November 17, 2023 • 42 mins
Who is Juno and where did she come from? This week, Stacey and Lindsay sit down with Mike Flanagan's episode 6 co-writer, Rebecca Klingel (also known as author C.K. Walker!).
Tune in next time for another interview and new deep dives into the The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix!
Tune in next time for another interview and new deep dives into the The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Straw Media. Hi, I'm LindsayJones, I'm Stacy Nye, and welcome
to another session of Psychoanalyzing the Fallof the House of Usher. This week
we have episode six writer Rebecca Klinglejoining us, who is also a mystery
(00:24):
writer under a completely different name.We're gonna get to the bottom of that
and everything else we ought to knowabout Goldbug on this episode of Psychoanalyzing the
Fall of the House of Usher.All right, this is the recap of
episode six of the Fall of Houseof Usher. If for some reason you
(00:47):
have not watched episode six, whatare you doing with yourself? Please stop
listening to this recording right away andgo watch episode six. Then come back
here and listen to the summary ofthe thing you just watched for whatever reason,
and then we'll have an interesting interview. In a flashback, Roderick and
Dupan seek Fortunado files despite Annabelle's concerns. In the present, Tamerlane faces stress,
(01:11):
insomnia, and the fallout of herbreakup with Bill, her husband,
as she prepares to launch her wellnesspackage, Goldbug. Madeline tries to convince
Roderick that Vernon is a threat afterfour children died, which by the way,
I feel like four deaths is aroundthe time you should start to worry.
Just I'm putting that out there,I think so. Leonor expresses concern
(01:34):
for Frederick's paranoia and Rodrick's worsening insomnia. Juno discusses with Tamerlaane her desire for
acceptance from a larger family after marryingRoderick, but the deaths have only isolated
them. Madelon pushes her scientists todevelop an AI for consciousness mapping. Arthur
Pim uncovered Verna's true identity and linksto prominent family dating back hundreds of years.
(01:59):
It turns out she's been doing thiskind of thing before. Marilla starts
to begin to speak again, leavingFrederick to secretly interrogate her, and at
Goldbugs launch, Tamerlaine is rattled byvisions of Verna and a sex video of
her Bill and an escort plays forthe public. Tamberlaine accidentally injures Juno as
(02:20):
she flees the event, and Madelinespots Verna, who vanishes in front of
her eyes. But at home,Tamerlane is haunted by Verna through mirrors,
which she ultimately smashes over her bedand the broken glass falls and impales her
and kills her. Ah another cheerfulepisode of Fall of the House of Us,
(02:45):
that whole scene where she's at thelaunch and she Tamberlaine is like yelling
at Verna, only it appears asif she's yelling at Juno, and I'm
just like, oh my god,poor Juno. It's so it's a little
painful. I'm the president of theJuno Fan Club. I want to say
that right now. I like Junois She's quickly becoming my favorite thing on
(03:09):
the show because no one likes her. She doesn't belong here. She's clearly
completely inequipped in every way to dealwith any part of this situation, and
yet she shows up to every eventwith a smile on her face and hope
in her heart that it's all goingto work out great every time. I
(03:30):
think all of us should try tobe more like Juno. I mean,
minus obviously massive drug addiction, whichwe should avoid, but beyond that,
I want to push everybody out there, be a Juno. If you've got
to be somebody, do it bea goldfish or be a Juno. Don't
be a gold bug, though,no, do not be a gold bug.
(03:52):
So you've heard me say this nowtwenty times. I don't think.
I don't think our listeners have heardme say it yet. Maybe they have
if you have, Sarry, thisis my favorite episode. One of the
reasons is the whole Hillhouse tie inand the whole bentneck Lady tie in,
which is my favorite part of Hillhouse. Nell's episode is just so tragic.
(04:15):
Nell was an extremely likable character,and what happens to Nell and Hillhouse is
tragic. Now, what happens toTamerlane in this episode is not tragic because
she's such a bitch. But Iloved that they did, you know,
they they made her do that.And I know that so many Flannagan fans
(04:40):
were all screaming at the TV atthat moment, going betneck Lady. And
if you didn't, then go backand watch it, and you will.
I haven't seen Haunting of Hillhouse.This is the only Mike Flannagan thing I've
ever seen. You need to seeit. You just need to see it.
You'll like Henry Thomas and you'll reallybecome a super fan. But also
(05:02):
the death, something about that,the slow motion of it really captured me.
I just thought it was rather beautiful. Yeah, there's something about a
mirrored glass which is meant to reflectbeauty, but then the minute it shatters,
it's horrible and broken, and also, in this particular case, a
(05:27):
harbinger of death. I feel likethere's so many lessons to be learned from
this episode. But by the way, anybody out there with the mirror over
their bed, think twice before jumpingup there with a fireplace poker, you
know what I mean, Like,that's never gonna work out well. And
why was there a mirror over thebed? She wasn't having sex in the
bed, presumably, I think itwas so that she could control Bill and
(05:53):
whoever the sexual surrogate was, whoturns out to be Verna by the way,
Yeah, the most recent one.Yeah, but we do learn that
Verna has been in lots of people'slives over time, looking exactly the same.
Yeah, so that that is strange. We don't really know who are
what Verna is. Yeah. Themore that we see who Verna associates with,
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the more scary it gets. I'lljust say that, like, there's
nobody that they show that Pim islike, and here he is with the
Kochs, here he is with allyou know, all of these horrible people
over time that were enormously rich.There's nobody like, Oh I like that
guy. You don't like any ofthese people should be a sign. It's
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definitely a sign. And so weget to hear now all of the ins
and outs of this episode with ourguest today, Rebecca Klingle. Rebecca is
a screenwriter from Los Angeles who haswritten on several Netflix shows, including the
(06:57):
Haunting of Hill House and the Hauntingof Blind Manner. She was nominated for
a Writer's Guild Award for her workon Hillhouse. Actually, she's a content
writer and has a whole history ofwriting under a different name, C.
K. Walker, and she doeswriting for the No Sleep podcast. So
we'd like to present our guest,Rebecca kling El. Hi Becca, So,
(07:26):
hi, Becca, We're so excitedthat you're here today to talk about
episode six, which I already letyou know was my favorite episode. Tell
us all about your experience doing that. Oh, yes, thank you,
Yeah. I actually really I reallyloved episode six as well. Because I
think that we're spoiling six obviously,I think that Tammy's I have to be
(07:49):
so worried about spoilers. So Iwas very excited to be assigned episode six.
When I wrote on the Hunting ofBlind Manner also gave me the Dappelganger
episode, So I think it waskind of like you did Henry's doppelganger,
Let's do Tammy's doppelganger, which wasa bit different. But I really liked
(08:11):
Tammy, not liked her, youknow, liked her as a character.
I thought she was really interesting,and because she was in six episodes,
we were able to get a littlein deeper with her and see more of
her life than kind of non arcas it were. I really I really
loved writing the episode. I thoughtit came out really well. It was
(08:31):
great. I think I wrote itin maybe two weeks, so we can
have something like that. Yeah,very quick. Yeah, I'm a big
outliner. I do like the scroutlines as they call them, the script
outlines. So it's very once itgoes to go to going to draft,
it's you know, it's not toobad. I have it all there when
you were a signed goldbug, whichI know is you know, I think
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of a lot of Edgar Allan poststories and it's not one of the more
well known ones. And was therea moment you're like, man, I
got gold Bug or are you like, were you okay with it? Did
you feel like there's there? No, I was very excited. Goldbug was
named a different episode earlier. Itwas named William Wilson at first because her
(09:13):
story, Tammy's story is most likeWilliam Wilson in her episode, which is
a short story by edgarl and PoeRight, And actually I think that some
people miss that her death is actuallyquite close to the original story. If
you know the story of William Wilson, which I can just recite it really
quick if you want, sure,please do. Yeah. Yeah. So
it's about this boy named William Wilsonand he lives this really recklessly extravagant lifestyle
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and he never takes the blame foranything the consequences of any of his actions,
you know, these violent delights.And when he goes to boarding school,
he meets a boy with the samename, the same birthday, and
looks quite similar to him, basicallyhis doppelganger, and the boy would whisper
things to him at night, advice, and so he leaves cool freaked out,
(10:00):
and the doppelganger keeps showing up andkind of ruining things. Like,
he goes to a poker game andhe cheats, and the doppelganger tells everyone
he tries to have an affair witha married Whoompan and the doppelganger stops that,
so he gets very angry and hechallenges the other William to a sword
fight, which he kills the otherWilliam and then notices that he's actually looking
at a mirror and he's just killedhimself. So it's quite similar to Tammy,
(10:24):
and we even gave her husband thename William or Bill Till. Yeah.
