Polygon: The first scene of the first episode of the first season of your show scared me more than other horror shows have during their entire runs.
Nick Antosca: You mean the interview at the beginning of Candle Cove? Sooo frequently, we were told to cut that scene. I’m not going to disparage, at all, the people who’d give us notes; we have a really supportive network and studio. But every round of notes on that, we were told “Cut that scene, cut that scene, it’s bad!” I knew that we were going to be asked to do that when I wrote it, so I put all of the exposition that would be necessary to understand the show in that scene so you couldn’t cut it.
The scene is like the opening of David Cronenberg’s The Brood, when Oliver Reed is having that weird therapy session onstage. Everything is dark and you have no idea what’s going on.
Antosca: You know, our show references The Brood in multiple seasons in other places, but that was not a deliberate reference to it. In the script, that was written as being interviewed by Dr. Phil at one point, then it was written as being interviewed by Charlie Rose and then Matt Lauer. We asked them both to do it and they wouldn’t do it. Thank God.
As frightening as that first scene was, the series basically never lets up.
Antosca: The idea of the show was always to capture a sense of dread, and we felt it was very important to establish that in the first scene, in a way that was different from other horror shows that I’m familiar with.
I interviewed Nick Antosca about his phenomenal horror anthology series Channel Zero for Polygon.
Tags: channel zero, horror, interviews, nick antosca, reviews, TV, TV reviews