‘The Black Phone’: Ethan Hawke Sent a Threatening Voicemail to the Director as The Grabber
Ethan Hawke stars in The Black Phone as the antagonist called The Grabber. However, this is a very unusual role for the actor, who doesn’t typically play villains. Director/co-writer Scott Derrickson recalled how Hawke left a fittingly terrifying voicemail for him as The Grabber before officially accepting the role in the horror movie.
‘The Black Phone’ director Scott Derrickson started casting with Ethan Hawke as The Grabber
Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill held a Q&A following the Beyond Fest screening of The Black Phone. They talked about their experience casting the movie, where it all started with The Grabber. Derrickson immediately reached out to Hawke for the villain role in The Black Phone after they worked together on Sinister.
“I said, ‘Look, I’ve written this role, it’d be great. Just two things: one, it’s a sadist pedophile killer. I don’t know if that’s interesting to you. And secondly, he wears a mask the whole time,'” Derrickson said. “I remember him texting back this really long [text]. He said, ‘Send me the script, I’ll read it right away. I just want to tell you, for the most part, I don’t play villains.’ Which hadn’t really occurred to me, but he just generally doesn’t.”
Derrickson continued: “He’s like, ‘It has to be really extraordinary for me to want to play a villain. So, just know I want to read it, but the odds are against it.’”
Ethan Hawke sent Scott Derrickson a threatening voicemail as The Grabber
Derrickson sent the script for The Black Phone over to Hawke, but he never expected what the response would be. The actor left him a terrifying voicemail that totally visualized exactly how this character would come to life on the silver screen.
“There was a section of prose in the script that Cargill had written that was a description of his voice,” Derrickson said. “It wasn’t a line in the script. Then, late that night, I was out and I saw that I got a voicemail from him. I’m going to play it for you now. So, I’m out and this is a direct line from the script and so when I heard this, I was very happy.”
Derrickson took out his phone and played Hawke’s saved voicemail that he left for him. The actor dropped his voice in a low, raspy tone and said: “I’m about to murder the f*** out of you. And it’s going to hurt. You just sleep.”
The voicemail came to an end and the crowd burst into applause and laughter.
“And so, when I heard that, I knew he was going to do it,” Derrickson said. “The thing that really struck me, because we talked about this, one of the things that excited Ethan was the mask. It was the first time he was forced to act using solely his eyes and his voice. That excited him. Once I heard that, I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to work.'”
The Grabber’s mask in ‘The Black Phone’ changed during prep
However, Derrickson’s work on crafting The Grabber with Hawke didn’t end there. They ultimately decided to make some changes to the villain’s mask because it would be a bit too static as it was written in the script. The Grabber mask is split horizontally, allowing for some variety in its appearance.
“The whole idea of the split mask wasn’t in the script,” Derrickson said. “We came up with that in prep. The more that I was working on the script, the more I felt that it would get very repetitive if it was the same. I think in the script it was a smile devil and a frown devil. So, that was in the script.”
Derrickson continued: “But, I also was like, ‘I have Ethan Hawke. I want to see his eyes a little bit, you know?’ So, the idea of splitting it up kind of came from the fact that I had a great actor and a movie star that was going to play this very unusual role. That just turned out to have all kinds of layers of meaning as we started to talk about it, work on it.”
