Julianne Moore hit the couch on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, vibing off the energy of a live audience. “It’s the first time I’ve been on a TV show in a year-and-a-half or whatever in a room with a bunch of people!” she said to the anointed ones who met all the coronavirus protocols to sit in NBC’s Studio 6B at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York.
She was there to push the upcoming Apple TV+ miniseries Lisey’s Story, based on Stephen King‘s novel. Though supernatural in nature, the story is rooted in King’s actual life, and his 50-year marriage to novelist Tabitha King. As such, he’s been far more hands-on with this adaptation, personally writing each of the eight episodes. The series was produced by J.J. Abrams‘s Bad Robot Productions and directed by Pablo Larraín.
Jimmy Fallon was there to remind audiences that this is not Moore’s first trip to the “scary movie” rodeo, and whipped out a production still from her first feature film, the 1990 anthology Tales From The Darkside: The Movie. The film included a segment based on a King story (adapted by George Romero) but also included one called Lot 249 based on a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In it, Moore and Robert Sedgewick are two students who cheat off a colleague (Steve Buscemi) who reanimates a mummy that kills them both. Moore’s brother, played by Christian Slater, tries to find revenge, but Buscemi brings the two back from the dead to protect him.
But Moore never knew that last part. She confessed to Fallon that she rarely reads the stage direction of the script (she doesn’t like being told that her character is walking “jauntily,” she’d rather figure that out for herself), and since her character’s undead action didn’t have any dialogue she embarrassed herself on set with director John Harrison when she thought she was ready to clock out when her character died.
Moore also told Fallon about the woes of having to scream for movies, and how to work it into a busy schedule, since it takes her vocal cords two days to recover.
You can check out Julianne Moore’s Tales From The Darkside scream at the end of this trailer.
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