The Vanishing Bosses on David Schwimmer and Scariest Episode

When Disney+ announced it had greenlit a second season of Goosebumps last February, it came alongside an unexpected bit of news. The latest adaptation of wildly popular horror author R.L. Stine’s best-selling middle-grade books would now be an anthology series. 

It isn’t the first horror TV show to anthologize. But the larger serial approach to the YA dramedy’s first season — about five teens in the Pacific Northwest battling their hormones, parents’ secrets and monsters from various Stine books — had seemingly taken a different path than previous small-screen adaptations of the author’s works. Not to mention, that cliffhanger ending had presumably left the door open for the teens and their parents to continue the saga. 

But in the show’s second season, officially dubbed The Vanishing, which released Friday (dropping all eight episodes on Disney+ and Hulu), viewers will be introduced to an entirely new set of teens living in New York City who are facing down a different set of coming-of-age challenges — new love triangles, parental tensions and creepy terrors. With David Schwimmer and Ana Ortiz as the season’s adult leads, actors Sam McCarthy and Jayden Bartels also join as twins forced to band together with several neighborhood teens when a creepy experience in an abandoned fort in Queens follows them home and gets into their father’s basement laboratory. 

Also starring Elijah Cooper, Galilea La Salvia, Francesca Noel and Stony Blyden, the season is primarily based on five Stine novels, including Stay Out of the Basement, and features a found footage episode among its expansion into new corners of the horror genre. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Stine called this season’s aged-up approach to his books “terrifying.” 

Speaking to THR in December ahead of The Vanishing release, executive producers and co-showrunners Winston and Letterman discuss the narrative potential of turning Goosebumps into a serial anthology series, the importance of casting actors like Schwimmer, how they lean on comedy — and Disney — to push the horror and working with The Blair Witch Project director Eduardo Sánchez.  

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It seemed like your Goosebumps series was going to follow a more serialized approach to adapting Stines’ books, but then with the season two announcement came the news of an anthology series. Why did you move in that direction?

HILARY WINSTON It gave us the power to keep it fresh. Rob can talk more about this, but one of the things we enjoyed doing in season one is that each episode was a different genre. Rob has really set the visual tone for our show. Every episode is ambitious and tries to do its own thing. The anthology lent itself to that, to Goosebumps — the actual series, the books, what you expect, and also the visual tone that we already established.

ROB LETTERMAN When we started thinking it through, it made a lot of sense in that it was way easier to stay true to the Goosebumps IP. It’s an anthology series by nature, but we didn’t want to make every episode its own book. They did that in the ‘90s, it was awesome and there’s a huge fan base for that, but we wanted to be different. So the idea of each season being its own storyline with its own characters and monsters seemed to crack the code for us. 

We joke all the time about how many years a character can go on experiencing horrific things and still react in a way that’s interesting. At a certain point it’s like, “Oh, it’s an abominable snowman from Pasadena. I’m going to grab a donut.” (Laughs) You can’t sustain it for that long, so it does free us up quite a bit. We can jump genres, which we love to do, and explore different styles of horror. We love coming up with very relatable young adult characters who can go through these things freshly each time.

WINSTON We get to then do our own thing by carrying these characters across a season. Those characters that you love from Stay Out of the Basement, you stay with them a little bit longer.

While these are new characters, a new location and new monsters, when it comes to how the pilot and larger season unfold, it’s very similar to season one. Why did you keep that structure?

LETTERMAN There are a couple of reasonS. We wanted a pattern because if we’re going to do an anthology and do something brand new each season, this is what the fans of season one would recognize in season two. Giving it that structure made a lot of sense from a storytelling perspective in how to unpack the mystery of the cold open teaser of the pilot and bring characters who live in the same neighborhood together, who are experiencing all these monster-y things and cross paths with each other. Then we bring them together at the midpoint and let them unpack what happened all those years ago. That was a familiar thing we could carry on, and then deliver something totally fresh with a brand new set of stories.

