With slasher-comedy New Fears Eve heading to Blu-ray on September 15th, breakout star Lily-Claire Harvey talks practical gore, finding Leslie Starks, life away from social media and why her future might be behind the camera as much as in front of it.
Lily-Claire Harvey is surprisingly difficult to find online.
For an actor appearing in a blood-soaked horror comedy alongside Sleepaway Camp icon Felissa Rose, Scary Movie’s Dave Sheridan and Final Destination creator Jeffrey Reddick, Harvey keeps a remarkably low profile.
It wasn’t always that way.
“I was all over social media,” she tells us. “I mean I was, I was obsessed, and I really, I think it was like it really became a problem, I wasn’t being like problematic or anything, but I was just, I was just so conscious about my online presence, and I mean, I think it just got a little out of hand.”
These days, she’s happier keeping some distance from the endless scroll, it makes her performance as Leslie Starks in New Fears Eve feel like even more of a discovery.
Written by P.J. Starks and co-directed by Starks and Eric Huskisson, New Fears Eve takes one of humanity’s most horrifying creations, the mandatory work function, and somehow makes it worse.
Three friends attending Hooper Industries’ New Year’s Eve celebration find themselves trapped inside the building as a killer known as ‘The Doctor’ begins carving through the guest list.
It’s messy, funny, unapologetically indie and filled with enough practical bloodshed to test even Harvey’s stomach, which is particularly amusing because despite starring in a slasher, she didn’t exactly grow up dreaming about horror movies.
“I did not,” she laughs when asked if she was a horror fan as a kid.
Her two older brothers were.
“They loved horror movies. Loved horror movies. The more jump scares, the better. They loved them, right?”
The problem was their younger sister was watching along.
“I mean, at 10 years old, I was scared to go downstairs by myself in my own house. My mom banned me from watching horror movies.”
Eventually, the genre found its way back in. In fact, making New Fears Eve helped reignite Harvey’s interest in horror, although her real weakness lies with the undead.
“My favorite like horror adjacent genre is zombies. Like everything zombie books, TV shows, movies, like any sort of media.”
And prestige is absolutely not required.
“If it’s bad, even better.”
Finding Leslie Starks
Harvey originally had considerably more modest expectations when she auditioned for New Fears Eve.
Back home visiting family, she saw a locally produced film as an opportunity to audition for a smaller part, spend some extra time near home and add another project to her résumé.
Then the filmmakers asked her to read for Leslie.
“I auditioned for a smaller role. They had me, I guess, re-audition. It was the same day. They were just like, ‘Can you read for this part as well?’”
Harvey hadn’t initially considered herself an obvious fit. Leslie, she recalls, was originally envisioned as older than the age range she was playing at the time.
“I just didn’t even think it was in my wheelhouse. So I auditioned and they loved it.”
It turned out to be a smart call.
At the centre of New Fears Eve, Harvey brings an easy likeability to Leslie while bouncing between workplace comedy, escalating panic and increasingly brutal slasher territory.
The production itself was largely a hometown affair, with many cast members sourced from around the Kentucky area, that included Matthew Tichenor (who plays Moses) and whose chemistry with Harvey didn’t exactly need to be manufactured from scratch.
“When I was in high school, his sister was one of my best friends.”
Harvey knew Tichenor long before cameras rolled and says she actively championed him for the role after reading the script.
“I read Moses and I was like Matthew would be perfect for this role.”
Why?
“He is just that funny.”
New Fears Eve trailer
Blood, Laughs And “Overstimulation Station”
For a relatively new horror convert, New Fears Eve also threw Harvey headfirst into one of the genre’s great pleasures: practical gore, there is one Felissa Rose sequence in particular that she still struggles to watch.
“My eyes are closed, my my face is covered every time that scene happens. I mean, I’ve seen the movie. I don’t know how many times now. I still I watched the first time. Have not watched it since because I was just like, oh, that’s so…”
Being on the receiving end of the fake blood wasn’t much easier, before principal photography, members of the cast shot promotional material that involved Harvey being completely drenched.
“They just covered me in blood, absolutely in the fake blood. I had it all over my face.”
The glamour of filmmaking quickly disappeared.
“I mean, hair just stuck to my face. I felt like I had just run six miles, and I mean, everybody that got absolutely drenched in blood that movie, props to them because that was just overstimulation station.”
While Harvey didn’t share scenes with Rose, Sheridan or Reddick, she did meet the horror veterans through the production and has nothing but praise for them.
“Class acts. Every single one of them.”