Yeah, so it originally was actuallypretty close to the original post story
and it still is. It justI think Goldbug made a lot more sense
for the episode. The episode isn'tabout Bill, it's about Goldbug, which
you know, Goldbug is another short, really weird ed Rowland post story,
So yeah, we just decided tolean that way. Mary the two if
(10:46):
you will, that's so cool.I mean I mentioned this to you also
in an email about how I thoughtthe death was just beautiful, and that's
a weird thing to say. Irecogniz, like, how can someone dying
be beautiful? And I have atheory about why I thought it was beautiful.
(11:07):
There's something maybe it's about the slowmotion. You know that all of
a sudden it was in slow motionas she's jumping up and filing back down
and she looks up and you seeall the glass, and there was just
something like kind of beautifully orchestrated aboutit. I think, curious what your
thoughts are about that. Yeah,you know, in the script, it
(11:28):
was violent and interesting, and Iwouldn't call it beautiful, but it's definitely
the way that Mike shot that episode, the ending with the green lighting,
with the slow motion of Tammy jumping. I love that scene of her jumping
and throwing that fire poker up andthen being completely pincushioned on the way down,
(11:50):
and you know, the and it'svery slow and it's very beautiful because
I think it's a death we've seenbefore in other movies, TV shows,
that sort of thing. And Iloved the way that Mike took it and
made it so unique and beautiful.And I especially loved how as soon as
she hit the bed boom, thenit's we're back in real time and the
room is kind of just dark,and it's just a dead woman on a
(12:13):
bed. It's not that beautiful kindof death. Yeah, I was so
happy with the way that came out. Wonderful. It was so wonderful.
The thing I responded to actually wasthe moment before the death, when it
seems like for a brief moment,like she suddenly gets it and it's like,
oh, wait, maybe I doneed to resist this. And then
when she sees the reflection in themirror above and decides to go after it,
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it's like, ah, you wereso close. You were so close.
Yes, I like that where atthe end of her death she was
like, can I swear on thispodcast? Yeah, She's like, I
fucked it all up. And justone more wanted to say about her death
was Tammy doesn't sleep for the entireseries, and you see a lot of
that with her little micro sleeps,and I really enjoy that she dies like
(13:01):
finally laying in her bed at rest. All right. Yeah, it's very
cool. Kind of yeah, mirrorto the opening. She's just horrific throughout
the you know, like she is. And one of the reasons why I
liked episode six so much were theeaster eggs to Hill House the bent neck
(13:22):
Lady. So can you tell usabout how that came about? Sure,
that was not in the script.That was something I think that Mike decided
to do a nod to Hill Houseon set. But I yeah, I
did notice that too, and Iwasn't expecting it until I watched the episode.
But it does make sense, well, even just from a standpoint of
(13:45):
like Tammy was basically half decapitated,so she would definitely if she was standing
straight up, have you know,a bent neck. So I really enjoyed
that, and it was a surpriseto me too, so I liked it
even more. Oh so you didn'teven know that was going to happen.
You first saw that when you watchthe episode yourself. Yes, exactly.
(14:05):
Yes, I think she was justyou know, she was just a mess
with kind of a heavily slit throat, if I recall in the script.
So I really liked that. Yes, another daughter of another haunted family.
Yeah, a much more likable daughter. But nevertheless, yes, yes,
yes, yes, yes, nowdefinitely yes, yes, she had a
(14:26):
much more tragic story than Tammy did. Tammy had parts of that coming.
They all did, right. Iwanted to ask about that. It seems
like this episode really is the episodewhere the family, parts of the family
are starting to be like, hey, maybe this isn't just a series of
(14:48):
coincidences, like maybe there's actually somethingseriously wrong here, and they actually really
start to put that in motion oftrying to figure out what's happening. How
when you guys were sort of blockingout the series, you know, at
the sort of the beginning of thebuilding of the show's process, how did
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you determine when they were going tofigure out what is just a horrible tragic
slash accident slash maybe not accident versusright, someone is doing this to us,
right. Yeah, So that wassomething that we really talked about a
lot, because you never want yourcharacters to be stupid. You definitely want
(15:31):
them to be at least as smartas the average person. And these are
ushers here, you know. Imean, it was something we struggled with.
So, you know, the firsttwo deaths, I think you could
say, like that's very strange.You know that Camille dies right after Perry,
but both of them are kind oflike, well the monkey did one
and the other one. It's twokind of freak accidents. But then when
you get to Leo, then westart there's a lot more questions. Leo
(15:54):
was definitely starting to slip. Yeah, and so at some point the family
in stalls security guards with all theushers. Tammy talks about it in her
episode. I think they all theytalk about it in five when they remaining
siblings meet at the bar. They'veall got security and I suppose what else
can they do? So and thenyou have after episode five, Roderick was
(16:15):
there. Roderick watched victoryin stab herselfto death. Roderick knows what he saw.
He knows that he watched with hisown eyes Victory and do this,
which also helps him kind of settledeeper into the denial that he has that
Verna is here and back and comingfor his progeny. So that really helped
us because he was there for Victoryand Stath kind of kick the ball,
(16:38):
kick the can a little bit further. But yeah, I think that Tammy,
you know, she's just her episodeis all about like, I want
to make Daddy proud. I wantto save the company. You don't need
Froderick, you need your daughter,you need me. I'm the you know,
the Madeline of the family. Iam like my dad. And so
she goes forward with Goldbug and thatis really the thing that is the most
(17:00):
important to her. This episode.I mean you hear her say it,
like, oh, yes, afew my heart will go on tweets whatever.
Let's just like we'll put the public, you know, we'll we'll well,
we'll say what we need to sayin the press, and then we'll
move on, you know, moreconstant, more focus on me. And
then you know, she was justblind. She had her blinders on.
She was blind the whole episode.It was all about gold Bug. It
(17:22):
was all about doing it herself,not even built. Yeah, she didn't
even last a day and she waskilled alone in her own apartment. So
yeah, and then well we won'tget in I won't get into episode seven.
But yeah, by this time,it's like everything is going crazy,
Roderick showing up to work covered inblood, like we're in it now.
(17:45):
And this whole thing takes place overonly maybe a week and a half,
maybe two weeks. I think it'stwo weeks. It's not a whole lot
of time. So there's not awhole lot of time for the Circle of
Wagons, and they're doing what theycan while they're also running this empire at
the same time. That was along minute answer to that question. I
loved him, and you know,and Tammy is really really not a nice
(18:08):
lady, you know. I mean, she has opportunities to say the right
thing, or do the right thing, or just keep her mouth shut,
and she doesn't take any of thoseopportunities. She just cannot show an out
of compassion to Juno. She literallytells Bill that he was like on a
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list of people that looked right andthat's why he was chosen as her husband.
I mean, it's harsh, man, it is harsh. I really
feel sometimes that Madeline had a lotof hand in raising Tammy because they remind
me so much of each other.But yeah, I mean she arranged her
own marriage. She picked Bill offof a spreadsheet well that had things like
(18:52):
age, health problems, Instagram followers, all that she selected, hand selected
him wow for her business. Butyeah, I mean that's the thing with
Tammy. She just she can't becompassionate because that's being vulnerable, and she
can never be vulnerable. And Ithink that's part of the reason that she
uses avatars to have sex with Bill. That's what gets her off. She
doesn't have to be vulnerable. Thisavatar, this other woman that is her.
(19:17):
It's all the vanity and the mirrorsin her house. It's you know,
she has to see herself as thisvery strong sibling and that started from
you know, I think it's insome of the later episodes, but they
talk about Tammy was you know,she was a twin and she absorbed her
twin and she's been had an innatekiller instinct from birth, you know.
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Roderick likes to her. Dad likesto say that a lot like Tammy's a
killer. She came out, shewent to war, she won, she
came out. You know. Vernatalks about it a little bit in this
episode. Maybe I'm your twin.And she's also you know, she's a
bit like Eliza. She has aproblem. She has anxiety. She can't
sleep, but she refuses to takemedications. She's too much on her natural
(20:00):
homeopathics, you know, to herown detriment, just as Eliza was.
The Other character that really shines inthis episode and sort of we get the
chance to sort of get to knowher a little bit more than we do
elsewhere is Juno, who has someof what I think are my favorite lines
of this entire series in this particularepisode. My favorite is when everyone has
(20:22):
a box under their seat and she'slike I bet mine is filled with pooh.
