Andrew Lincoln is no stranger to the supernatural: as Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead, he faced down his fair share of lurching corpses and lived to tell the tale. But for his performance in Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, Lincoln had to tap into a very different side of horror. In “The Murmuring,” Jennifer Kent’s episode of the horror anthology, Lincoln plays Edgar, a bereaved father who works as an ornithologist with his wife, Nancy (Essie Davis), at Cornell University. Like Kent’s 2014 film The Babadook, “The Murmuring” is a very specific type of horror story — one that’s just as interested in the slow-motion horror of grief as it is in a classic jump scare. Lincoln and Davis bring that grief to life.
Lincoln sat down with Tudum to discuss “The Murmuring.” Watch out for stray bird droppings.
How did you get involved with Cabinet of Curiosities?
When I heard Guillermo del Toro’s name attached, I took it very, very seriously. And then equally when Jennifer Kent had written and wanted to make the first of this anthology. I was very excited because The Babadook is a movie I adore, and The Nightingale is an astonishing film.
What was appealing to you about this particular story?
I’m a big fan of horror and genre in general. I mean, you’re talking to a man who’s slaughtered a thousand zombies. I’m a man practiced in the dark arts of horror and genre. And when it’s done well, it’s beautiful. Don’t Look Now, The Shining, they’re sort of essentially about loss and all trauma or relationships in crisis. They’ll never recover from the death of a child, no one does. But they can certainly try and live on and continue to love each other. Those are the overarching themes in this thing. That’s a really exciting area for actors to explore.
Nancy and Edgar are ornithologists; what kind of research did you do to properly portray that kind of career?
We had an ornithologist who told us what was an appropriate whistle. And we spoke at length to people about how you record and how you interact with birds and how you touch birds. There was a lot of work that was done actually while we were still in lockdown, working out of houses, using the equipment to make it look like we knew. All the cameras and the recording equipment and everything was so different then. That’s one of the coolest things about it — I loved all of the shots with the parabolic recording equipment. It looks almost like some strange sci-fi movie from the ’50s.
Edgar isn’t present for many of the scarier moments in the episode. But were there moments that frightened you on set?
It’s a very interesting thing filming something; you read something and then you film something. We did a lot of the relationship work, intimate, exhausting, quite intense scenes. And then we came back to the set and all the cool stuff started to happen without me. Because I’m either asleep or watching birds. So every day I came to work, I’d go, “Show me all the cool stuff that I’m not in,” because I’m snoring or whatever. And they were very kind because they’d show me all this stuff. But what I think is going to be very important to this is the sound design. So much of the fear is this kind of psychological pressure cooker. That’s the bit I love, when you’re watching a movie and you realize you’ve been holding your breath for three minutes. And I think that what we’ve shot will operate on that level as well as the emotional level of Nancy and Edgar’s trauma.
What was it like working with Essie and Jennifer, who previously collaborated on The Babadook?
Essie Davis is a tremendously brave, true, extraordinary and powerful actor. And she’s also a comedian! She’s playing someone who’s so far away from who she is. It’s marvelous working with her and Jen as well. Jennifer works forensically with character. She’s a brilliant composer of the frame as well. It’s her story. She has a very strong vision in sound, in performance, in everything. It was about making sure that that was realized.
What do you hope audiences experience from this episode?
I hope audiences will have the same reaction I did when I read it, that it was a beautiful story about loss. And about coming to terms with grief. And hopefully some way of finding a way to navigate grief. But also equally that they get the scariest, the most appalling, nerve-shredding hour that Netflix has created. So far.
“The Murmuring” is streaming on Netflix right now, along with seven more stories from Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
