- You're magic, like me.
- I always called it the Shining.
- So Mike, I actually was talking
to you for Nerdist five years ago for Oculus
and when we talked you mentioned to me
how much The Shining was such a huge influence on you,
and now here we are, five years later,
how are you feeling about that?
- It still doesn't feel real, to be honest.
You know, The Shining has been such a huge
part of my life, both the movie and the book.
And that was at a time with Oculus when I would,
I got that movie greenlit because I described
that mirror as a port of the Overlook Hotel.
That was how I was able to get my career started.
So, yeah, it's completely unreal and it's been
a very kind of intense and intimidating
experience for the last two years, without fail.
- So Ewan, I am a big fan of both
the book The Shining and the book Doctor Sleep.
And so Dan's journey throughout Doctor Sleep
is intense and I've been told that it was
really important for you in the adaptation
to keep a lot of his rock-bottom moments.
- Yeah, it was one of my driving forces
for wanting to play him, was to explore
alcoholism through him.
I feel like The Shining is very much a book about
addiction and alcoholism and I feel like Stephen
wrote a book, Doctor Sleep, about recovery and
about sobriety, and I feel like we know where
he comes from, in terms of his story,
at the Overlook with his mom and dad,
because we know The Shining, but then this story,
I felt like it was important that we see
his real rock-bottom.
- When I found out that they were making
this movie, I thought to myself, I wanna see
Abra Stone on the big screen.
(both laughing)
Did you read the book before you made the movie?
- Yeah, I read some of the book to kind of
get a grip on Abra and who she was and let me tell you,
I found her so interesting.
I mean, it's not all the time that we get these
young characters with so much power,
which is super cool.
- Can you talk a little bit about, you know,
maybe that relationship between Abra and Dan
and yourself and Ewan?
- Yeah, well, because me and Mr. Ewan
we grew a friendship off set, I think
we were able to have a stronger bond between
Abra and Dan, and he's just so extremely talented.
Watching him work was so amazing and, I mean,
it wasn't that hard to work off of him
because of how awesome he is.
- She's the one that brings him
to finally face his fears.
It's so interesting what he's writing about,
Stephen King, and of course in Danny's case,
he has real demons to fear, you know,
like really, as opposed to just our inner demons.
You can drink away the responsibility to
sort of grow and face your fears or you can
choose a different path where you have to
face up to them, and we see that he does that,
to an extent, you know, with his friend
that Cliff plays.
Eight years of sobriety and a life that's ticking along,
he's got a small life but he's happy and he's getting there.
That's when she challenges him with saying
you've got to come and help me with this
horrendous problem, and he's like, no way.
- Well, before I let you go the last thing
I want to ask is, long-form story telling.
The Haunting of Hill House was such a
wonderful experience for fans of horror and drama.
The Overlook has so much history.
- Yeah.
- You know, could you foresee maybe going back
to the Overlook?
- God, that would be, that would be so cool.
I would love to do that.
Yeah, the beautiful thing about the blueprint
that King created with, you know, Before the Play,
when he wrote out his kind of history of the Overlook.
It's one of the most unique kind of spaces in horror
and I think it exists in all of our imaginations.
That's how I felt when I walked on the set,
it was like I'm walking through my own memories
of, kind of, what a horror movie could be.
Any chance that I could have to like inhabit
those spaces again I would jump at, you know,
I think that'd be really cool.
(electronic music)