Goosebumps returned to our screens with a new adaptation brought to life by visionary Rob Letterman and Nicholas Stoller – ahead of the show’s Disney+ and Hulu release, I was lucky enough to chat with two of the show’s executive producers Pavun Shetty and Conor Welch as we discussed our favourite stories, Justin Long and the possibility of more Goosebumps to be adapted in the future.
Having had a childhood of growing up with an older sibling loving the original series of books, and later the adapted TV series – this interview was incredibly exciting to conduct.
When You Came To Bring The Show Together, Was There Any Idea To Sort Of Follow The Original TV series As An Anthology, Or Did You Want To Have This As A Serialised Story Throughout?
Pavun Shetty: I was just going to say I’m like you – I grew up with an older sister, so I read them when I felt like I shouldn’t be reading them, so I loved the books growing up and I also watched the original show, which was an anthology, which was great. I think when we first started talking about this. One of the things we talked about was taking some of the most popular books and putting them in episodes, but not having it be completely anthological like the books and the original series, and we wanted the narrative to continue and have a real serialised element. So the way we structured the season is that the first five episodes do take inspiration from five of the most popular books, and in each of the first five you are seeing the hauntings that occur in five specific books. But then when all of our kids in our town come together after Episode 5 and realise that they’ve been individually haunted by all these things, it’s there when we’re not pulling from any specific books or pulling from a bunch of different books and putting them into the back after the season.
Conor Welch: Yeah, and it was important that we kind of are faithful to the tone and the DNA of R.L. Stine’s book series. But then we make it feel very contemporary and premium as well. We needed it to be funny, we needed it to be scary, a little funnier and a little scarier maybe than the audience would suspect, which was my experience in reading the book as a youngster. But we also wanted to be able to take liberties and make it feel contemporary and fun and elevated and a little bit older so that we could capture an even broader audience so that adults without kids would be entertained and excited by it, but parents like myself could also watch it with our children and love it together as well.
You Mentioned You’ve Brought Some Of The Most Popular Stories Into The Show – What Was The Process Like When You Were Sort Of Deciding Which Five You Wanted To Adapt? Were There Any Stories That You Considered That Obviously Didn’t Make The Final Story?
Pavun Shetty: Well, I think the first five are “Say Cheese and Die”, “The Haunted Mask”, “Cuckoo Clock of Doom”, “Go Eat Worms” and then we kind of had a little bit of fun with the rest of them. It wasn’t just because they were five of the more popular ones. It was because the issues that our characters are facing and their individual episodes in the show tie in directly with what was happening in the books. So we made sure that these elements, we call them totems that they found in the show were directly linked. So, for example, in the second episode, which is inspired by the Haunted Mask, our character Isabella, is a wallflower. She’s ignored by everyone and we learn that she’s an Internet troll and that’s the only way she can be noticed. She goes to this Halloween party and goes to the basement and finds a mask and puts it on – and like the book, the mask makes her seen and gives her confidence. But she soon learns that she can’t take it off and it sort of starts to take over her life and it turns her into an actual troll. So all of these books, the central theme and the central haunting in the book actually directly relate, which is why we picked those specific ones for the first five
Conor Welch: And that’s a real hallmark of R.L. Stine’s series and why I think it’s remained so timeless and why I loved it 30 years ago, and my eldest daughter loves them today, is that each of the stories and each of the sort of horrifying situations are born of very relatable personal issues, right? So, you know, whether it’s the idea of identity, or being a wallflower, or being popular, those are very relatable issues that sort of anyone can connect with and then what Stine did and what we endeavoured to do with the series was from there, you can elevate it with horrifying situations and cinematic set pieces. So it feels really big and exciting. But it was important to us that it all started from a very relatable, grounded place for everybody.
One Of My Absolute Favourite Things About The Show Was The Soundtrack. One Minute You’ve Got SZA, And Then You’ve Got Justin Long Lip-Syncing To The Proclaimers. Was The Mixed Compilation For Your Soundtrack An Important Thing In Development For You Guys?
Pavun Shetty: Yeah, it was hugely important and we had amazing music supervisors that Connor and I were lucky to have worked with on a number of shows. There are a lot of contemporary songs in there – Billie Eilish, I think we have a new Yeah Yeah Yeahs song in there, but at the same time we flashback to the 90s and that was a lot of the music that we loved growing up. So we got to pick a song from The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and you mentioned The Proclaimers for a fun scene with Justin Long. Using music from both of those eras really helped in setting the tone for the different time periods in the show. We wanted the show to feel contemporary, cool and fun, and I think music is a big part of that elevated take we wanted to achieve with the show, so it was a huge part of the discussion when we developed it.
Conor Welch: And what better way to introduce a new generation to The Proclaimers than to watch Justin Long dance, while possessed by a 14-year-old boy? I don’t know. It just feels like something that will stick with an audience and have them searching for that song maybe for the first time.
On The Subject Of Justin Long, What A Performance. Was There Anything About Him That Made You Really Want To Work With Justin?
Conor Welch: I mean, he is as good as anyone out there at horror and comedy. His resumé is filled with Barbarian, Jeepers Creepers 2, to some of the great coming-of-age high school comedies as well. So, he was the exact type of actor we were looking for… Frankly, to cast in all of our roles, which was people with great comedic timing like Rachel Harris and Rob Huebel, both from the sort of improv world, but who could also land the emotion of the more dramatic scenes and lend nuance to some characters dealing with some real human issues. He was an absolute bullseye in our target in terms of someone who could fluidly traverse both of those genres.
Pavun Shetty: The intent was a lot of time to have a joke where you expected a scare, and to have a scare where you expected a joke. So we wanted to sort of subvert expectations about what those would be like and having someone like Justin is perfect for that because he can kind of seamlessly go back and forth between those two things, which is a very specific and difficult skill set to have. It kind of worked perfectly and then he just brought so much on his own that it just made things even more fun. He’s a really good physical comedian too, and he had fun doing a lot with that because in the show a teenager takes over his body and he becomes possessed, so we got to have a lot of fun throwing himself around and trying to fight this inner demon inside of him.
If The Show Gets Renewed For A Second Season, Would The Same Characters Return For A New Story In The Same Location Or Would It Become Anthology-esque?
Conor Welch: If given the opportunity to do more seasons, which we’re very hopeful we will be. We would definitely like to keep the same cast of characters, you know, the five sort of newcomers that we cast in the roles are just exceptional. We really hit the jackpot with all of them, and their chemistry really started gelling immediately. To be able to expand on those dynamics, to watch them grow, watch those interpersonal relationships shift and change, I think would be really fun and we were lucky enough to have Scholastic open up the entire canon to us. So there are many, many more books to pull from and we hope to do many, many more seasons.
Do Either Of You Have A Particular Story That You’d Love To Adapt?
Pavun Shetty: There was one of the Goosebumps titled “Chicken, Chicken”, which I just remembered the cover was this girl changing into a chicken, which is just a bizarre cover, and it’s all framed into my memory. I don’t know what version of the show would have our kids turning into chickens, but I figure there’s some way to do it. So I would say perhaps at some point, maybe not until Season 12 or 13 with chicken.
Conor Welch: I’ve always found theme parks after dark to be especially creepy. So I think Horrorland would be a fun one to dive into. I think there’s a lot of potential comedy and scares to mine from that world.
Episodes 1-5 of Goosebumps are now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu. Check out a trailer for the series below:
