Other Conference Call Highlights:

Eric Roberts and Jesse Plemons on whether the stand alone episodes feel more like small indie films, rather than a TV series:

ROBERTS: It’s like working on an independent film exactly, or at least my experience was working with Brad Anderson, because he does his homework and he directs like a movie director. It was like making a movie.

PLEMONS: For me it did, it felt like a really fast movie. I mean we filmed for eight days and it was a pretty hectic schedule, as I’m sure most of the other episodes were. But yeah, it did have a sort of independent feel to it because we shot it in Edmonton and it is kind of away from Hollywood and all of that. So it did have a sort of an independent feel and we got the local Edmonton crew there that was really great to work with.

Jesse Plemons and Eric Roberts on the challenges associated with their roles:

PLEMONS: I guess for me the most challenging this was just the endurance of it all. For most of the show, at least the last twenty or thirty minutes of it, it’s all really high intensity, high emotion. He’s scared out of his mind. So that was something that was kind of challenging, just keeping that same intensity throughout the show.

ROBERTS: The biggest challenge for me as an actor and a person was this story peaks in about ten minutes, and that peak maintains itself up to the very end and it doesn’t ever come down from that peak level. As an actor, if I didn’t have a truly great director I would’ve been panicked and I would’ve come across as cheating and being repetitive, as where Brad Anderson kept it interesting and every scene was a different level of peaked hysteria. I was actually frightened of if I hit this this early, can I maintain this? And if I do maintain it, is it going to come across as repetition? But I was in a great director’s hands. I know I sound repetitive, but I just can’t say that enough.

Plemons and Roberts on their experiences with the horror genre and what drew them to Fear Itself:

PLEMONS: This was actually the first horror project that I’ve done and it was something that I always wanted to do. I mean I’ve read a lot of scripts, but honestly this was a well written story, which got me really excited. I think the main thing that I took out of it is that I have a newfound respect for actors and just everyone involved in horror, because there’s just so much that goes into it - time, energy, it’s not an easy process. This was eight days. I can’t imagine doing a movie where you’re screaming and being freaked out the whole time, but it was a lot of fun.

ROBERTS: My interest was peaked because of Mr. Anderson and my commitment came through because of the script itself. It was just juicy and I get offered [a lot] of pointlessly crazy people to play and this guy was kind of a normal A-hole who becomes possessed, basically, by this experience. And I knew I had a really great director behind me because his past work I was aware of. So I knew I could put myself in his lap and he would do it correctly, because it’s hard to cry and die in almost every scene of a project and [for it] to not get boring. But Mr. Anderson really took care of that and it was interesting.

Jesse Plemons on scrambling through the dialogue of his character:

"I kind of pictured [him] as a similar type of guy as Landry on Friday Night Lights. The dialogue in the script just seemed like he was one of those kids who didn’t quite fit in, and the relationship with him and his brother was obviously strained. It always seemed like he was trying to impress his brother, especially with this deal that he made that went wrong. But I don’t know, I think a lot of times my mind gets working too fast and I just jumble some of the lines together and I don’t know if that’s on purpose or just by accident."

Keith Addis on what sets Fear Itself apart from other horror anthology shows:

"One of the cool things about an anthology is that every one of these films is completely separate and unique from the others, and that’s something we enjoy the most with this form. Some of the episodes have more of a Twilight Zone feel and dwell in the realm of physiological thrillers. Others are at the very opposite end of the spectrum of the genre and are much more down the center, down the bull's eye of what the genre offers most frequently. So I really think you’ll see an incredibly broad cross-section of different kinds of storytelling over the life of the thirteen episodes."

Addis on championing the anthology format:

"This has always been, since I remember going to the movies in the late 50s, a genre that’s been entertaining, delighting, frightening audiences, providing a catharsis during challenging times, and we obviously watched the different spikes that have taken place over the years. It seems to us, in a non-scientific way, that there is a correlation between audience interest in these shows and the kind of general unease in the Zeitgeist culturally, and to the extent that this provides a safe escape from some of the challenges and anxieties of modern day society. We hope it is great entertainment and a little refuge from the storm in a way."

Andrew Deane on benefits of the anthology format:

"I think what also makes it exciting and fun to do is it gives the writers, directors, and performers all an opportunity to do something with a little more freedom than they would ordinarily have and I think the results reflect that."

Keith Addis on what FDR might think of his quote being used in the title of the show:

"This was in fact Mick Garris’ idea and there was a lot of enthusiasm about the idea as soon as he mentioned it in one of the first meetings. One hopes that he would have a rich and wonderful sense of humor about it."

Addis on whether they considered having a narrator for the show:

"Of course it was discussed, particularly because of the tradition that exists in anthologies, with that iconic host we’ve seen in the past, including Rod Serling and Alfred Hitchcock to the extent that The Outer Limits main title sequence really served that function. I think we decided it was a fresher approach to use that time to dive right into the storytelling itself. It was discussed and everyone agreed that this was the right approach under these circumstances. They’re only forty three and odd minutes to tell these stories in a network hour and we wanted to make sure that the directors had as much of that time we could possibly give them."

Keith Addis on the level of gore for network television:

"We were anxious in the transition from the show we had done at Showtime to the commercial environment at NBC, and the impact that would have on the filmmakers and the writers in the process of telling these stories. But we were totally surprised when we began talking to the writers and directors, how intrigued they were about this challenge. It was a really great unintended consequence of this switch from the show we had done at Showtime to this different, but related, show we’re doing for NBC. And I think there was a consensus, it certainly wasn’t unanimous, but there was a strong consensus that most of the elements that caused these episodes of Masters of Horror to be what you’d call R-rated, basically the graphic gore, and a lot of the sexual violence had been played out as far as they could be in the movies on cable shows. And theses restrictions, these guidelines that obviously exist in the commercial broadcast environment, really motivated the writers and directors to think much more imaginatively and much more creatively about the devices they’d use to get audiences pushed just as far, but in more imaginative ways. One of the things that Andrew has said before that I think is very smart, and maybe obvious to you guys too, is it’s so often much scarier not to see than to see graphically what’s going on, and that’s a great advantage to telling these stories in television. And frankly, for the audience who expects more, there will be more to see on the home video version of these shows than there will be on the broadcast version. I think that will satisfy that different kind of audience."