February is Women in Horror Month, a time to celebrate all of our favorite Scream Queens, Final Girls and Lady Villains. One of those leading ladies is A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Amanda Wyss, also known as Tina Gray. Who was the first to fall to the trash talking dream demon, Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven’s 1984 classic. We recently sat down with Wyss, virtually of course, and found out what she thinks of the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
The following is a transcript of an interview, some of the questions have been edited for brevity and clarity.
SNPaul: Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to chat with me. I’m sure you’re crazy busy and I guess my first question is what is your secret and how have you managed to not age since the 80s?:
Amanda Wyss: (Laughs) Flash photography and really good lighting. No, I’ve totally aged, I look every bit my age. I do take really good care of myself, I like to do yoga, exercise and I eat pretty well. But I’m actually looking forward to the roles that are going to come the more weathered I look. Because I think it’s a trap, and it’s hard not to fall into it, especially when you’ve had some sort of good fortune when you’re young.
I think it’s easy to want to hang on to that and so I want to just be where I am. Hopefully start to be the crazy grandma in Hallmark movies or something, I don’t know. But I think there is a lot of pressure to try to stay looking the same especially if you’re not doing plastic surgery. I have a youthful energy, but I look my age without that good lighting and flash photography that I love so much. You know, it’s like the older I get, I am really working to just embrace where I’m at. Which is something we all try to do and I have times where I’m better at it than others. But I appreciate you thinking that, that makes me feel good (laughs).
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SNPaul: Do you have any favorite directors or stars in horror right now?
Amanda Wyss: I mean I think there’s really so many interesting people. I’m really digging a lot of the horror television that is happening right now, like the shows on Shudder. I like those short anthology series that people are creating that are horror. That movie Host over quarantine that was so scary and amazing, I think they’re people to watch.
I can’t think of anybody off the top of my head that I want to single out. But I would really like to work with some of the female horror content creators. Just because in my entire career I’ve worked with six female directors. Just six, so I think I would like to be a part of that and make something fantastic directed by a woman. There’s just so many young female directors coming up right now. Not just in the horror world but all over the place and just I’m really excited to see what they bring to the market. Because I don’t think one’s better than the other, male or female, it’s kind of just interesting to see perspective and to see a balance in the content. I would like to work with some more female film and television creators and it would be great to do it in the horror world.
SNPaul: What have you been working on recently?
Amanda Wyss: There’s an audio book that just came out that horror fans would like it’s called Jinxed and it is written by Thommy Hutson. Who produced the Never Sleep Again documentary about Nightmare on Elm Street. He wrote the book and I recorded it, it takes place in a mysterious performing arts school. About these high school students and its like an old throwback slasher meets, thriller meets, mystery meets, a little bit of supernatural it’s very scary and charming all at the same time. It’s a young adult book but adults would like it to I loved it.
I always think the Nightmare fans have been so loyal and they love the Never Sleep Again documentary. They were very welcoming about The Id when it came out because of that connection and I think that they would like Jinxed. I also did a pilot for Full Moon features called The Resonator: Miskatonic U and it’s part of the HP Lovecraft universe and it’s going turning on Full Moon features app and also on Amazon Prime at the end of this month and we’re waiting to hear if they pick it up for the series.
Which I really fingers crossed, I hope they do, it’s really fun and it’s basically about these six to eight students. They’re all so talented and gorgeous, just such a good cast. Michael Paré plays one of that plays one of the professors, I play one of the professors, it’s created and directed by William Butler who horror fans know. I’m super excited about that and just fingers crossed to the universe and anybody listening that they pick it up so we can all get back to work.
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SNPaul: In the horror genre today, how do you feel that the the role of females has changed. Do you feel it’s change for the better since when you were doing Nightmare versus new movies that are coming out today?
Amanda Wyss: I don’t want to sound like I’m an expert on the genre. But my thoughts about horror movies are there’s always at least one woman who you know the ‘Survivor girl’, the queen. Who is empowered to beat the bad guy or at least beat him back enough to survive until the next movie. I think that trope is still the same, I think possibly in the modern movies women are less sexualized. However, some of the movies are still overly sexualized, so that perhaps also goes hand-in-hand with the genre, the sexualization and the violence of men and women.
