The Haunting of Bly Manor, the next highly anticipated chapter of The Haunting anthology series, is finally streaming on Netflix to kickstart the Halloween mood of October.
In this second season, we’ll see many familiar faces as some of ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ stars return. This time, we’re introduced to a new haunted house (the Bly Manor), a new set of characters (completely untethered to the previous season), and the story is set in 1980s England.
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From Hill House’s ‘the bent-neck lady,’ Victora Pedretti now plays the role of Dani Clayton, an American au pair (a fancy term for nanny) in England. She is tasked to take care of the niece and nephew of Henry Wingrave, played by Henry Thomas, when their original nanny dies. As the new governess, Dani must reside at the Bly Manor where the children live along with the estate’s chef, the groundskeeper, and Mrs. Grose.
In a Zoom interview, we chat with two of the Bly Manor stars Victoria Pedretti and Henry Thomas, both coming from success of Hill House. Read on as Victoria and Henry share their thoughts on the new haunted house. There are a few spoiler-ish details, so yes, this is your spoiler alert — don’t scroll down and read more after this if you haven’t seen it yet!
How is it like to reunite with other cast member members, this time for another season, and this time playing different characters and a in different setting?
Victoria Pedretti: It was really great. I was really happy to see new people again, and also have the opportunity to explore a completely different place, different character. There’s the safety of the familiarity, but also the challenge of all everything that is new.
Did working on these two seasons, Hill House and Bly Manor, change or in a way influence your own beliefs in the supernatural?
Henry Thomas: Not for me, no, I, I’m a bit of a skeptic. But being on a film set anyway, is probably one of the most boring places to be. You know, all of the scares are rehearsed, and everyone knows it’s coming. So watching it all put together is exciting. And you can feel like [what] the audience feels. But being on the set, nothing happens very quickly. [laughs] So it’s hard to be scared.
This is obviously not your typical sort of hearts and flowers romance. What were the things you enjoyed about ‘Bly Manor’ as a love story?
Victoria: It’s a love story on many levels. It’s great to see Dani’s experience multiple loves over the course of this season. And I think that that’s beautiful.
(Photo: Eike Schroter / Netflix)
Did it give you a chance to explore things that you haven’t able to in other love stories you played?
Victoria: Yeah, definitely. I feel like we got to delve deeper into it. I think there’s an understanding that Nell and Arthur [from The Haunting of Hill House] have a really strong, healthy bond with one another. A sense of camaraderie and partnership. But we get to see more of that with Danny and Jamie. Spoilers are fine, I guess. Especially in that they’re very honest with each other, they slowly gain trust with one another. I think it’s really incredible to see two people not kind of throw themselves into all of these false expectations of one another before they’ve had the chance to introduce each other to each other. Compared to also earlier in the season, I think it’s really incredible to see her relationship with her ex Eddie. I think it shows a great, deep love for someone that you can be honest with them, even if it even if it might hurt them.
We know that ‘Hill House’ is about family issues, while ‘Bly’ is a gothic romance. What else do you think viewers can expect from The Haunting of Bly Manor that is not in Hill House?
Victoria: Period piece? Well, I guess there’s aspects of the first season that were also a period piece.
Henry: Yeah, there’s a period piece within the period piece, really.
Victoria: True! Yeah.
Henry: So we go back in time farther than we’ve ever gone before, I suppose, in Bly. But I think also, it’s a different world. And we’re exploring the works of a different author from a different time. So that makes things exciting and new.