Yeah, poor Juno sort of isa unique sort of character in this
whole series because everyone else they're supermean spirited. They each have their own
episode by which we see their demise, and Juno really sort of like orbits
(20:45):
in a completely different way around thiswhole series, And like it does seem
like she gets a little bit oflike these moments that are not just about
her being subservient to Roderick in thisepisode, but are actually her. We
get to see a little bit whatof what she's like as a person outside
of that relationship, and it's kindof fun and entertaining. So I'm just
curious how you sort of sketched Juno'scharacter through the series and then specifically through
(21:11):
this episode. Yeah. Well,I hope this isn't too disappointing, But
I will say that Juno wasn't inany of the scripts when we broke the
room. Wow, Mike added herlater, And so I can only really
speculate with you, but what Isee originally Anna Belly was going to show
up at the funeral of her twochildren, have a moment with Roderick and
(21:33):
a moment with her granddaughter, Butthen you know, as we know,
something else happens. So yeah,Juno wasn't in it. But what's interesting
is when I watched it, Ireally liked what he did with her character.
There was a little there was alittle bit more heart. You know,
these characters are so such terrible peoplethat it's nice to have, you
(21:53):
know, a Juno and a leonorto be there so and even a Built.
Honestly, I like bi poor built. But to me, and I
think this was Mike's intention, Junoseems to just represent ligodone. And I
think that's why Rodrick is in lovewith her. I don't think he knows
much about her. I don't thinkthat it's about her really at all.
(22:14):
I think he just says, like, you're like this miraculous ligodone Frankenstein.
You know, like you are everything. I've worked so hard for your walking,
you're living, you're high functioning onthis dose of ligodon. And I
thought that was really interesting. Butno, she was not in the show
when we broke it, but Ireally love her edition, especially when she
got hit with that microphone. ButAmmy, that was amazing. She was
(22:38):
out. When was she added?Then? How did she enter into that
process? You know, I'm notsure. At some point I heard that
there was going to be another character, added a bit of a tertiary character,
and I thought that was great,And of course when I heard it
was the wonderful Ruth caught it wasvery happy because she's such a good actress.
But I wasn't really sure how thatis going to work. And I'm
(23:00):
so glad he put her in becauseshe we definitely needed her. I think,
just a little more softness in thefamily and relatability. Honestly, she's
so great. She is she sheshe is truly wonderful. H She was
so great in Midnight Mass and Ilove that she really is missing, like
you know, her leg and itjust makes her so Like you said,
(23:25):
she's very relatable and you just gotthat like, you know, sense of
humor, and I think, youknow, people really like her. I
think so too. She's just she'sso lonely and she's like, oh,
I get this big family. I'mmarrying into a large family, so many
siblings, and she tries to getto know them and they just brush her
off. And I also like that. I'm pretty sure, oh wait,
that's a spoiler, never mind,but I think she ties in the end
(23:48):
of the series very well. So, yes, Juna was a lovely addition.
And I believe another Poe character ohwow, huh yeah, which I'm
sure. I'm sure she is.I don't think there's anyone who's not named
after a Poe character. Actually thisis slightly unrelated, but I know that
because I did some research on you, Becca that you also you publish novels
(24:15):
under another name, that you're kindof a horror writer outside, like you
have a totally different identity, AndI was just wondering if you could talk
to us about that and why youwrite under an alias, and also like
what that's like and how that sortof does that have any relationship to the
kind of work you've been doing onthe Fall of the House of USh.
Yeah, that's a great question.Well, so, actually I had an
(24:38):
alias because I was I started writingonline short stories on Reddit and I didn't
want my Reddit account link to myactual real account. I wanted to stay
anonymous, so I had come upwith this alias C K. Walker.
Also, I hate that it isthis way, but at the time I
thought, if I don't if Iuse a name that's kind of like ender
(25:00):
ambiguous, that you know, maybeI'll help get read more because there is
some of that still out there,and I know a few female authors that
unfortunately have to do that or wantto do that. So that was the
reason that I had that. Andthen Mike actually discovered me, if you
want to put it that way,through my short stories online and called me
and option one of my stories andasked me to come out and write on
(25:22):
the Haunting of Hillhouse, which ishow I got involved in the flann Of
fam So that's why I started.I wish I could go back and undo
it now because my work is undertwo to three different names. But yes,
yes, I do have collections ofshort stories. Yes, I've always
enjoyed short stories. Just the bereviting, that's so great. Yes. C
J. Walker is your doppelganger?C. K. Walker? Yes,
(25:45):
I know I've got both doppelganger episodeson the Doppelganger shows that we did,
And then I guess I also havea doppelganger. Yes, so maybe those
were appropriate episode assignments. Is thata Flannagan thing? I think that Mike
assigns the episodes. He asks whatepisode we want to do, and then
he assigns them. I belief basedon who he thinks could write it best.
(26:07):
For instance, in Hill House,I believe I heard him say that
he staffed the room every writer remindedhim of one of the Usher cast or
one of the characters, so thatcould be how he assigns him. Yes,
it's a wow. I've never seenbehind that Curt, and I'm not
sure how they do it. ButI'm always very excited to get to write
on a mic show. I'm nowimagining all the writers in really horrible makeup.
(26:30):
Oh god, I know, youknow. On BLI it's funny.
We wanted to convince Mike to letus to let the writers come and be
like one of the tables at thewedding in the framing story of Blind Manner,
so we could just be all thewriters in the background, out of
focus, at a table. Butyou know, that's hard to organize.
Yeah, we didn't do that obviously, but I would love to know.
(26:52):
And now I'm behind the camera personmaybe out of focus. Something else that
we didn't have as much of aproblem with in my episode, and especially
not episode seven the episode after mine, is the good Usher problem, which
was a problem we had to workthrough a few times, which is are
these characters in the name of makingthem realistic becoming too good, Like,
(27:14):
we want to make sure that theydeserve their come up. And because some
of the deaths are quite violent orunique. So that's not something that we
had to really deal with by episodesix and seven, but it was something
that we did had to deal withearlier. But I think you see the
way that Tammy treats Bill when shebasically breaks up with him, it's like,
read your prenam you know that's she'shorrible to poor Bill. Were you
(27:37):
guys just doing a lot of researchon how to be jerks and then just
sort of incorporating that into these charactersso that they people would feel like,
oh, you know, they deservedit. Well, most of us had
watched Succession, Yeah, so weknew how to write a jerk. But
also, you know, a lotof it is in po He had his
own like mortal enemies as an author. While he was alive, he was
(28:02):
a very dramatic person, which Ireally enjoy. Even his death, which
most people know was quite mysterious ormurder, whichever it was. He was
a weird guy. He had acane that had like a sword in it.
Yeah, so he wrote complicated charactersand evil characters. So we read
so much Edgar Allan Poe in thatroom that I think that it just probably
(28:23):
rubbed off on us, you know, And it's just not hard to do
when you're talking about you know,sociopathic billionaires either. Sure, even Frederick,
who has a daughter, we don'tsee him be particularly a good father
or caring toward her or anything.He's just too obsessed with that phone.
So that's the way they made Ithink, at least Kendall a little bit
(28:45):
more religious. Not really. Nowif we start talking about succession, then
this will go three hours, soanyway, please that's continued. So I
was told I was told backa thatat the beginning of each episode there's a
sound which is a clue as tohow that character dies. So I heard
(29:06):
that after I'd watched many of them. I had to go back and watch
them again, at least that beginningpart. Can you tell us about like
how that came about? Yeah,I'm sorry to this point you again,
but that was the first I heardof it. I watched the whole series.
I didn't hear anything. I'm goingto have to go back and watch
it again. A lot of alot is done in post, a lot
of sound, I mean the sounddesign, you know, everything like that.
(29:27):
So that's a new to me thing. What's the sound on episode six
glass breaking? Maybe? Yeah,yeah, it's just a sound a glass
break. I love it. Andin episode five there's like the it's the
sound of the heart. Oh that'snot quite how she dies, but that
is, you know, Victor Yan'sepisode all about the hearts. You can
hear the beating of the heart.That's really brilliant. I mean you could
(29:48):
see from the marketing materials we weren'ttrying to hide necessarily that these kids were
dead, that the kids were dead, or even how you know their cause
of death was. But it's allthe journey leading up there and how they
die. So I think that's quitebrilliant and I'll have to go back and
look for it. I just wantedto ask you about you said that you
(30:11):
had before you met Mike Flanagan.You were writing horror based short stories,
which of course is how Poe sortof made his name for himself as well,
writing horror short stories and that sortof thing. And I'm wondering do
you feel any type of kinship withPoe. What type of inspiration did you?
