Apartment 7A, the prequel to Rosemary’s Baby: the world premiere photos

It’s the classic case where, whatever you do, you get it wrong: how do you make a sequel to Rosemary’s Baby in order to delve deeper into the 1968 classic without compromising its disturbing ending? Not even Ira Levin, the late novelist who wrote the original story, succeeded when he published Son of Rosemarya sequel novel that was widely despised (it turns out to be all a terrible dream, which is almost more depressing than the rise of the Antichrist).

The future of this demonic child had been left hanging at the end of the first novel and film, when the young, manipulated mother (played in the film by Roman Polanski from Mia Farrow) saw her baby for the first time and was able to smile fondly, despite having been tricked into giving birth to the embodiment of evil. The producers who held the rights to the sequel spent years wondering what the next chapter should be. In Apartment 7Athe director Natalie Erika James avoids focusing on Rosemary and her baby, instead shifting attention to a secondary character whose brief narrative arc was no less disturbing, tragic, and mysterious.

“When they first approached me about the project, I was very skeptical,” James tells Vanity Fair at this exclusive preview. “I certainly would never have agreed to do a remake of such a classic and fundamental film. But it was a joy to be able to play in the world and the virtual environment of Ira Levin’s novel, as well as with the characters. I guess what drove me to agree was the sense that there was a different emotional journey to explore, and that I could do it in a way that would shake up the genre a little bit.”

Apartment 7Awhich will be released on Paramount+ on September 27, centers on the character of Terry Gionoffrio (played in the film by the star of Ozarks And Inventing Anna, Julia Garner), an unsuccessful aspiring dancer who finds herself entangled with the leaders of a coven of witches who inhabit the Bramford apartment building. Dianne Wiest plays Minnie Castevet, the elderly neighbor whose nosy behavior is only slightly more annoying than her secret devil worship. The role earned Ruth Gordon an Oscar for best supporting actress for the original film. “With Dianne, it was about creating something really different, because Minnie really has this wonderfully feisty, nosy way,” says James. “Even in the costume considerations, we went for more ’50s silhouettes. There’s a loudness to her character that’s definitely there in the original film, but we’ve twisted it a little bit to make it our own.”

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Wiest adds her own twist to the performance, mimicking Gordon’s New York slang that’s like air slowly escaping from a balloon, but also drawing on other influences. “I think the essence of Ruth is still there in this really overflowing character,” James says, “but our main inspiration was Mae Questel, who voiced Betty Boop. There’s a hint of the Bronx in there.”

Garner’s character, Terry (played in the original film by Angela Dorian) is a young woman who meets Rosemary in the Bramford’s basement laundry room. Terry explains that the Castevets gave her a home and rescued her from drug addiction, welcoming her into their lives and offering her free room and board. “They don’t have any children, so I’m like the daughter they never had,” the character explained in the 1968 film to her new neighbor in apartment 7E. “At first I thought they had some motive. I don’t know, maybe they were trying to have sex with me. But they were just being a real grandpa and grandma.”

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Their real plan is more twisted than she feared. Terry is the first woman the Castevets have tricked into becoming the mother of Satan’s spawn, though when she meets Rosemary she has no idea of ​​their motives. “If it weren’t for them, I’d be dead by now,” Terry says. “That’s a fact.”

Here’s a 56-year-old spoiler: she still dies fairly early. When Rosemary next sees her, Terry is a mess on the sidewalk outside the building, having fallen from the upper floors. It’s unclear whether she was pushed, jumped, or otherwise suffered. The police have a letter written by her, but is it a suicide note? That night Minnie can be faintly heard wailing through the walls: “If you’d listened to me, we wouldn’t have had to do this! We should have had everything ready by now, but instead we have to start all over again.” Apartment 7A promises to fill all the gaps.

Rosemary’s Baby struck a nerve not only for its otherworldly eeriness, but also because it metaphorically captured the lack of control women felt over their lives at the time through Farrow’s character, who is manipulated by her ambitious husband Guy (John Cassavetes), ignored by her swaggering doctor (Ralph Bellamy), and viewed by her community as little more than a vessel for reproduction and breastfeeding.

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

“Of course there’s always progress, but there’s also some backsliding,” James says. “And certain movements always meet with a strong backlash. In a way, the saddest thing is that we’re still discussing these issues pretty much the same way we were 50 years ago, and that should really make you think.”

While still setting the story in mid-1960s New York, James (who co-wrote the screenplay with Christian Whitestarting from a first draft of Skylar James) felt that Terry’s story had great contemporary resonance in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement. Like Rosemary’s husband, Terry is an aspiring artist, but when she injures herself while dancing, she is forced to put her career on hold and ends up on the brink of poverty and a ruinous drug addiction. In desperation, she embraces the suspicious kindness of Minnie and her husband, Roman Castevet (played by actor Pirates of the Caribbean Kevin McNally), and takes at face value the promises of fame from their young Broadway producer friend (Jim Sturgess Of Across the Universe).

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

As she tells Rosemary in the original film, Terry accepts their offers and promises despite foreseeing disturbing motives. She just doesn’t realize how empty the promises are, how deceiving she is, and that she will end up physically violated by a demonic entity. “The film is very much about Terry and her ability to use her body in her discipline, but also how it is used against her,” James says. “The sexual assault carries over into the rest of the film and Terry’s insecurity within her own body. The theme of bodily deprivation is obviously very strong in the first film as well.”

Soon, the streetwise young woman finds herself overwhelmed and trapped. “A key difference between Rosemary and Terry is that Rosemary starts out as almost a hapless victim of her husband’s choices, and then gradually discovers the conspiracy that surrounds her and the horror that comes with it,” says James. In the original, Guy (Rosemary’s aspiring actor husband) is aware of the Castevets’ plan, while in Apartment 7A Terry only knows part of it. At first, Terry suspects that she is the one taking advantage of the seemingly decrepit elderly couple, but she is wrong about that too. “As for Terry, I think she is almost the incarnation of Rosemary as well as Guy. Terry is both the conduit and a sort of active part of the Faustian exchange: there is still a larger conspiracy surrounding her, but she is also made to feel complicit in her own aggression, which is in a way even more chilling.”

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Among other previously unexplored subjects is another member of the coven, Mrs. Gardenia (played by Tina Gray), who was not seen in the 1968 film, because the apartment into which the young couple moves is hers. «As for Mrs. Gardenia, [potrete] see it in action when in reality it is just a postscript at the beginning of Rosemary’s Baby“, says James. In that case, the character literally appeared as a footnote. While wandering around Mrs. Gardenia’s still-furnished apartment at the beginning of the 1968 film, Rosemary glances at her desk and sees a handwritten note that, in retrospect, alludes to her doubts about the coven’s actions. “I can no longer deal with…” are the words Rosemary sees on the page.

As for the condominium itself, it is one of the most faithful elements of Apartment 7A. In real life, the Bramford is the famous Dakota Building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, completed in 1884 in an elaborate style reminiscent of a Renaissance castle and forever scarred by 1980, when John Lennon, who lived there, was assassinated outside while returning home from a recording studio. Apartment 7A It was filmed in London, so the production designer Simon Bowles (The Descent, A Royal Weekend) recreated the living spaces of 1960s New York in various soundproofed recording studios. “We really tried to recreate the Dakota from the original film,” says James. “The key thing about the Bramford is that it’s a Gothic Revival building that has a sense of history and is very imposing in its grandeur, its high ceilings and its finishes. We tried to make it feel like it had, if not a life of its own, then a lot of secrets.”