Aside from there’s obviously more women directing I think that there’s always been somewhat of a feminist stand in horror films to some degree. There’s always this one empowered female that saves the day or tries to save at least one of her friends or something like that. I feel like Nightmare on Elm Street wasn’t a sexualized movie other than archetypal that Tina was a bad girl so she had to be killed. I think that that still stands in some movies today that the girl or girls who are either scantily clad or having sex get killed.
Sometimes, it appears to me that even though the women are fighting off the predator, the survivor girl is still being preyed upon by a man for the most part. It’s always about a predator attacking a woman but I think that is horrific and that is horror. I also think you know that men become stereotypes in those movies too, it’s not just the women. That’s changing to, that you can have more empathetic men but you know that the dumb guy can’t save anybody because he doesn’t know what’s going on. I think those are changing, so there’s more well-rounded people finding themselves in scary situations and dealing with them across all spectrums.
SNPaul: It’s interesting because Tina wasn’t a final girl but everyone remembers her, she was technically Freddy’s first on-screen kill so you’ve cemented your legacy as horror royalty.
Amanda Wyss: I think what was unique about her in that film or maybe as a slasher horror, was that Wes wanted to make sure that the audience had their heart involved in the story. Not just their mind or their logic, he wanted people to be emotionally invested and I think that was my job in that film was to get people emotionally invested. Then when I die you think ‘is anybody safe in this film.’ It’s just a unique way to start a film to get everybody emotionally invested so I feel like Wes and I did a good job with that. Which is I think why that role is memorable, in my opinion but you know I don’t know (laughs).
SNPaul: How do you feel about movies being remade for today’s audiences? How did you feel about the Nightmare remake?
Amanda Wyss: Overall, I suppose if someone thinks they have a unique take on a movie that’s already been made. Or they think they could add to that movie’s legacy, or maintain the integrity of the movie while creating a new love for the film. I can see the impetus for that. But I think there’s so many writers out there that have written really wonderful scripts that aren’t getting made.
I don’t quite understand the love of remaking things. I obviously understand the commerce, it’s an easy buck. There’s an already made audience for it, so I get that it’s a marketing and financial decision for the most part. About Nightmare itself, I haven’t seen the remake so I can’t speak to whether I liked it or not.
I do know that I think Jackie Earle Haley is a fantastic actor. I just don’t think anybody can embody that character the way Robert (Englund) did because he created it. Robert’s a brilliant stage actor, a Shakespearean actor, he was able to embody his character after years of doing his training and drama school. Years of doing theater to create this iconic old school monster, that knows how to move almost like a jazz dancer. The things that Robert was able bring to it are unique to him and his training.
So it would be apples to oranges with him and Jackie, because Jackie is also a brilliant actor. I just think that it would be hard to create the same energy that Robert does. However, I think all the actors that are in the remake are good, I just don’t understand. It didn’t do a further telling of the story or present it in a unique way, they just kinda copied shot for shot and put supermodels in it. They also don’t want anything to do with the original people (from the original franchise) whoever owns it now. They say they keep tossing around remaking other ones too but they don’t want anything to do with anybody from the original movie. So I don’t know what they’re thinking, it’s just you know financial gain it seems like.
I don’t even know who owns its now, maybe its back in the family’s hands. But it could have been exciting, riskier, and more beloved had they tried to do something along the lines of Halloween (franchise). Bring us all back. Because at the end (of the first film) is Tina dead? is she not? was it all a dream? Who knows, bring her back, who cares, make the story with Heather and Robert and the further telling of us as adults. That would have been much more interesting and would have been riskier. It would have been more challenging, but they didn’t trust that the audience was there. In watching how they’ve done the further tellings in Halloween, the audience is there.
We could have really created another three or four films with Robert, Heather (Langenkamp), Ronee Blakely, Jsu Garcia, and I, everybody. We’re all still around and it would have been really cool. How are we are coping with it now with Freddy back and we’re adults it could have been fantastic. But that can never be now because the people that have it are just interested in the remakes.
You can check out Amanda Wyss in her upcoming series The Resonator: Miskatonic U premiering on Full Moon Features February 26th. Be sure to follow ScaryNerd for more of all things horror.
