When Orphan first premiered to audiences in 2009, horror fans were taken on quite a journey as a grief-stricken family adopted a little girl after suffering a terrible loss. After the couple felt a special bond with the quiet and often overlooked young girl from the orphanage, Kate and John Coleman brought home their new daughter, Esther.
What happened next was a terribly rocky road for the family resulting in the loss of trust, lives, and safety within their own home. Could the strange happenings around their home have something to do with Esther? If so, what on earth could be her motive? Suddenly, the sweet young girl seemed vindictive and scary.
Actress Isabelle Fuhrman plays Esther, and in 2009, she was a 12-year-old girl playing the role of a 9-year-old orphan who was actually a 33-year-old woman. If that sentence is confusing to you, we get it. You have to watch the film to understand how Esther got away with being both 9 and 33 somehow and the pieces of the puzzle that slowly began to fall apart.
So what was it like returning to the role of Esther for the upcoming horror film, Orphan: First Kill? Fuhrman recently spoke with SlashFilm about the experience. The film gave Fuhrman the ability to be childlike again, and while the life of Esther isn’t that of a relatable childhood for many of us, she did revisit her own childhood to be able to connect with her character. Fuhrman also spoke with
“For me, what was really lucky is that in order for us to make the movie, we had to hire two young ladies, Kennedy and Sadie Lee, who were me from other angles. And I just got to hang out with them all the time. And I felt really childlike working on the movie, and I felt like it was a great excuse for me to revisit some parts of my childlike self because instead of finding moments to seem more adult, I had to find more moments to seem more childlike. It was a different challenge.“
She went on to say that it was essential to find ways to explain the movie-making process to the children that were hired to help Esther to a state unlike that of which fans of Orphan have ever seen before. Orphan: First Kill occurs before the story we already know, so we see a younger and less experienced version of Esther in the upcoming movie.
“It was really finding ways to explain to the kids that I was working alongside how we were going to do certain things and how we were going to be the same person. And really learning from them every single day and allowing them to play and dance and do things that I didn’t know how to do as Esther and finding ways to make it make sense within the story. And William Brent Bell, who directed the film, gave me complete free rein to work with them on my performance. And I’m so grateful to that because it allowed the three of us to create something special. And I think people will be really interested to see this Esther that is the Esther before the Esther you’ve seen in the previous film.”
Knowing Esther’s story as horror fans do, it’s interesting to wonder what road led her to the one where we first met her. What does her history look like? What skeletons are hiding in her closet, and will we see them soon?
We can’t wait to see what happens next, and luckily the wait won’t be an incredibly long one. Orphan: First Kill hits theaters on Jan. 28, 2022.