(30:32):
I know you guys had to reada lot of his material. Did
you were you inspired by what youread? And did you feel like a
connection between him as a fellow horrorshort story writer. You know, I
would like to say yes, becauseI've always really we've adapted a few things
now from brilliant authors, but EdgarAllam Poe. Yeah. I love the
(30:53):
gothic tone of Edgar Allan Poe's shortstories, and I love that so much
of it really seems to surround thetrauma of death, which I always think
is it's always something I try towrite towards, is if you just take
a simple death, you can makea whole story around, no matter how
(31:15):
they died, if the characters arerelatable. Death is just a scary,
mysterious thing, a heart attack ora boat accident, it doesn't matter because
they're all ending up in the samedestination. And I like that he can
write a whole story about one deathand make it incredibly scary, even if
that death has already happened. AndI think that a girl and pose obsess
(31:37):
with death, and so am I. He also writes about particularly tragic deaths
death of the young, death ofyoung innocent women a lot, and I
also write about more tragic deaths aswell that are just fascinating to me,
which probably sounds horrible. But yeah, I was extremely excited when I heard
that we were going to adapt Poe, and I read his biography and I
(32:00):
watched a documentary about him just toget ready so we could have actual things
from edgro and Poe's life to putin the movie in the TV show too,
which yeah, we did and itwas great. Griswoll Long Longfellow,
both real people. We didn't getthe sword cane, but you know that
would have been a little a littleharder to back in. You may not
(32:22):
know this, but our first episodewe interview curator of the Poe Museum in
Virginia. Oh so you might reallylike that episode, Chris Sumter. Yeah,
we learned a lot. I willhave to do that. Yeah,
did they talk about the potos potos? Oh? That is my favorite thing.
Is every year, I want tosay, in his birthday or perhaps
(32:43):
his death day, someone leaves kognakon Edgirl and Poe's tombstone and I think
it's like a Man in Black ormass Man, and it's been going on
for over one hundred years, Ibelieve. So it's very interesting clearly being
passed down from someone. But that'syou might notice some nods to Poe's life
that I wanted to ask you aquestion about one line in episode six,
(33:07):
So get ready. So we startto see, you know, some of
Frederick's decline in this episode, youknow, using a lot of cocaine.
And I want to say, youknow, Lindsey, you mentioned this the
other day, like the last oneyou saw, you know, you recognize
Henry Thomas. He was like anet and now he's this grown man and
acting so out of the ballpark inthis episode. And what tremendous acting because
(33:34):
Henry Thomas did not act this wayin Hillhouse or Blind manner, so he's
really doing a tremendous job. Butanyway, so he's very you know,
like activated, and he says thisone line and I don't I just wonder
know if it was planned or anaccident and you kept it or what he
goes It just shows to go you, Oh, I bet you that was
(33:55):
all Henry. I bet you thatwas all Henry. Yeah you think so?
Yes? I really like he lived. He might have had lived or
Mike might have done a pass andthat was in there, but it really
sounds like I had. I hadheard during filming that Henry was really making
Frederick his own, which was coolbecause he's in so many episodes, you
(34:17):
know, and I you know,he's a family man, and he was
so sadistic to me in the scripts, as you'll see later. But yeah,
when when I saw some of thedailies, I was like, I
love this. I didn't expect this, but I love his take on Frederick.
It's so wonderful and weird. Iwould guess that either Henry flubbed it
(34:38):
and they kept it, or Henrytried it, or Mike had him try
it. But yeah, that thatkind of persona was definitely curated after the
writer's room. Great stuff, though, Yeah, I was wondering you could
easily have missed it too. Yeahyou know that he that he said that.
I just remember going like this.I had to go back and listen
(34:58):
to it again, and I thought, you know, Frederick could have said
that because he was so he washigh as a kite all the time,
and so he could have easily justtwisted all of his words up. But
it really fit the moment. Yes, Yes, Frederick is ended up kind
of delightful. In the first fewepisodes, I liked his whole like departed
(35:20):
little joke about like who's a moleand who's an informant? I thought that
was like fun family time. It'sthe only time you really see it.
Actually, Mike got to write episodeone, and that's really the only fun
times anybody's having before it all goesto crap. Such a great episode though,
I mean, just the stuff withI know we're here to talk about
six, but just just that stuffwith Eliza and the mom unburying herself and
(35:44):
got it came out so good.Oh my god, I was so scary.
Yes, Becca, we want tothank you so much for being with
us. This has been so incrediblyinformative and fine, and we really appreciate
you spending time with us. Thishas just been fantastic. Thank you.
Yeah, and I wish I knewthe answers to all of your questions,
but you know, so much ofit with Mike uh kind of happens on
(36:05):
set, some of that magic,so but I was happy to answer what
I could and it was really greattalking to you guys. I love talking
about the show. So it's great. It was fun to learn that that
was part of the process for us, learning that some of those things came
in later. And yeah, sowe we really appreciate your time, and
thank you so much. Yeah,thanks again. Well, thanks guys.
(36:27):
I'm really glad that that I gotto come on. So that was Becha
Klingle And that was really fun totalk to her about my favorite episode.
Lindsay, I don't know which isyour favorite episode? Which is yours?
(36:49):
Oh? Wow, I don't knoweither. I mean, like, I'm
such a sucker for episode three.That Lemon speech absolutely killed me. And
I'm gonna I'm gonna go with thatfor a while. But and okay,
I don't want to totally commit untilI get to the end because I don't
want to give it myself away andthen I'm done after that, so I'm
holding out. Okay, Okay,But she was great. We learned some
(37:10):
really interesting things about how the showcame together, Like Juno wasn't originally part
of the cast, wasn't in theoriginal script. It's totally fascinating to me
to see how things develop on theset that the writers can completely go through
the entire process of blocking out allof the story and all of the plot
(37:34):
and write it all out, andthen it gets to the set, and
then things happen and things change,And it could be something as small as
that line you pointed out, Stacy, or it could be something as big
as a whole other character or thebentnet lady who shows up later, who
knows what, like all of thesethings, I mean, they have to
totally, I guess rethink things.I don't know, but they made it
(37:58):
seem pretty seamless. Totally. Iwould never have known that, you know,
wasn't in the script from the beginning. I know. I love that
he added her because she was oneof the most likable people on the show
for sure, which isn't saying much, but she was one of the most
likable people. I mean, it'snot hard to be one of the more
(38:19):
likable people on that show. Thereare not a lot of likable people,
right right. Maybe that's why she'sprobably there. I don't know if you
hurt. I don't know if wewere recording when Becca told us that she
wrote the whole episode with her dogon her lap, I don't know if
that's going to make the cut,But she told us that that's amazing.
That's a very helpful dog. Yeah, cute little dog. I have a
(38:43):
cat, and I guarantee you mycat will never help me write. I
also loved her insight into Tammy,that Tammy could not be vulnerable. Yeah,
so that was a very psychological insightinto her. I think what's interest
about this show is that a numberof the women on this show are absolutely
(39:07):
ruthless. They are driven, andin some ways are more cruel and sadistic
than the men of this show.And I found that especially interesting that even
when there are moments of softness withTammy where you think, ah, here's
the moment where we're going to finallyget to know who Tammy is on the
(39:30):
inside, Well, Tammy's a coldhearted killer on the inside. Like she's
always going to be a ruthless murdererto the very end. So there isn't
that. And I appreciated that thewomen were so tough on this show.
Yeah, now for one minute,do you feel bad about what's happening to
her? Right Like, you know, when she's up on stage doing the
(39:51):
goldbug thing that she keeps saying vernaand you know, it's a little awkward,
it's a little painful, but I'mlike, yeah, take her down.
She's so awful. You know.What really helps set that up,
in my opinion, is the wayshe treats Bill right, her husband,
but also the way she sort ofdirects that whole weird sex thing they've got
(40:15):
going on, which is I mean, I feel like that's a whole cycle
analyzing show in itself of just tryingto walk through that whole process. But
like, at no point during anyof that business of the intimacy with her
husband where she has this surrogate performingfor them, first of all, in
(40:37):
no way is Bill really I meanlike it seems like Bill's just playing a
part in that too, so youcan tell Bill's not enjoying it. And
then also she treats them really justlike puppets. They're just like meat puppets,
you know, just people doing herbidding. And so in the end,
after she's treated everybody so poorly,yeah, you're kind of like,
(41:00):
man, she really did have thatcoming. Like I can't feel bad for
her. Absolutely, well, letthat be a lesson to everybody out there
who wants to have sexual avatars andthen treat them poorly. It's not going
to work out. Well in theend. That's the lesson of today's episode
of Psychoanalyzing the Fall of the Houseof Usher. Thanks so much for joining
(41:20):
us. Our session has come toan end. We'll see you next time.
Bye bye. Psychoanalyzing the Fall ofthe House of Usher is a production
of straw Hut Media. Your hostsare Stacy and I and Lindsay Jones.
