The Spiderwick Chronicles' Christian Slater & Joy Bryant On Building Family Dynamics & Scenery-Chewing Villain

Summary Christian Slater plays the scenery-chewing Mulgarath while Joy Bryant plays the caring mother in The Spiderwick Chronicles.

The duo were thrilled at the opportunity to expand on their characters as they're given bigger roles than the original books.

Bryant also recalls how "seamless" it was building the family dynamic with her onscreen children during filming, being proud of the work they brought to their roles.

A dysfunctional family find their worlds completely uprooted in The Spiderwick Chronicles. The Roku Channel show serves as the second adaptation of Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi's fantasy novel series of the same name, which chronicles the story of the Grace family as they move into their ancestral home of the Spiderwick Estate after a big change in their lives. As they try to adjust to their new home, rebellious son Jared learns that their great-grandfather, Arthur Spiderwick, discovered the existence of magical creatures.

The Spiderwick Chronicles show follows Jared, his twin brother Simon, and the former's similarly troubled new friends, Emiko and Hatcher, as they search for the missing pages of the Spiderwick Field Guide. The group will find themselves at odds with a variety of different people, including Jared and Simon's concerned mother, Helen, brought emotionally to life by Joy Bryant, and the villainous Mulgarath, played by a scenery-chewing Christian Slater, who has evil plans for the guide.

Related The Spiderwick Chronicles Season 1 Review: The Dark Fantasy Series Is A Breath Of Fresh Air The Spiderwick Chronicles season 1 is a win as a book adaptation, providing an exciting first chapter for what could be a multi-season fan-favorite.

Alongside Bryant and Slater, the ensemble Spiderwick Chronicles cast includes Lyon Daniels as Jared, Noah Cottrell as Simon, Mychala Lee as their sister Mallory, Jack Dylan Grazer as the mischievous Thimbletack, and Alyvia Alyn Lind. The show hails from Locke & Key co-developer Aron Eli Coleite, with Black and DiTerlizzi attached as executive producers and helping develop the show. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law's Kat Coiro also directs the first two episodes of the show and executive produces it.

In anticipation of the show's premiere, Screen Rant interviewed Christian Slater and Joy Bryant to discuss The Spiderwick Chronicles, how the latter went about building a family dynamic with Daniels, Cottrell and Lee, while the former discussed the fun of playing his villainous character. Slater also reflected on the legacy of the animated spy comedy Archer, and his character's fate in the series finale.

Slater & Bryant Were "Excited" To Expand Their Spiderwick Characters

While Helen is somewhat of a key player in the original novels, The Spiderwick Chronicles show offers bigger roles for both her and Mulgarath, better expanding on the motivations and plan of the villain and how he manipulates the Grace family. For Slater and Bryant, they were thrilled to get to tap into this expansion and build their own takes on their characters:

Joy Bryant: I was so drawn to this project because I saw the movie years ago, and knew that this is all based off of that, and the book, and the book series, and I just thought it's something so new and different for me to do and exciting. And, of course, to work with Christian. I'm used to playing moms, so for me, taking on another mom role this time with teenagers was pretty cool. But just an opportunity just to come to work and play in this really fantastical magical world, it was a no-brainer.

Christian Slater: Yeah, I was really excited about it. It is based on these wonderful books, I also saw the movie. And it was a great opportunity here to, I think, expand on the characters, create some new fun storylines and new characters. The writers and creators, I think, did a great job. And also the special effects team, a lot of this stuff was done practically, which you don't see very often nowadays, it's all computer-generated stuff. One of the things I loved was we were out there shooting in the forest, it was dark, it was cold, and the special effects guys had actually built the Mulgarath character creature, so it was this eight-foot-tall, tree-branch looking character out there. And it was legitimately scary. So, that got me really excited. And just knowing that that's what my true form actually is kind of gave me a lot of freedom to be as nuts and crazy as I wanted to be.

Joy Bryant: It was pretty scary, too, because I didn't know that he was behind me. And I turned around, and this tree branch, crazy-looking thing was there, and I screamed so loud. [Laughs] It was dark, and it was nighttime in the forest. It was very real.