Her major scene with V/H/S actor Hannah Fierman, meanwhile, became an acting lesson of its own.
“She is amazing. Absolutely, 100% fed off of her. I was like, ‘This is like a whole new ballpark for me. I don’t know what’s happening. I’m like a different person in that scene.’”
A Set That Felt Like A Divorce
Part of New Fears Eve’s charm is the looseness of its comedy.
Harvey describes herself as a script-first actor, a “memorization demon” who generally prefers delivering what is on the page rather than inventing new material on the spot.
Plenty of her co-stars took the opposite approach, one early office scene was repeated multiple times while another performer continued inventing new lines.
“They just gave him full creative freedom. He just said something different 10 different times, and it just got progressively funnier and funnier as we went on.”
Harvey says keeping a straight face became the challenge.
“The hardest part about filming that was just everybody in the background just trying not to laugh.”
Behind the camera, Starks and Huskisson had their own unique creative rhythm, Harvey has one particularly vivid description for watching the longtime friends co-direct.
“It is like working with a married couple.”
Pause.
“Like a married couple on the outs. Like they’re going to break up.”
Their creative disagreements could get energetic, but never lasted.
“I said it on set a million times. I was like, I feel like a child of divorce right now, trying to do a scene.”
The solution?
“They would step away for 60 seconds, and then come back. Nothing happened. Everybody’s fine.”
As Harvey puts it: “I feel like that’s a quality way to resolve conflict. Step away, and we’re back to it.”
The Other Side Of The Camera
For all the attention New Fears Eve may bring Harvey as an actor, her long-term ambitions are more complicated.
After studying acting, her education exposed her to the realities of production beyond simply performing.
“My degree was like half in production, so I learned everything behind the scenes.”
One lesson stuck particularly hard: actors aren’t the only people grinding through enormous days on set.
“At least an actor gets to sit down in between scenes. Like the PAs, like everybody else, they’re just standing and working nonstop for those 14 hours.”
That appreciation for crew work eventually turned into experience in casting and directing, Harvey began helping a small film and theatre company with auditions and discovered she loved the process.
“Oh my gosh, love that.”
Casting, in particular, clicked.
“It was just the most fun thing in the world for me to go through all the the actors websites and see and post all these things and do the Zoom auditions.”
Ironically, the person increasingly drawn toward directing other performers also has one problem with live performance herself.
“I have violent stage fright. I cannot do theater.”
An actor with stage fright?
“I just tremble like a little baby deer up on a stage.”
Instead of seeing that as a limitation, Harvey increasingly views it as something that pushed her toward another part of the industry.
“It was like the universe was telling me, ‘Here’s your stage fright, so go try something else,’ and it let me try something else.”
She has since returned to freelance casting and hopes to continue exploring that side of filmmaking.
“I think that my strength, my strengths really lie with helping other actors, guiding them in the right direction.”
That doesn’t mean Leslie Starks is her acting swansong.
“I would like to see myself in a few more projects because I mean I don’t think I’ve gotten it all out of my system yet.”
Dinosaurs, Zombies And Whatever Comes Next
Away from filmmaking, Harvey’s ideal day is considerably quieter.
There’s matcha. Sunshine, her cats Mally and Soju, then gaming. A lot of gaming!
“I am unfortunately a big gamer.”
Her perfect day involves getting outside just long enough to meet the daylight quota before retreating to her PC.
“A matcha on the porch, get my daily sun intake, and then spend the rest of the day at the computer. I mean, that is just no interruptions. That’s a dream.”
Recently, that has included dinosaur survival game The Isle, and, thanks to proximity chat, an unexpected opportunity to put the acting training to use.
“I’ve essentially been role playing as a dinosaur in my free time.”
It makes more sense than it sounds.
“It goes right back to my acting background. I mean, it’s right on my alley if you really think about it. If you really, really, really think about it.”
Her other current comfort viewing is equally on brand: Z Nation, which she describes beautifully as “the ugly stepsister to The Walking Dead.”
As for New Fears Eve, Harvey may not be finished with its blood-soaked world either.
“The next script is written. New Fears Eve two.”
The filmmakers are working toward getting the follow-up made, although Harvey is careful about giving too much away, what she will say is that she’s enthusiastic about the possibility of stepping back into this world.
“I’m ready to kick some more ass.”
For somebody who once needed her mother to escort her downstairs after watching horror movies, it’s a pretty decent character arc.
New Fears Eve arrives on Blu-ray on September 15th and is available to pre-order here.
MORE IN Features
