Interview With Emily Hampshire For ‘Chapelwaite’

‘Salem’s Lot is one of my favorite books by Stephen King, and the movie is just as equally terrifying. It wasn’t until just recently that I found out there’s a prequel called Jerusalem’s Lot, a short story that first appeared in the 1975 illustrated edition of ‘Salem’s Lot, and then found a home in the collection, Night Shift (1978). To celebrate the new made-for-television version of Jerusalem’s Lot, called Chapelwaite, I spoke with start Emily Hampshire about what intrigued her about the project, how she prepared for her role, and her favorite scary movie.

PopHorror: Hi Emily! Thank you so much for your time. So, what intrigued you about Chapelwaite and made you want to be a part of the project?

Emily Hampshire: Quite honestly, when the script came to me, I had just sold my own show that I’m a writer on for the first time, and I was reading Stephen King’s book called On Writing. And I was reading that book when I got the script to play Rebecca Morgan, a writer in this project. I didn’t want to go against the universe too much to say, “No,” to that. It was also brilliant. And then the other thing was, I had a Zoom with the Filardi brothers who created the show and wrote it, and Donald De Line, who produced it. Honestly after that Zoom, I was like, “I will do anything with these guys. I just want to work with these people.” Thank God it was a good project, because I would have done anything.

PopHorror: I like all that worked out! With this being a period piece, it’s a departure from what you’ve been known for. How did you prepare for your role?

Emily Hampshire: Well, I took off my plaid shirt, and I put on a corset. Quite honestly, this was something that my agent, who I’ve been with since I was a kid… I was her first client and back in that time, there used to be these things called mini-series. I would do a lot of these mini-series that were set on the farm back in the 1800s. I’d be 15 playing the mother of 10 kids, and I did a lot of those. And then Schitt’s Creek happened, and those went away. And when Schitt’s Creek was done, Dani – my agent – was like, “I want you out of those plaids, out of those baggy jeans,” and I think being put into that corset was everything she could have hoped for. So that was the push. 

PopHorror: What was your favorite part of shooting? 

Emily Hampshire: Oh gosh. Honestly, I think a huge part of it was the costumes. I love stuff like that. I feel like it does 50% of the acting for you just being in that time period. Also, working with Adrian Brody. He’s basically old timey from birth. He lives in that time period. But yeah, I think that was really special to me, because I hadn’t done something like that for so long.

PopHorror: We only have a few seconds left, but I just want to know what is your favorite horror movie?

Emily Hampshire: Favorite horror movie, favorite horror movie… I mean it’s campy and it’s not my favorite or scary but I always think of this movie called Sleepaway Camp, because it’s just so campy and watching it again with the camp counselors in their outfits from 70s… it’s funny scary, but not really scary, but it used to be very scary to me. Yeah, that I think.

Thank you so much, Emily,for taking the time to speak with us. The first episode of Chapelwaite premieres August 22, 2021, on Epix.