, [composer] Colin Stetson, genius. I love him so much. He’s my Spotify top artist like every year: That’s what I told him to get him to work on the show… It’s true. [Laughs] I said that like it was a lie, but it’s true. He composed most of the music to the script, and it was all very strange and just perfect.
I think it is a hard tone. Weronika [Tofilska], the lead director and I talked a lot about that balance and wanting to feel the unsettling nature of what Rachel’s going through, the humor coming from the characters more than the situations, and because a lot of absurd things happen in the show, it was important to us that the emotions felt very grounded. So we talked a lot about that, and dread and tension, and there’s a lot of films that influenced that, like The Celebration and The Vanishing, The Silence of the Lambs.
So we had the same kind of reference points, and then a lot of it came together in the edit, too. My pilot editor Maxime [Lahaie], he did Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects, which is my favorite show. There’s a lot of stylistic quick cuts, always interrupting the scene, and we did that with the score, as well, which was something that Colin and our sound designer were like… I mentioned my being new to it — they were kind of like, “Whoah, what are you doing?” [Laughs] But it just felt right to me. I just wanted to constantly keep the audience surprised.
I think it’s hard to sustain horror in TV. You know, once you reveal the monster, it’s no longer scary. So we were constantly trying to reinvent the tone of the show. Same with a lot of the needle drops, [which] we’re playing in that world [of] tonal imbalance where the music’s very upbeat and what’s happening is not.
DEADLINE: How did you come to where you are now? Did you know you wanted to create film and television from an early age? And what were your big influences?
BOSTON: I had no idea that this is a job you could do. I grew up in Oregon. My parents are both doctors. I had no connection to Hollywood at all, and I saw Kill Bill at water polo boot camp. The boys’ team was watching Kill Bill and I was like, “What is that?” I walked in during the Crazy 88 scene and I just was enamored by that movie.
I think it’s because I was like 14 and I just hadn’t seen anything like it at the time. I didn’t know that was possible. Then, I started getting into film, and Shutter Island, randomly, was another one that I saw. Then, once I got into that, I started to get really into horror. The Strangers was one of the earliest horror movies I watched and loved. Paranormal Activity. I sort of grew up on the 2010s remakes — it was like The Last House on the Left, the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, and the Friday the 13th remake. And then I went back and, of course, educated myself on the classics.
But I was really into the feeling of being afraid. I found it empowering, and I just loved, loved horror and found a lot of comfort in it. I used Ouija boards a lot; I was a spooky teenager. Then, I went to Northwestern. I wanted to study film, again didn’t know how to make it a career, and then someone told me to intern. I worked at a talent agency, was an assistant before I was fortunate enough to get my first staff writing job at 24. And I’ve been working ever since.
DEADLINE: Was there one particular piece of writing that helped you gain traction in the industry?
BOSTON: I wrote a pilot as a staffing sample. I’m actually much more of a movie person than a TV person, but I had a really good TV agent, so I got work in TV. I wrote this pilot called Kill F*ck Marry, and it was about a teenage girl who kills her crush, and that girl comes back as a ghost and tries to get her caught for the murder. I did end up getting my first staffing job from that, but I also sold that pilot to Amazon and developed it there — where it died. But that’s the script that got me everything and got me into the world of serious writing.
DEADLINE: What were some of the big takeaways from earlier experiences in writers’ rooms that informed your work on Something Very Bad?
BOSTON: Definitely, my strong suit is in the actual writing. I don’t outline; I’d figure things out through writing. You can’t do that in TV because it moves too fast. So certainly, I learned a lot about the tricks of how to break story and figure out the big stuff you need to keep the story going.
But I will say — this is something that came up a bit with some of my collaborators on the show — I do think my being fresh to it, and I don’t want to say inexperienced, but it’s true…Having done this for the first time, because I didn’t approach it with a rulebook, I think that’s actually what attracted a lot of people to the project. Because they were like, oh, you’re doing something different. And you don’t realize that night shoots are awful. The show takes a lot of unexpected turns, and I think in part, that’s because I’m not following a rulebook. So that is good and exciting, and I hope to continue to stay loose and free and figure things out as I go.
DEADLINE: How do you feel about coming into the business at a time when it’s undergoing such an incredible level of change?
BOSTON: I try not to think about it. [Laughs] It’s all very scary. It’s hard to get anything made. I never expect anything I write to get made; I didn’t expect this show to get made. I’m really doing it for the love of doing it.
This is corny, but when I’m writing, I really genuinely feel like the story is flowing through me, and it’s not about me. So I have ambitions to write and direct movies, and I don’t actually know that much about that side of the business, so I’m sure know I’m going to walk in there and be like, “Yeah, this will be easy,” and I’ll be wrong. But I can’t think about it too much or else it’ll just depress me. I’ve got to believe that I can do anything.
BOSTON: I’m writing a movie that I’m going to direct. I’m very excited to step into that role. I’d made a short film, but I learned so much from running this show, and especially being in the edit, that I’m excited to take that next step.
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