Your producer is Maggie Bowles. Editingand sound design by Daniel Ferrera. Theme
(41:42):
music by Adrian Baranker with additional musicfrom Marco Martini and Artie Son. Subscribe,
rate and review, and come backfor new episodes every Friday, and
tell us what should we psychoanalyze next. Let us know by emailing us at
Psychoanalyzing at straw hutmedia dot com.See you next time. Week
Straw Media. Hi, I'm LindsayJones, I'm Stacy Nye, and welcome
to another session of Psychoanalyzing the Fallof the House of Usher. This week
we have episode six writer Rebecca Klinglejoining us, who is also a mystery
(00:24):
writer under a completely different name.We're gonna get to the bottom of that
and everything else we ought to knowabout Goldbug on this episode of Psychoanalyzing the
Fall of the House of Usher.All right, this is the recap of
episode six of the Fall of Houseof Usher. If for some reason you
(00:47):
have not watched episode six, whatare you doing with yourself? Please stop
listening to this recording right away andgo watch episode six. Then come back
here and listen to the summary ofthe thing you just watched for whatever reason,
and then we'll have an interesting interview. In a flashback, Roderick and
Dupan seek Fortunado files despite Annabelle's concerns. In the present, Tamerlane faces stress,
(01:11):
insomnia, and the fallout of herbreakup with Bill, her husband,
as she prepares to launch her wellnesspackage, Goldbug. Madeline tries to convince
Roderick that Vernon is a threat afterfour children died, which by the way,
I feel like four deaths is aroundthe time you should start to worry.
Just I'm putting that out there,I think so. Leonor expresses concern
(01:34):
for Frederick's paranoia and Rodrick's worsening insomnia. Juno discusses with Tamerlaane her desire for
acceptance from a larger family after marryingRoderick, but the deaths have only isolated
them. Madelon pushes her scientists todevelop an AI for consciousness mapping. Arthur
Pim uncovered Verna's true identity and linksto prominent family dating back hundreds of years.
(01:59):
It turns out she's been doing thiskind of thing before. Marilla starts
to begin to speak again, leavingFrederick to secretly interrogate her, and at
Goldbugs launch, Tamerlaine is rattled byvisions of Verna and a sex video of
her Bill and an escort plays forthe public. Tamberlaine accidentally injures Juno as
(02:20):
she flees the event, and Madelinespots Verna, who vanishes in front of
her eyes. But at home,Tamerlane is haunted by Verna through mirrors,
which she ultimately smashes over her bedand the broken glass falls and impales her
and kills her. Ah another cheerfulepisode of Fall of the House of Us,
(02:45):
that whole scene where she's at thelaunch and she Tamberlaine is like yelling
at Verna, only it appears asif she's yelling at Juno, and I'm
just like, oh my god,poor Juno. It's so it's a little
painful. I'm the president of theJuno Fan Club. I want to say
that right now. I like Junois She's quickly becoming my favorite thing on
(03:09):
the show because no one likes her. She doesn't belong here. She's clearly
completely inequipped in every way to dealwith any part of this situation, and
yet she shows up to every eventwith a smile on her face and hope
in her heart that it's all goingto work out great every time. I
(03:30):
think all of us should try tobe more like Juno. I mean,
minus obviously massive drug addiction, whichwe should avoid, but beyond that,
I want to push everybody out there, be a Juno. If you've got
to be somebody, do it bea goldfish or be a Juno. Don't
be a gold bug, though,no, do not be a gold bug.
(03:52):
So you've heard me say this nowtwenty times. I don't think.
I don't think our listeners have heardme say it yet. Maybe they have
if you have, Sarry, thisis my favorite episode. One of the
reasons is the whole Hillhouse tie inand the whole bentneck Lady tie in,
which is my favorite part of Hillhouse. Nell's episode is just so tragic.
(04:15):
Nell was an extremely likable character,and what happens to Nell and Hillhouse is
tragic. Now, what happens toTamerlane in this episode is not tragic because
she's such a bitch. But Iloved that they did, you know,
they they made her do that.And I know that so many Flannagan fans
(04:40):
were all screaming at the TV atthat moment, going betneck Lady. And
if you didn't, then go backand watch it, and you will.
I haven't seen Haunting of Hillhouse.This is the only Mike Flannagan thing I've
ever seen. You need to seeit. You just need to see it.
You'll like Henry Thomas and you'll reallybecome a super fan. But also
(05:02):
the death, something about that,the slow motion of it really captured me.
I just thought it was rather beautiful. Yeah, there's something about a
mirrored glass which is meant to reflectbeauty, but then the minute it shatters,
it's horrible and broken, and also, in this particular case, a
(05:27):
harbinger of death. I feel likethere's so many lessons to be learned from
this episode. But by the way, anybody out there with the mirror over
their bed, think twice before jumpingup there with a fireplace poker, you
know what I mean, Like,that's never gonna work out well. And
why was there a mirror over thebed? She wasn't having sex in the
bed, presumably, I think itwas so that she could control Bill and
(05:53):
whoever the sexual surrogate was, whoturns out to be Verna by the way,
Yeah, the most recent one.Yeah, but we do learn that
Verna has been in lots of people'slives over time, looking exactly the same.
Yeah, so that that is strange. We don't really know who are
what Verna is. Yeah. Themore that we see who Verna associates with,
(06:15):
the more scary it gets. I'lljust say that, like, there's
nobody that they show that Pim islike, and here he is with the
Kochs, here he is with allyou know, all of these horrible people
over time that were enormously rich.There's nobody like, Oh I like that
guy. You don't like any ofthese people should be a sign. It's
(06:35):
definitely a sign. And so weget to hear now all of the ins
and outs of this episode with ourguest today, Rebecca Klingle. Rebecca is
a screenwriter from Los Angeles who haswritten on several Netflix shows, including the
(06:57):
Haunting of Hill House and the Hauntingof Blind Manner. She was nominated for
a Writer's Guild Award for her workon Hillhouse. Actually, she's a content
writer and has a whole history ofwriting under a different name, C.
K. Walker, and she doeswriting for the No Sleep podcast. So
we'd like to present our guest,Rebecca kling El. Hi Becca, So,
(07:26):
hi, Becca, We're so excitedthat you're here today to talk about
episode six, which I already letyou know was my favorite episode. Tell
us all about your experience doing that. Oh, yes, thank you,
Yeah. I actually really I reallyloved episode six as well. Because I
think that we're spoiling six obviously,I think that Tammy's I have to be
(07:49):
so worried about spoilers. So Iwas very excited to be assigned episode six.
When I wrote on the Hunting ofBlind Manner also gave me the Dappelganger
episode, So I think it waskind of like you did Henry's doppelganger,
Let's do Tammy's doppelganger, which wasa bit different. But I really liked
(08:11):
Tammy, not liked her, youknow, liked her as a character.
I thought she was really interesting,and because she was in six episodes,
we were able to get a littlein deeper with her and see more of
her life than kind of non arcas it were. I really I really
loved writing the episode. I thoughtit came out really well. It was
(08:31):
great. I think I wrote itin maybe two weeks, so we can
have something like that. Yeah,very quick. Yeah, I'm a big
outliner. I do like the scroutlines as they call them, the script
outlines. So it's very once itgoes to go to going to draft,
it's you know, it's not toobad. I have it all there when
you were a signed goldbug, whichI know is you know, I think
(08:52):
of a lot of Edgar Allan poststories and it's not one of the more
well known ones. And was therea moment you're like, man, I
got gold Bug or are you like, were you okay with it? Did
you feel like there's there? No, I was very excited. Goldbug was
named a different episode earlier. Itwas named William Wilson at first because her
(09:13):
story, Tammy's story is most likeWilliam Wilson in her episode, which is
a short story by edgarl and PoeRight, And actually I think that some
people miss that her death is actuallyquite close to the original story. If
you know the story of William Wilson, which I can just recite it really
quick if you want, sure,please do. Yeah. Yeah. So
it's about this boy named William Wilsonand he lives this really recklessly extravagant lifestyle
(09:39):
and he never takes the blame foranything the consequences of any of his actions,
you know, these violent delights.And when he goes to boarding school,
he meets a boy with the samename, the same birthday, and
looks quite similar to him, basicallyhis doppelganger, and the boy would whisper
things to him at night, advice, and so he leaves cool freaked out,
(10:00):
and the doppelganger keeps showing up andkind of ruining things. Like,
he goes to a poker game andhe cheats, and the doppelganger tells everyone
he tries to have an affair witha married Whoompan and the doppelganger stops that,
so he gets very angry and hechallenges the other William to a sword
fight, which he kills the otherWilliam and then notices that he's actually looking
at a mirror and he's just killedhimself. So it's quite similar to Tammy,
(10:24):
and we even gave her husband thename William or Bill Till. Yeah.
