Genre icons Tom Atkins and Adrienne Barbeau have starred in a number of projects together over the decades, yet have never had the opportunity to share the screen, with Creepshow showrunner Greg Nicotero confirming that he nearly made that long-awaited moment happen in the first season of the Shudder series. While Barbeau did still make an appearance in one of the episodes, a variety of scheduling and production issues prevented Atkins from delivering a cameo in the new series, though Barbeau had her involvement increased from a cameo to a supporting role in the series premiere. Hopefully this means we’ll finally see them share the screen in a Season Two episode.
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“I love Tom. I’ve known Tom for 30 years,” Nicotero shared with ComicBook.com. “I offered him a part and he couldn’t do it because he was shooting something else. In ‘House of the Head,’ when Kaylee Fleming, who played Evie, goes to the doll shop, there was a couple, a woman and a man, who owned the shop. When I originally was thinking about it, I thought, ‘Oh well that would be Adrienne and Tom Atkins.’ It was just going to be like a little cameo. Then we started rewriting that script, and honestly, it was like, ‘Well we can’t afford two actors here, so we need to lose an actor.’ We cut the woman, and then when we started developing ‘Gray Matter,’ I thought, ‘Wait a minute, here’s the perfect part for Adrienne, because it’s the lead. It’s not just a one-off part.’”
When the series was first announced, reports emerged that it wouldn’t be the Gray Matter Stephen King short story that would be adapted, but instead would be Survivor Type. Production limitations shifted gears, allowing Barbeau to take the larger part in the series.
“Originally we had had a different story of [King’s], we had Survivor Type, and as we were filming we were like, ‘Wait a minute, we’re never going to be able to go to a desert island to shoot this. I don’t know, production-wise, how we’re going to be able to pull it off,’” the filmmaker pointed out. “Because, again, it was low budget. I had read Gray Matter and remembered really liking the story and we switched gears and went from Survivor Type to Gray Matter and then I was like, ‘Well this is perfect because we have the best role for Adrienne Barbeau.’”
Last month, Atkins even claimed that we can expect a cameo of his in the second season of the series, confirming to ComicBook.com, “Nicotero is down there doing Creepshow in Atlanta and he assured me I would be in the next season of Creepshow.”
With the first season only having wrapped up last month, it’s unclear when Season Two will be moving forward. Stay tuned for details on Creepshow.
Do you hope we get to see Atkins and Barbeau share the screen in Season Two? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!
