One Broadway Musical Has Become The Horror Movie Gateway We Never Saw Coming
"Who is Matilda Wormwood if not Carrie White without religious trauma?" This is a joke I made when interviewing "Abigail" directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett for the /Film Daily podcast after complimenting them on their decision to cast Netflix's "Matilda the Musical" star Alisha Weir as their titular ballerina vampire. "Matilda" is one of author Roald Dahl's most beloved characters, offering children both the fantastical wish-fulfillment of having telekinetic superpowers, as well as the ever-important message that reading is cool. The 1988 novel has been adapted multiple times across various media, most notably the 1996 feature film directed by Danny DeVito and starring Mara Wilson, the two-part BBC Radio 4 special, the stage musical featuring music by Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly, and the Netflix film adaptation of said musical.
"Matilda" consistently ranks as one of the most important children's novels and she was even given a Royal Mail commemorative postage stamp in 2012. But unlike her fellow beloved children's book comrades like Junie B. Jones, Amelia Bedelia, Pippi Longstocking, or even Ramona Quimby, Matilda Wormhood holds the distinction of inspiring a whole new style of entertainment heroine — horror movie stars.
If I had a nickel for every time someone who played the titular role in "Matilda the Musical" went on to star in a horror role, I'd have (that I know of) seven nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened seven times! Kerry Ingram played the sacrificial Shireen Baratheon on "Game of Thrones," while Oona Laurence starred in Rachel Talalay's Netflix tween horror adventure film, "A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting." But a handful of these Matildas have gone above and beyond to live out the "Matilda" motto: "Cause if you're little, you can do a lot, you mustn't let a little thing like 'little' stop you."
All Hail Milly Shapiro
Before Milly Shapiro lost her head in Ari Aster's "Hereditary," she won a shared Tony Honor in 2013 with "Matilda" stars Sophia Gennusa, Bailey Ryon, and Oona Laurence, making her the youngest recipient of the award in Tony history. That same year she was also nominated for the Grammy for "Best Musical Theater Album" for the musical's cast album. This all took place a whopping five years before "Hereditary" hit theaters, but her performance as Charlie Graham instantly made her a beloved horror favorite.
While Shapiro hasn't been doing much acting in film and television these days (she's focusing on her music career), she has been very open about her complicated feelings about her meme status thanks to the horror film that helped make her household name and the way people wrote and said disgusting things about her appearance in the film. Side note: if any producers are reading this, y'all are missing out by not casting Shapiro in other projects. She's phenomenal, she has a huge fanbase, and she deserves a role that doesn't hinge on hoping audiences will be ableist losers "afraid" of her face.
Fortunately, Shapiro seems to have come out the other side of the hate with a great sense of humor. She dressed as Marie Antoinette for Halloween 2023 (get it, 'cause she lost her head?) and her TikTok is filled with plenty of "Hereditary" jokes. Shapiro kicked off the trend of the "Matilda to Horror Movie Star" pipeline and helped prove that there's something about playing Matilda Wormwood that prepares you to tackle the most terrifying genre of cinema.
Three Matildas starred in horror films in the last year
In the last year alone, three different Matilda stars have appeared in horror films. "Abigail" star Alisha Weir is arguably the most well-known, considering her breakout role was in the Netflix adaptation of the stage show, and the choreography from the "Revolting Children" number went extremely viral, even becoming a TikTok dance challenge. It was the connection between Shapiro and Weir that had folks realizing "Matilda the Musical" has become the soil from which horror stars have flowered, and Weir's incorporation of dance in "Abigail" meant her "Matilda" background prepared her well for the role. Coincidentally, as "Abigail" entered theaters, another horror film starring a former "Matilda" was leaving theaters and beginning its life on Shudder — the throwback Australian horror film, "Late Night with the Devil."
Ingrid Torelli stars as Lilly D'Abo, the sole survivor of a suicide cult who is now possessed. Her character is brought on as a guest for a Late Night talk show's Halloween episode, and her presence sparks a number of unexplainable events in front of the live studio audience. Torelli is tied to a chair and contorts her body while mocking the humans around her, displaying telekinetic abilities (how Matilda of her!) and existing as a beacon for pure evil. And wouldn't you know, she starred in the Melbourne, Australia production of "Matilda the Musical!" Just a few months earlier, Shudder also debuted Jennifer Wexler's "The Sacrifice Game," which featured Georgia Acken, who performed as Matilda in the 2019 Vancouver production. That's three different Matildas from three different productions all within one year!
Multiple Broadway Matildas now star on genre TV
The "Matilda the Musical" love isn't exclusive to films either, with two Broadway replacement performers — Gabriella Pizzolo and Brooklyn Shuck — now starring on some of the biggest supernatural TV shows currently on the air. Pizzolo is a dyed-in-the-wool Broadway kid having also performed in "Fun Home," and "Sunday in the Park with George," but became a household name when she took the role of Suzie Bingham on "Stranger Things," the science-wiz girlfriend of Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo, another Broadway kid) with a deep love of "The NeverEnding Story." She's also currently playing a recurring role on "Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin" as Angela Waters, a melodramatic teen show that doubles as a slasher series.
Likewise, fellow "notable Broadway replacement" Brooklyn Shuck plays Lynn Bouchard in the supernatural drama "Evil" on CBS/Paramount+. She's the eldest of four daughters of the show's protagonist, and the siblings are like a funnier, more rambunctious version of the March sisters in "Little Women." The Daily Beast reported that the four sisters are the only ones on set allowed to truly improvise during scenes, meaning Shuck's theatre background is certainly coming in handy. And then there's English Eleanor Worthington Cox, one of the famous "Matilda" replacements during the West End production, who still mainly sticks to stage acting but has dabbled in both film and television. Most notably, Cox played Janet Hodgson in the horror drama series "The Enfield Haunting," where she was nominated for a British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actress. If "The Enfield Haunting" sounds familiar, this is a dramatization of the story that served as the basis for "The Conjuring 2."
These mentions are just the Matilda performers that are easily identifiable because their productions were high-profile enough to be found online and don't account for the numerous regional, community, and educational productions that could have also been the stepping stone for young horror performers. Let this be a lesson to us all — if a young performer can believably pretend to move objects with their mind on stage, they'll be great in a horror movie.