Yeah, so it originally was actuallypretty close to the original post story
and it still is. It justI think Goldbug made a lot more sense
for the episode. The episode isn'tabout Bill, it's about Goldbug, which
you know, Goldbug is another short, really weird ed Rowland post story,
So yeah, we just decided tolean that way. Mary the two if
(10:46):
you will, that's so cool.I mean I mentioned this to you also
in an email about how I thoughtthe death was just beautiful, and that's
a weird thing to say. Irecogniz, like, how can someone dying
be beautiful? And I have atheory about why I thought it was beautiful.
(11:07):
There's something maybe it's about the slowmotion. You know that all of
a sudden it was in slow motionas she's jumping up and filing back down
and she looks up and you seeall the glass, and there was just
something like kind of beautifully orchestrated aboutit. I think, curious what your
thoughts are about that. Yeah,you know, in the script, it
(11:28):
was violent and interesting, and Iwouldn't call it beautiful, but it's definitely
the way that Mike shot that episode, the ending with the green lighting,
with the slow motion of Tammy jumping. I love that scene of her jumping
and throwing that fire poker up andthen being completely pincushioned on the way down,
(11:50):
and you know, the and it'svery slow and it's very beautiful because
I think it's a death we've seenbefore in other movies, TV shows,
that sort of thing. And Iloved the way that Mike took it and
made it so unique and beautiful.And I especially loved how as soon as
she hit the bed boom, thenit's we're back in real time and the
room is kind of just dark,and it's just a dead woman on a
(12:13):
bed. It's not that beautiful kindof death. Yeah, I was so
happy with the way that came out. Wonderful. It was so wonderful.
The thing I responded to actually wasthe moment before the death, when it
seems like for a brief moment,like she suddenly gets it and it's like,
oh, wait, maybe I doneed to resist this. And then
when she sees the reflection in themirror above and decides to go after it,
(12:39):
it's like, ah, you wereso close. You were so close.
Yes, I like that where atthe end of her death she was
like, can I swear on thispodcast? Yeah, She's like, I
fucked it all up. And justone more wanted to say about her death
was Tammy doesn't sleep for the entireseries, and you see a lot of
that with her little micro sleeps,and I really enjoy that she dies like
(13:01):
finally laying in her bed at rest. All right. Yeah, it's very
cool. Kind of yeah, mirrorto the opening. She's just horrific throughout
the you know, like she is. And one of the reasons why I
liked episode six so much were theeaster eggs to Hill House the bent neck
(13:22):
Lady. So can you tell usabout how that came about? Sure,
that was not in the script.That was something I think that Mike decided
to do a nod to Hill Houseon set. But I yeah, I
did notice that too, and Iwasn't expecting it until I watched the episode.
But it does make sense, well, even just from a standpoint of
(13:45):
like Tammy was basically half decapitated,so she would definitely if she was standing
straight up, have you know,a bent neck. So I really enjoyed
that, and it was a surpriseto me too, so I liked it
even more. Oh so you didn'teven know that was going to happen.
You first saw that when you watchthe episode yourself. Yes, exactly.
(14:05):
Yes, I think she was justyou know, she was just a mess
with kind of a heavily slit throat, if I recall in the script.
So I really liked that. Yes, another daughter of another haunted family.
Yeah, a much more likable daughter. But nevertheless, yes, yes,
yes, yes, yes, nowdefinitely yes, yes, she had a
(14:26):
much more tragic story than Tammy did. Tammy had parts of that coming.
They all did, right. Iwanted to ask about that. It seems
like this episode really is the episodewhere the family, parts of the family
are starting to be like, hey, maybe this isn't just a series of
(14:48):
coincidences, like maybe there's actually somethingseriously wrong here, and they actually really
start to put that in motion oftrying to figure out what's happening. How
when you guys were sort of blockingout the series, you know, at
the sort of the beginning of thebuilding of the show's process, how did
(15:09):
you determine when they were going tofigure out what is just a horrible tragic
slash accident slash maybe not accident versusright, someone is doing this to us,
right. Yeah, So that wassomething that we really talked about a
lot, because you never want yourcharacters to be stupid. You definitely want
(15:31):
them to be at least as smartas the average person. And these are
ushers here, you know. Imean, it was something we struggled with.
So, you know, the firsttwo deaths, I think you could
say, like that's very strange.You know that Camille dies right after Perry,
but both of them are kind oflike, well the monkey did one
and the other one. It's twokind of freak accidents. But then when
you get to Leo, then westart there's a lot more questions. Leo
(15:54):
was definitely starting to slip. Yeah, and so at some point the family
in stalls security guards with all theushers. Tammy talks about it in her
episode. I think they all theytalk about it in five when they remaining
siblings meet at the bar. They'veall got security and I suppose what else
can they do? So and thenyou have after episode five, Roderick was
(16:15):
there. Roderick watched victoryin stab herselfto death. Roderick knows what he saw.
He knows that he watched with hisown eyes Victory and do this,
which also helps him kind of settledeeper into the denial that he has that
Verna is here and back and comingfor his progeny. So that really helped
us because he was there for Victoryand Stath kind of kick the ball,
(16:38):
kick the can a little bit further. But yeah, I think that Tammy,
you know, she's just her episodeis all about like, I want
to make Daddy proud. I wantto save the company. You don't need
Froderick, you need your daughter,you need me. I'm the you know,
the Madeline of the family. Iam like my dad. And so
she goes forward with Goldbug and thatis really the thing that is the most
(17:00):
important to her. This episode.I mean you hear her say it,
like, oh, yes, afew my heart will go on tweets whatever.
Let's just like we'll put the public, you know, we'll we'll well,
we'll say what we need to sayin the press, and then we'll
move on, you know, moreconstant, more focus on me. And
then you know, she was justblind. She had her blinders on.
She was blind the whole episode.It was all about gold Bug. It
(17:22):
was all about doing it herself,not even built. Yeah, she didn't
even last a day and she waskilled alone in her own apartment. So
yeah, and then well we won'tget in I won't get into episode seven.
But yeah, by this time,it's like everything is going crazy,
Roderick showing up to work covered inblood, like we're in it now.
(17:45):
And this whole thing takes place overonly maybe a week and a half,
maybe two weeks. I think it'stwo weeks. It's not a whole lot
of time. So there's not awhole lot of time for the Circle of
Wagons, and they're doing what theycan while they're also running this empire at
the same time. That was along minute answer to that question. I
loved him, and you know,and Tammy is really really not a nice
(18:08):
lady, you know. I mean, she has opportunities to say the right
thing, or do the right thing, or just keep her mouth shut,
and she doesn't take any of thoseopportunities. She just cannot show an out
of compassion to Juno. She literallytells Bill that he was like on a
(18:29):
list of people that looked right andthat's why he was chosen as her husband.
I mean, it's harsh, man, it is harsh. I really
feel sometimes that Madeline had a lotof hand in raising Tammy because they remind
me so much of each other.But yeah, I mean she arranged her
own marriage. She picked Bill offof a spreadsheet well that had things like
(18:52):
age, health problems, Instagram followers, all that she selected, hand selected
him wow for her business. Butyeah, I mean that's the thing with
Tammy. She just she can't becompassionate because that's being vulnerable, and she
can never be vulnerable. And Ithink that's part of the reason that she
uses avatars to have sex with Bill. That's what gets her off. She
doesn't have to be vulnerable. Thisavatar, this other woman that is her.
(19:17):
It's all the vanity and the mirrorsin her house. It's you know,
she has to see herself as thisvery strong sibling and that started from
you know, I think it's insome of the later episodes, but they
talk about Tammy was you know,she was a twin and she absorbed her
twin and she's been had an innatekiller instinct from birth, you know.
(19:37):
Roderick likes to her. Dad likesto say that a lot like Tammy's a
killer. She came out, shewent to war, she won, she
came out. You know. Vernatalks about it a little bit in this
episode. Maybe I'm your twin.And she's also you know, she's a
bit like Eliza. She has aproblem. She has anxiety. She can't
sleep, but she refuses to takemedications. She's too much on her natural
(20:00):
homeopathics, you know, to herown detriment, just as Eliza was.
The Other character that really shines inthis episode and sort of we get the
chance to sort of get to knowher a little bit more than we do
elsewhere is Juno, who has someof what I think are my favorite lines
of this entire series in this particularepisode. My favorite is when everyone has
(20:22):
a box under their seat and she'slike I bet mine is filled with pooh.