WINSTON We’re also aware those Goosebumps fans that read [the books] when they were kids are older now. We want to make sure we’re always telling those dual storylines so it’s truly for everybody to watch. If you read the books as a kid, you might relate more to David Schwimmer‘s character. You might see yourself in that or a little bit in between — still remembering what it was like to be a teenager going through all these things. It’s a way to make sure that everybody has an in.

LETTERMAN We discovered this way after season one came out, but the audience for our show is 50-50 adults without kids and younger. People grew up in the ‘90s reading the books and they still love it, and they’re in their thirties and forties. We’re serving two audiences. So going back into the ‘90s, those little references and cold open things make a lot of sense when you think about who’s watching.

You shift locations between seasons one and two, but presumably, everything is set around the same period for the adults and the kids. Is it fair to say that at some point, if given the chance, you might be able to bring at least the modern cast of characters together from different seasons? 

WINSTON We talked about one character as a crossover who could come back and do different things. So [the idea] is definitely out there. In Goosebumps, Slappy appeared, then came back then became a spinoff, so you never know. I think it sets us up to be able to do whatever we want.

LETTERMAN That’s the great thing we do. I mean, look, fingers crossed. Knock on wood. You need a lot of seasons to pull off your Avengers. Hopefully we can get there.

So you’re not averse to Goosebumps Avengers? 

LETTERMAN (Laughs) Not at all. Hopefully, we can answer that question legit in future seasons. 

WINSTON Yeah, you know, Goosebumps is a multiverse. It’s definitely in the books. 

In season one you cast Justin Long and in season two, you’ve cast David Schwimmer — both actors known for their comedy chops but with real performance ranges. You touched on this at the NYCC panel, but there is a thin line between comedy and horror. Can you talk about the choice to cast a performer like Schwimmer to help lead your second season and set the tone? 

LETTERMAN We both love casting comedic actors to play dramatic roles. We’re big fans of that. [Executive producer] Nick Stoller is also a big fan of that. We find that it’s a really interesting, very honest, authentic portrayal of something when someone can dance between comedy and horror. It’s hard to just keep a one-note tone. That’s not how humans operate.

WINSTON Look at Jack Nicholson and The Shining.

LETTERMAN There are really funny moments in The Shining, but it’s just human nature. It’s a defense mechanism to make light when you’re dealing with something very traumatic. That’s why we chase down a Justin Long or a David Schwimmer for the show. And for David, we got on so well with him. We jumped on a Zoom, we talked about it. He’s amazing.

WINSTON He’s an awesome guy and he’s done just about all you can do in a half-hour comedy space. 

LETTERMAN He thinks hard about it. He’s also a filmmaker and understands it from different levels, not just from the acting level, but from storytelling, directing. He vibed on it quite a bit. And he has a 13-year-old kid, so he was also looking at it from that perspective and just wanted to have fun doing something that people don’t know him for and that’s interesting for an actor. And we do get him in a lot of trouble this season. He goes through some serious stuff.

In the pilot alone, season two feels a little scarier than one. But horror as a genre — tone, narrative, experience — is not always about the scariest monster. There are very human horrors people deal with. Naturally, as Stine does in his books, you do that with your teens — everything from crushes to parents’ punishment to near-death accidents. How scary do you actually want this show to be?

LETTERMAN There are so many answers to this. The fact that Goosebumps is both horror and comedy, we start with that. The pattern of scares matches nicely with the pattern of comedy, in the sense that the timing of a joke weirdly lines up with the timing of a jump scare. Disney’s also been great. We push it as hard as we can. They told us a while ago, “You guys go as far as you can. We’ll tell you when to stop,” which is a nice thing to work with.

WINSTON It makes it so we don’t have to condescend to our audience. We don’t have to say: “Here’s the YA version of this. Here’s the four-quadrant version of this.” We’re like, no, let’s do something scary. The found footage episode is really scary. Legit scary. We don’t want our audience to feel like we’re holding anything back.