When it came to building the family dynamic between her younger co-stars in the show, Bryant found it to be "pretty easy", remarking that it "doesn't always happen like that" and that she was moved to get to connect with her onscreen children:

Joy Bryant: Oh, thanks, I mean, it's pretty easy. These kids are awesome. I mean, not kids, they're young people. [Chuckles] But we all hit it off immediately, which could have went a different way. But luckily for us, the minute we all met, we connected, so it felt really seamless, and really easy. I'm just very lucky with that, for me, anyway, it wasn't trying to create anything. We kind of had it naturally, and then I think that it just grew and evolved over time we were filming. Doesn't always happen like that, but when it does, it's great.

Slater Didn't Know The Creator's Inspiration Behind Mulgarath (But Loves It)

As Mulgarath gets more screentime than in the original movie or books, Slater and Coleite had a lot more room to play and figure out who exactly the villain was. The creator/showrunner looked at Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick as a major inspiration for penning the dialogue for Mulgarath, and though Slater didn't realize this, he sees the parallels and had just as much fun in playing the character:

Christian Slater: Oh, The Witches of Eastwick, I didn't know that, and that's one of my favorite movies, and one of his, I think, greatest performances, that really did stick with me. So, through, I guess, osmosis, we were connected in that way. And I'm glad that was his image, I think if you look at The Witches of Eastwick, Jack is definitely having a lot of fun playing the Devil. There's no doubt about it, and you can see why. You have free rein, everything is acceptable, everything is okay, and you can overact, and underact and just go as nuts as you want to go. So, anytime I get an opportunity to play a character like that, it's wonderful. I love doing this character, and working with everybody was great. It was a great, great team making these episodes. I love the crew, and I just really wanted to perform for them, and be as outrageous and nuts and insatiable as I could be.

Joy Bryant: You chewed it up, you chewed it up! Every angle! [Laughs]

Christian Slater: That's right, whenever we were in scenes together, I would always try and get in every angle, every shot. Why not? I feel the moves on my back love. I was like, "Ooh, rack focus!" [Chuckles]

Slater Watched Archer "Religiously" Before Being Cast In The Show (& Is Sad It's Over)

Slater has embodied a variety of iconic roles across his 45-plus-year career, and one beloved character in recent years is as the CIA agent Slater in FXX's Archer. In looking back on the animated spy comedy, the Golden Globe winner recalled having watched the show "religiously" while campaigning to get a part in some capacity. As to his character's fate in the Archer series finale, Slater recalled hoping to have some ambiguity as to whether he dies, just in case the show returns at some point:

Christian Slater: I was watching that show religiously, first, second, third, fourth season, I just loved it, I just identified with it. To be honest with you, I reached out to them. I said, "Look, if there's ever anything I can do on that show, let me know."

Joy Bryant: And they were like, "Hell yeah!" [Chuckles]

Christian Slater: Well, you know, you don't know, they could hang up the phone, they can completely ignore me. But they took me up on it, and it was the best. I got to know H. Jon Benjamin very well, that whole team is great. You go in and do a voiceover, you're in a booth, you're by yourself, and you're just reading funny lines and having a great time with those guys. So, yeah, it's a bummer, of course, that they ended it after 14 seasons. But, I think they did a great job. I think the finale was great, and I loved playing Slater. I thought that was really fun. [Chuckles] The cool thing when they were sending me the images of what the character was going to be, it was great to be able to pick my hair color. Originally, they wanted blonde, and I was like, "Come on, I'm not blonde, let's go. Let's really make it look like me, I want to be preserved." That's the other thing with animation is you never get any older. Of course, on that show, they pulled a fast one and put that white streak in my hair, and I was like, "Hey, the hell's going on?!" [Chuckles] So, even in animation, they have to age you.

That was the thing when we were shooting, when we were recording the last scene, I didn't want to die like Chef in South Park, because you knew he was dead. There's no way he's coming back. [Laughs] Everything they could possibly do. So, I was very curious if they were going to kill me off completely, or what was going to happen. I think they handled it well. But there's always a possibility, so we'll see.

About The Spiderwick Chronicles

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The Grace family moves from Brooklyn, New York, to their ancestral home in Henson, Michigan, the Spiderwick Estate. Helen makes the move with her 15-year-old fraternal twin boys, Jared and Simon, and her older daughter, Mallory. Shortly after moving to the Spiderwick Estate, Jared discovers a boggart and realizes that magical creatures are real! The only one to believe him is his great-aunt Lucinda, who implores Jared to find the pages of her father’s field guide to magical creatures and protect them from the murderous Ogre, Mulgarath.

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The Spiderwick Chronicles is now streaming in full for free on The Roku Channel.

Source: Screen Rant Plus