Yeah, poor Juno sort of isa unique sort of character in this
whole series because everyone else they're supermean spirited. They each have their own
episode by which we see their demise, and Juno really sort of like orbits
(20:45):
in a completely different way around thiswhole series, And like it does seem
like she gets a little bit oflike these moments that are not just about
her being subservient to Roderick in thisepisode, but are actually her. We
get to see a little bit whatof what she's like as a person outside
of that relationship, and it's kindof fun and entertaining. So I'm just
curious how you sort of sketched Juno'scharacter through the series and then specifically through
(21:11):
this episode. Yeah. Well,I hope this isn't too disappointing, But
I will say that Juno wasn't inany of the scripts when we broke the
room. Wow, Mike added herlater, And so I can only really
speculate with you, but what Isee originally Anna Belly was going to show
up at the funeral of her twochildren, have a moment with Roderick and
(21:33):
a moment with her granddaughter, Butthen you know, as we know,
something else happens. So yeah,Juno wasn't in it. But what's interesting
is when I watched it, Ireally liked what he did with her character.
There was a little there was alittle bit more heart. You know,
these characters are so such terrible peoplethat it's nice to have, you
(21:53):
know, a Juno and a leonorto be there so and even a Built.
Honestly, I like bi poor built. But to me, and I
think this was Mike's intention, Junoseems to just represent ligodone. And I
think that's why Rodrick is in lovewith her. I don't think he knows
much about her. I don't thinkthat it's about her really at all.
(22:14):
I think he just says, like, you're like this miraculous ligodone Frankenstein.
You know, like you are everything. I've worked so hard for your walking,
you're living, you're high functioning onthis dose of ligodon. And I
thought that was really interesting. Butno, she was not in the show
when we broke it, but Ireally love her edition, especially when she
got hit with that microphone. ButAmmy, that was amazing. She was
(22:38):
out. When was she added?Then? How did she enter into that
process? You know, I'm notsure. At some point I heard that
there was going to be another character, added a bit of a tertiary character,
and I thought that was great,And of course when I heard it
was the wonderful Ruth caught it wasvery happy because she's such a good actress.
But I wasn't really sure how thatis going to work. And I'm
(23:00):
so glad he put her in becauseshe we definitely needed her. I think,
just a little more softness in thefamily and relatability. Honestly, she's
so great. She is she sheshe is truly wonderful. H She was
so great in Midnight Mass and Ilove that she really is missing, like
you know, her leg and itjust makes her so Like you said,
(23:25):
she's very relatable and you just gotthat like, you know, sense of
humor, and I think, youknow, people really like her. I
think so too. She's just she'sso lonely and she's like, oh,
I get this big family. I'mmarrying into a large family, so many
siblings, and she tries to getto know them and they just brush her
off. And I also like that. I'm pretty sure, oh wait,
that's a spoiler, never mind,but I think she ties in the end
(23:48):
of the series very well. So, yes, Juna was a lovely addition.
And I believe another Poe character ohwow, huh yeah, which I'm
sure. I'm sure she is.I don't think there's anyone who's not named
after a Poe character. Actually thisis slightly unrelated, but I know that
because I did some research on you, Becca that you also you publish novels
(24:15):
under another name, that you're kindof a horror writer outside, like you
have a totally different identity, AndI was just wondering if you could talk
to us about that and why youwrite under an alias, and also like
what that's like and how that sortof does that have any relationship to the
kind of work you've been doing onthe Fall of the House of USh.
Yeah, that's a great question.Well, so, actually I had an
(24:38):
alias because I was I started writingonline short stories on Reddit and I didn't
want my Reddit account link to myactual real account. I wanted to stay
anonymous, so I had come upwith this alias C K. Walker.
Also, I hate that it isthis way, but at the time I
thought, if I don't if Iuse a name that's kind of like ender
(25:00):
ambiguous, that you know, maybeI'll help get read more because there is
some of that still out there,and I know a few female authors that
unfortunately have to do that or wantto do that. So that was the
reason that I had that. Andthen Mike actually discovered me, if you
want to put it that way,through my short stories online and called me
and option one of my stories andasked me to come out and write on
(25:22):
the Haunting of Hillhouse, which ishow I got involved in the flann Of
fam So that's why I started.I wish I could go back and undo
it now because my work is undertwo to three different names. But yes,
yes, I do have collections ofshort stories. Yes, I've always
enjoyed short stories. Just the bereviting, that's so great. Yes. C
J. Walker is your doppelganger?C. K. Walker? Yes,
(25:45):
I know I've got both doppelganger episodeson the Doppelganger shows that we did,
And then I guess I also havea doppelganger. Yes, so maybe those
were appropriate episode assignments. Is thata Flannagan thing? I think that Mike
assigns the episodes. He asks whatepisode we want to do, and then
he assigns them. I belief basedon who he thinks could write it best.
(26:07):
For instance, in Hill House,I believe I heard him say that
he staffed the room every writer remindedhim of one of the Usher cast or
one of the characters, so thatcould be how he assigns him. Yes,
it's a wow. I've never seenbehind that Curt, and I'm not
sure how they do it. ButI'm always very excited to get to write
on a mic show. I'm nowimagining all the writers in really horrible makeup.
(26:30):
Oh god, I know, youknow. On BLI it's funny.
We wanted to convince Mike to letus to let the writers come and be
like one of the tables at thewedding in the framing story of Blind Manner,
so we could just be all thewriters in the background, out of
focus, at a table. Butyou know, that's hard to organize.
Yeah, we didn't do that obviously, but I would love to know.
(26:52):
And now I'm behind the camera personmaybe out of focus. Something else that
we didn't have as much of aproblem with in my episode, and especially
not episode seven the episode after mine, is the good Usher problem, which
was a problem we had to workthrough a few times, which is are
these characters in the name of makingthem realistic becoming too good, Like,
(27:14):
we want to make sure that theydeserve their come up. And because some
of the deaths are quite violent orunique. So that's not something that we
had to really deal with by episodesix and seven, but it was something
that we did had to deal withearlier. But I think you see the
way that Tammy treats Bill when shebasically breaks up with him, it's like,
read your prenam you know that's she'shorrible to poor Bill. Were you
(27:37):
guys just doing a lot of researchon how to be jerks and then just
sort of incorporating that into these charactersso that they people would feel like,
oh, you know, they deservedit. Well, most of us had
watched Succession, Yeah, so weknew how to write a jerk. But
also, you know, a lotof it is in po He had his
own like mortal enemies as an author. While he was alive, he was
(28:02):
a very dramatic person, which Ireally enjoy. Even his death, which
most people know was quite mysterious ormurder, whichever it was. He was
a weird guy. He had acane that had like a sword in it.
Yeah, so he wrote complicated charactersand evil characters. So we read
so much Edgar Allan Poe in thatroom that I think that it just probably
(28:23):
rubbed off on us, you know, And it's just not hard to do
when you're talking about you know,sociopathic billionaires either. Sure, even Frederick,
who has a daughter, we don'tsee him be particularly a good father
or caring toward her or anything.He's just too obsessed with that phone.
So that's the way they made Ithink, at least Kendall a little bit
(28:45):
more religious. Not really. Nowif we start talking about succession, then
this will go three hours, soanyway, please that's continued. So I
was told I was told backa thatat the beginning of each episode there's a
sound which is a clue as tohow that character dies. So I heard
(29:06):
that after I'd watched many of them. I had to go back and watch
them again, at least that beginningpart. Can you tell us about like
how that came about? Yeah,I'm sorry to this point you again,
but that was the first I heardof it. I watched the whole series.
I didn't hear anything. I'm goingto have to go back and watch
it again. A lot of alot is done in post, a lot
of sound, I mean the sounddesign, you know, everything like that.
(29:27):
So that's a new to me thing. What's the sound on episode six
glass breaking? Maybe? Yeah,yeah, it's just a sound a glass
break. I love it. Andin episode five there's like the it's the
sound of the heart. Oh that'snot quite how she dies, but that
is, you know, Victor Yan'sepisode all about the hearts. You can
hear the beating of the heart.That's really brilliant. I mean you could
(29:48):
see from the marketing materials we weren'ttrying to hide necessarily that these kids were
dead, that the kids were dead, or even how you know their cause
of death was. But it's allthe journey leading up there and how they
die. So I think that's quitebrilliant and I'll have to go back and
look for it. I just wantedto ask you about you said that you
(30:11):
had before you met Mike Flanagan.You were writing horror based short stories,
which of course is how Poe sortof made his name for himself as well,
writing horror short stories and that sortof thing. And I'm wondering do
you feel any type of kinship withPoe. What type of inspiration did you?
