Scout Taylor-Compton, who played Laurie Strode in Rob Zombie’s Halloween and Halloween II, wants to play the character again someday
Seventeen years ago, writer/director Rob Zombie took on the challenge of remaking John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween – and to do so, he had to find an actress who could fill Jamie Lee Curtis’s shoes and become the new Laurie Strode. Zombie’s choice was Scout Taylor-Compton, and he put her version of Laurie through the wringer. Although she starts out a nice, normal high school student like Curtis’s Laurie, her experience with Michael Myers leaves her an emotional mess, with Zombie and Taylor-Compton exploring Laurie’s trauma in the 2009 sequel Halloween II. That one had an ambiguous ending. Did Taylor-Compton’s Laurie die, or did she survive? During an interview with Fangoria, Taylor-Compton said she thinks her Laurie may be dead, but she’s still holding on to hope that she’ll get to play the character again someday.
When asked what she thinks happened to Laurie, Taylor-Compton answered, “If you had asked me right after finishing that movie, or even before the David Gordon Green films, I would have said that my Laurie survived because we were always prepared to do a third one. I was just very anxious and excited to be able to play her again. Now that we have the new ones, I would say that my Laurie is probably R-I-P because our other Laurie is back [Laughs]. I always hold on to hope that maybe I will get the opportunity to play her again, but it’s still really cool and a pinch me moment whenever I remind myself that only two people have played Laurie Strode: Jamie and myself. It’ll always be really cool.“
She then addressed the negative reception to Halloween II and the Halloween III plans that fell apart: “Halloween II gets such a bad rap. People like to remind me all the time, even in person, that they don’t like it, which is so funny. I could never go up to someone and be like, ‘Hi, I don’t like your work, but can you sign this for me?’ I just could never. Every time, it’s like a knife goes in just an inch. It’s like, okay, enough stabs! [Laughs] But I think that’s probably why I don’t watch it as much. In addition to the experience and stuff that I was going through and it being so hard. When you get told so much, ‘Oh, this movie is terrible,’ why would I want to watch it? We’re actors, we’re human beings. We’re not like this special fairy that doesn’t have feelings, you know? But at the time, I thought it was amazing, everybody loved the movie. It was a high-grossing movie. I was like, ‘This is great. This is amazing.’ And then it was very shortly after the release that they approached us about the third one. It was literally, ‘Get ready. Rob’s not a part of it and we’re working on the script, but it’s going to happen in like two months.’ We were ready to go. So, it was kind of shocking when it all crumbled and fell apart. … When we found out that Rob wasn’t a part of it, that was really hard to digest, but I love the character so much that I would have come back. But new things kept on coming, and actors are the last to know. They told us, ‘All right. Flight’s booked and you’re filming next week.’ It’s like, ‘Wait, what? Okay.’ They never call to tell us, ‘We’re looking at this director. He did My Bloody Valentine. We’re maybe going to do it in 3D.’ You just have to read about it and hope that they’ll settle on something, and you’ll be able to come back and reprise your role and make another cool movie. And then it just went silent.“
Taylor-Compton has noticed that more positivity is being directed toward the Rob Zombie Halloween movies in recent years. “Since the Blumhouse ones came out especially, I’ve had a lot of people coming to my table just saying that they wouldn’t mind a third from Rob. I wish that was a possibility but I don’t think he would ever, ever touch the Halloween franchise again. It’s really hard putting all your creativity into an art and then people being super awful about it. It weighs on the director. It doesn’t weigh on anybody else. Maybe actors a little bit, but it really does weigh on a director because it’s their movie. It’s their creativity. They put it together. That’s hard. That’s hard in any film, in any art form, in any sort of job, I think. So, I don’t know if he would ever want to revisit that. But if he does, man, I’d be game. I’m just really happy to be a part of the franchise because it just introduced me to some really amazing people in my life and the horror genre as a whole. It’s brought me into this massive family. I just appreciate it so much, and I’m very grateful for it.“
It’s good to know that she is open to returning to the role of Laurie Strode – and who knows? They might ask her to come back for another Halloween sequel someday. Stranger things have happened in this franchise. My biggest hope for the future of Halloween is that Danielle Harris will have the chance to reprise the role of Jamie Lloyd, but I wouldn’t be against a Taylor-Compton sequel.
Would you like to see Scout Taylor-Compton play Laurie Strode again? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