LETTERMAN Or pandering. This is obvious and kind of textbook, but it’s very true: if you don’t know your and care about your character, you can’t be worried for them when you put that character into a situation. We have certain limits on what we do comedically. We never break the fourth wall. We’re not broad. We’re never silly. If your character is scared, the viewer is scared in the situation. So we have certain rules that we follow that we map out and work well. That’s kind of how we do it. And there’s a lot of trauma that we’re dealing with outside of the monster stuff this season.

WINSTON One of the things we always want to do is if you took all the monsters out, still have a compelling story and compelling relationships. If we don’t have that and you’re just like, “When can we get to the monster coming out?” you’re in trouble.

Let’s talk about the found footage episode, which you teased at the NYCC panel. How did that come about and what was your experience working with Sanchez? 

LETTERMAN We wanted to do a found footage episode. We had that idea. We didn’t know how to do it. (Laughs)

WINSTON Exactly. We knew enough to know, we did not know. (Laughs)

LETTERMAN We barely knew how to write it, but Ed, who directed The Blair Witch Project, Hillary and I talked to him and he was so great. He was like, there’s a lot you need to think about for that. Let me help you. I know Hillary was checking in with him a lot, even when we were —

WINSTON Working on the outline and everything to make sure that we were telling the right story for that.

LETTERMAN It’s a really interesting process, and watching him work — he’s got so much experience with it. When you strip things away, it’s so terrifying. Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later was shot on a DV camera and it just freaked me out. The format alone is terrifying. So we had Ed shoot it. We got off eBay or rented old ’90s —

WINSTON Sony camcorders.

LETTERMAN And shot on Hi8 video, which we never had the settings right, so that was a whole situation. (Laughs) But it just brings a level of reality that is cool. There’s a scene towards the end of episode six, which is the found footage episode, that just is so terrifying.

WINSTON It’s brilliant, and it feels like only Ed could have shot that.

LETTERMAN I was FaceTiming with him as I was on a different episode, and I’m like, “Ed, how are you going to do this? I don’t understand.” He’s like, “Ok, ok, I’m just going to do it for you.” On FaceTime, he turned it around and he did the entire thing. No cuts. He’s on this set and he’s going in [heavy breathing], and then “Now, I’m scared.” (More heavy breathing.) I’m just watching him do it, and there’s his foot and there’s his hand, then he drops the camera and he picks up the camera. I was like, “Do it, man. That’s incredible. That’s awesome.” He just had it all worked out.

Wētā FX helped you with the monsters this season, including Schwimmer’s transformation, which actors Sam and Jayden teased to THR. How did you get connected to them and how did they help elevate this season for you in terms of your creatures?

LETTERMAN Wētā just did us a huge favor, I’ll be honest. We started shooting April 1. We wrapped July 20. And today’s our last day on the show. We deliver at the end of today. 

WINSTON It’s so fast. Our writer’s room started the last week of January. So it’s an incredible undertaking.

LETTERMAN We reached out to so many people and they’re like, it’s impossible. We can’t do it. Wētā stepped up and they’re like, it is impossible, but we’ll do it for you. Just having a VFX vendor of that scale saved our butts. But they’re also artists too, and we relied on them for that. They had concept art teams and creature design teams. They integrated with our art department really well.

WINSTON They loved the pitch for the show.

LETTERMAN They loved season one. We put up a whole deck and we pitched them all the episodes. We walked them through it and they just got into it as —

WINSTON Artists. They became such a part of the process. 

LETTERMAN It was really cool, and they flew out from New Zealand. We can’t tell you because it’d be giving away what it is.

WINSTON But they developed a lot of things. 

LETTERMAN And performed some cool stuff for us. 

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Goosebumps: The Vanishing premieres Jan. 10 on Disney+.