(30:32):
I know you guys had to reada lot of his material. Did
you were you inspired by what youread? And did you feel like a
connection between him as a fellow horrorshort story writer. You know, I
would like to say yes, becauseI've always really we've adapted a few things
now from brilliant authors, but EdgarAllam Poe. Yeah. I love the
(30:53):
gothic tone of Edgar Allan Poe's shortstories, and I love that so much
of it really seems to surround thetrauma of death, which I always think
is it's always something I try towrite towards, is if you just take
a simple death, you can makea whole story around, no matter how
(31:15):
they died, if the characters arerelatable. Death is just a scary,
mysterious thing, a heart attack ora boat accident, it doesn't matter because
they're all ending up in the samedestination. And I like that he can
write a whole story about one deathand make it incredibly scary, even if
that death has already happened. AndI think that a girl and pose obsess
(31:37):
with death, and so am I. He also writes about particularly tragic deaths
death of the young, death ofyoung innocent women a lot, and I
also write about more tragic deaths aswell that are just fascinating to me,
which probably sounds horrible. But yeah, I was extremely excited when I heard
that we were going to adapt Poe, and I read his biography and I
(32:00):
watched a documentary about him just toget ready so we could have actual things
from edgro and Poe's life to putin the movie in the TV show too,
which yeah, we did and itwas great. Griswoll Long Longfellow,
both real people. We didn't getthe sword cane, but you know that
would have been a little a littleharder to back in. You may not
(32:22):
know this, but our first episodewe interview curator of the Poe Museum in
Virginia. Oh so you might reallylike that episode, Chris Sumter. Yeah,
we learned a lot. I willhave to do that. Yeah,
did they talk about the potos potos? Oh? That is my favorite thing.
Is every year, I want tosay, in his birthday or perhaps
(32:43):
his death day, someone leaves kognakon Edgirl and Poe's tombstone and I think
it's like a Man in Black ormass Man, and it's been going on
for over one hundred years, Ibelieve. So it's very interesting clearly being
passed down from someone. But that'syou might notice some nods to Poe's life
that I wanted to ask you aquestion about one line in episode six,
(33:07):
So get ready. So we startto see, you know, some of
Frederick's decline in this episode, youknow, using a lot of cocaine.
And I want to say, youknow, Lindsey, you mentioned this the
other day, like the last oneyou saw, you know, you recognize
Henry Thomas. He was like anet and now he's this grown man and
acting so out of the ballpark inthis episode. And what tremendous acting because
(33:34):
Henry Thomas did not act this wayin Hillhouse or Blind manner, so he's
really doing a tremendous job. Butanyway, so he's very you know,
like activated, and he says thisone line and I don't I just wonder
know if it was planned or anaccident and you kept it or what he
goes It just shows to go you, Oh, I bet you that was
(33:55):
all Henry. I bet you thatwas all Henry. Yeah you think so?
Yes? I really like he lived. He might have had lived or
Mike might have done a pass andthat was in there, but it really
sounds like I had. I hadheard during filming that Henry was really making
Frederick his own, which was coolbecause he's in so many episodes, you
(34:17):
know, and I you know,he's a family man, and he was
so sadistic to me in the scripts, as you'll see later. But yeah,
when when I saw some of thedailies, I was like, I
love this. I didn't expect this, but I love his take on Frederick.
It's so wonderful and weird. Iwould guess that either Henry flubbed it
(34:38):
and they kept it, or Henrytried it, or Mike had him try
it. But yeah, that thatkind of persona was definitely curated after the
writer's room. Great stuff, though, Yeah, I was wondering you could
easily have missed it too. Yeahyou know that he that he said that.
I just remember going like this.I had to go back and listen
(34:58):
to it again, and I thought, you know, Frederick could have said
that because he was so he washigh as a kite all the time,
and so he could have easily justtwisted all of his words up. But
it really fit the moment. Yes, Yes, Frederick is ended up kind
of delightful. In the first fewepisodes, I liked his whole like departed
(35:20):
little joke about like who's a moleand who's an informant? I thought that
was like fun family time. It'sthe only time you really see it.
Actually, Mike got to write episodeone, and that's really the only fun
times anybody's having before it all goesto crap. Such a great episode though,
I mean, just the stuff withI know we're here to talk about
six, but just just that stuffwith Eliza and the mom unburying herself and
(35:44):
got it came out so good.Oh my god, I was so scary.
Yes, Becca, we want tothank you so much for being with
us. This has been so incrediblyinformative and fine, and we really appreciate
you spending time with us. Thishas just been fantastic. Thank you.
Yeah, and I wish I knewthe answers to all of your questions,
but you know, so much ofit with Mike uh kind of happens on
(36:05):
set, some of that magic,so but I was happy to answer what
I could and it was really greattalking to you guys. I love talking
about the show. So it's great. It was fun to learn that that
was part of the process for us, learning that some of those things came
in later. And yeah, sowe we really appreciate your time, and
thank you so much. Yeah,thanks again. Well, thanks guys.
(36:27):
I'm really glad that that I gotto come on. So that was Becha
Klingle And that was really fun totalk to her about my favorite episode.
Lindsay, I don't know which isyour favorite episode? Which is yours?
(36:49):
Oh? Wow, I don't knoweither. I mean, like, I'm
such a sucker for episode three.That Lemon speech absolutely killed me. And
I'm gonna I'm gonna go with thatfor a while. But and okay,
I don't want to totally commit untilI get to the end because I don't
want to give it myself away andthen I'm done after that, so I'm
holding out. Okay, Okay,But she was great. We learned some
(37:10):
really interesting things about how the showcame together, Like Juno wasn't originally part
of the cast, wasn't in theoriginal script. It's totally fascinating to me
to see how things develop on theset that the writers can completely go through
the entire process of blocking out allof the story and all of the plot
(37:34):
and write it all out, andthen it gets to the set, and
then things happen and things change,And it could be something as small as
that line you pointed out, Stacy, or it could be something as big
as a whole other character or thebentnet lady who shows up later, who
knows what, like all of thesethings, I mean, they have to
totally, I guess rethink things.I don't know, but they made it
(37:58):
seem pretty seamless. Totally. Iwould never have known that, you know,
wasn't in the script from the beginning. I know. I love that
he added her because she was oneof the most likable people on the show
for sure, which isn't saying much, but she was one of the most
likable people. I mean, it'snot hard to be one of the more
(38:19):
likable people on that show. Thereare not a lot of likable people,
right right. Maybe that's why she'sprobably there. I don't know if you
hurt. I don't know if wewere recording when Becca told us that she
wrote the whole episode with her dogon her lap, I don't know if
that's going to make the cut,But she told us that that's amazing.
That's a very helpful dog. Yeah, cute little dog. I have a
(38:43):
cat, and I guarantee you mycat will never help me write. I
also loved her insight into Tammy,that Tammy could not be vulnerable. Yeah,
so that was a very psychological insightinto her. I think what's interest
about this show is that a numberof the women on this show are absolutely
(39:07):
ruthless. They are driven, andin some ways are more cruel and sadistic
than the men of this show.And I found that especially interesting that even
when there are moments of softness withTammy where you think, ah, here's
the moment where we're going to finallyget to know who Tammy is on the
(39:30):
inside, Well, Tammy's a coldhearted killer on the inside. Like she's
always going to be a ruthless murdererto the very end. So there isn't
that. And I appreciated that thewomen were so tough on this show.
Yeah, now for one minute,do you feel bad about what's happening to
her? Right Like, you know, when she's up on stage doing the
(39:51):
goldbug thing that she keeps saying vernaand you know, it's a little awkward,
it's a little painful, but I'mlike, yeah, take her down.
She's so awful. You know.What really helps set that up,
in my opinion, is the wayshe treats Bill right, her husband,
but also the way she sort ofdirects that whole weird sex thing they've got
(40:15):
going on, which is I mean, I feel like that's a whole cycle
analyzing show in itself of just tryingto walk through that whole process. But
like, at no point during anyof that business of the intimacy with her
husband where she has this surrogate performingfor them, first of all, in
(40:37):
no way is Bill really I meanlike it seems like Bill's just playing a
part in that too, so youcan tell Bill's not enjoying it. And
then also she treats them really justlike puppets. They're just like meat puppets,
you know, just people doing herbidding. And so in the end,
after she's treated everybody so poorly,yeah, you're kind of like,
(41:00):
man, she really did have thatcoming. Like I can't feel bad for
her. Absolutely, well, letthat be a lesson to everybody out there
who wants to have sexual avatars andthen treat them poorly. It's not going
to work out. Well in theend. That's the lesson of today's episode
of Psychoanalyzing the Fall of the Houseof Usher. Thanks so much for joining
(41:20):
us. Our session has come toan end. We'll see you next time.
Bye bye. Psychoanalyzing the Fall ofthe House of Usher is a production
of straw Hut Media. Your hostsare Stacy and I and Lindsay Jones.
Your producer is Maggie Bowles. Editingand sound design by Daniel Ferrera. Theme
(41:42):
music by Adrian Baranker with additional musicfrom Marco Martini and Artie Son. Subscribe,
rate and review, and come backfor new episodes every Friday, and
tell us what should we psychoanalyze next. Let us know by emailing us at
Psychoanalyzing at straw hutmedia dot com.See you next time. Week
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