Castle Rock: Lizzy Caplan and Elsie Fisher Discuss Annie and Joy Wilkes [Video]

Castle Rock Season 2 premiered on Hulu this week, and with it came a host of new and familiar characters for Stephen King fans to enjoy. 

Center to this season is the much-anticipated arrival of Annie Wilkes, played by Lizzy Caplan. 

Earlier this month at New York Comic Con, the cast of Castle Rock took a few minutes to speak to reporters about the new season. Lizzy Caplan and Elsie Fisher talked about their characters and what’s in store for Annie and her daughter Joy when they enter Castle Rock.

First, they discussed a bit about the mother/daughter dynamic explored this season between Annie and her daughter Joy. 

“I think Joy and her mom have a lot of normal changes that happen in any mother/daughter relationship. Joy’s been through puberty. She’s being a teen, being a rebel, I think that is just amplified in some ways by Annie’s mental state and what she deals with, but you know there’s ups and downs, highs and lows to any relationship. So I think that applies to theirs just in the worst circumstances possible,” Fisher explained. 

Caplan also discussed how the showrunner Dustin Thomason charted out Annie’s journey and exactly how Castle Rock connects to Misery.

“Dusty, our showrunner, we discussed from the beginning, that there’s Annie’s childhood, which is kind of chapter one of her story, the bulk of this season of Castle Rock would be chapter two, and then chapter three is Misery,” Caplan said. 

“So we’re hoping that the things that we put our Annie through on Castle Rock didn’t necessarily need to happen for the Annie in Misery to come around, but I do think it works. I think they sort of dovetail nicely.”

Caplan was also very aware of the big shoes she has to fill in the form of Kathy Bates, who first played Annie Wilkes in the 1990 movie, and went on to win an Oscar for her performance. Caplan addressed how she went about making this version of Annie her own. 

“Large, nurse’s shoes to fill,” Caplan said. “I think what Kathy Bates did with Annie in Misery, it’s a faultless performance. It’s perfect. She’s exceptional in that movie. The fact that it was her first film job is crazy!” 

“When you meet her Misery, she’s already very isolated from the world, whatever her mental issues are, they’ve been allowed to completely blossom. Our Annie, she’s still moving through the world. She’s interacting with other people. She has a daughter to look after, so I think the circumstances, kind of do a lot of that work for me.”

There are a few storylines in this season of Castle Rock, but the writers have blended them together in a way that should delight fans. 

“There’ such a wonderful big cast, and instead of just pairing us off, which they kind of did, we’re still coming together and intertwining,” Fisher noted.

Caplan and Fisher also discussed the emotional range of the show. 

“I think there’s a lot of emotional range in the show,” Fisher said. “Which you would not expect from a horror show like Castle Rock.” 

“The character of Annie Wilkes isn’t a straight-up nasty villain,” Caplan added. “She has many different sides to her. She is silly and she can act like a little innocent child, and she’s excitable, and she’s fun and kind. So yeah, I do think there are lots of moments of joy!” 

While Caplan and Fisher couldn’t give too much of the plot away they were excited to share the show with fans. 

“Elsie is obviously a young spring chicken, but the rest of us, we kind of got our asses kicked by this show. It was a seven-month shoot, it was super physical, it’s really crazy, and so I think you can expect to see, at least ten to twelve crazy things an episode,” Caplan said. 

“I feel like that’s an underestimate,” Fisher responded. 

“Five hundred crazy things an episode,” Caplan said. 

Watch the interview with Lizzy Caplan and Elsie Fisher from Castle Rock:

Caplan and Fisher also recalled the spookiest place they filmed at. Marsten House took the prize. It was a defunct mental institution that had its own terrifying history. Caplan and Fisher recalled the tense energy during filming.

“They rook off the doors from the rooms, and you could see scratch marks from the inside,” Fisher recalled. 

“It was really screwed up. I think they like sold the patients dead babies to medical places for science, it’s so weird there. The grown security guards, these grown men were like, ‘I wouldn’t go to the third floor. No, no, no, no, no! Don’t go. I went once, I’ll never go again,” Caplan said. 

The doors that Fisher talked about with the scratch marks won’t be making an appearance in this season of Castle Rock, though. 

“They took them off because that was just too much,” Fisher said. 

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Castle Rock Season 2 is now streaming on Hulu with new episodes airing every Wednesday. 

Check out more of our New York Comic-Con coverage. There is plenty more to come.

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