I was recently lucky enough to attend a virtual press junket with the cast of Home Sweet Home Alone to talk about the movie, which is out now on Disney Plus. Below are some highlights from that session! Enjoy!
On Early Holiday Decorations:
Aisling Bea: I think that should be illegal.
Ellie Kemper: We put up some hilarious orange blinking Jack-o-lantern lights and I just took those down from Halloween, so I need a moment before I can put up the holiday lights and snowflakes, et cetera. Our bats are still up, our paste on bats. Black bats are still up on the wall, so I’ll take those down. Then I’ll move on to the next.
Rob Delaney: And I have to actively fight it because I live in the UK and the UK, it goes directly from Halloween to Christmas. There’s no Thanksgiving speed bump. So in the UK, people are already going bananas and I’m just trying to pace myself and I slowly get acclimated. It’s like getting into a cold pool of water. You got to do it slowly. And in the UK they do it too fast for me.
Archie Yates on Channeling his Inner-Kevin McCallister: I did take a lot of inspiration from the original Home Alone movies. I mean, I religiously watched them every year at Christmas.
And added: Yeah, so it was pretty easy for me to relate. But then again, Max Mercer is supposed to be a completely different character from Kevin McAllister. So while I did want it to be the classic, “Ah,” I also wanted it to be more original and a bit different because that’s what this film is all about. It’s the same universe, but it’s a completely different story.
On Capturing a Special Moment from the Original Home Alone:
Aisling Bea: For me, it was the emotional moment of seeing your son again and that moment at the door. And that’s, I think, because you get such a feeling from that moment and then also unemotionally, the brown coat, that the mother has a brown coat. Some actors worked differently. I worked from the coat out.
On The On-Screen Hijinks/Filming the Stunts
Ally Maki: I mean, just purely the hijinks. I feel like we all grew up on this movie and just seeing the booby traps being set, I think we all wanted to have a booby trap house growing up. And growing up, I had one of the, you know how they have the Talkboy? I had the Talkgirl, which is the pink version of that recording device. And I just thought I was so cool all day just talking and recording it back.
Rob Delaney: I mean, the stunts and the things that happen to our characters are truly horrible. I mean, Max, by definition, what he does to us is torture. I mean, what he does to us is prohibited under the Geneva Convention.
Rob Delaney: So in terms of the film Home Alone, we really wanted to have that real danger be a part of what we were doing. And it was easy to do because you’ve got projectiles headed at your skull at hundreds of miles an hour falling from great heights, actual fire and ice. So yeah, just making sure that the real peril was a part of this story was important to us.
Ellie Kemper: Do you remember the day the flour that’s all over the floor when Max hits you with a flour sack was actually baby powder, secrets revealed. And the man who administering the baby powder was, we loved him as a person, but our enemy professionally, because he just kept adding gallons and gallons of baby powder to the day.
Rob Delaney: Anytime he approached with his baby powder sack.
Ellie Kemper: His tube.
Rob Delaney: We would look at each other and just growl. I never want to smell it again. I can’t be around babies anymore. If you’re younger than three years old, stay away from me unless you’re naturally filthy.
On What You Would Do for Your Own Home Alone Prank:
Archie Yates: Own original prank, okay. So, for my prank, the ideal thing is pain, so I’m going to give mine a very professional name. I’m calling it The Trials of Yates. I’m making this up as I go.
Aisling Bea: This is how it begins. You know, when you’re like, “Oh yeah were there any signs early on that we could have picked up on?” The answer is yes and now is the time. Keep going. The trial of Archie Yates.
Archie Yates: The trials of Archie Yates. The first trial.
Archie Yates: Tar and glass.
Aisling Bea: Oh, so you mean like death? It’s just literally where prank meets death.
Archie Yates: Yeah.
On Subverting the Villains
Ellie Kemper: Yeah, I think that’s a great point because our mission was one inspired by, I think, goodness. I think we wanted; our motives were good. We wanted to see more family.
Rob Delaney: That said though, for me, there is a villain in the film and he’s played by Archie Yates and his character is named Max Mercer because we’re trying to get back our stuff that we need to save our family, so throughout filming, I didn’t think of myself as a method actor, but the whole time I was like, “Oh, Max is the enemy.” So, when I watched the final film and you for felt sympathetic towards Max, I was like, “This must be a different film than the one I appeared in.” So certainly, in watching it, I think there’s no antagonists but in filming it, I was like, “Max is my enemy and he must come to harm.”
On Working with Devin Ratray:
Archie Yates: For the one day I worked with him, he was so cool. He was strangely awesome to work with. I was really nervous at first because I thought I was looking at a god.
On Taking Anything from Set:
Ellie Kemper: Guys, I’m guilty of it. It’s what happened. When we shut down for COVID on March 13th, 2020, I took a lot of toilet paper. I did because we had it in spades.
Ally Maki: You must give it back.
Aisling Bea: Does it matter if it’s used? Ellie, you could probably sell that toilet paper now in eBay as real, original toilet paper from big Hollywood movie.
A Big Thank you to Disney for inviting us here at Geek Vibe Nation to this Press Junket. Check out Home Sweet Home Alone now on Disney Plus.
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Big film nerd and TCM Obsessed. Author of The Ultimate Guide to Strange Cinema from Schiffer Publishing. Resume includes: AMC’s The Bite, Scream Magazine etc. Love all kinds of movies and television and have interviewed a wide range of actors, writers, producers and directors. I currently am a regular co-host on the podcast The Humanoids from the Deep Dive and have a second book in the works from Bear Manor.
