Star Trek: Discovery’s Rebecca Romijn On Her New Film, Satanic Panic

X-Men and Star Trek alum Rebecca Romijn is headed back to theaters and SVOD next week with Satanic Panic, a film that sees her playing the role of a devil-worshipper hell-bent (see what we did there?) on delivering a virgin for sacrifice. The role is deliciously over-the-top, feeling like something out of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina or Ready Or Not, and as Romijn herself noted, it’s a far cry from some of her recent, more aspirational roles. During our interview, we mentioned her role in The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen, and Romijn said, with a laugh, “This is slightly different. Danica Ross is no Lois Lane!”

In the film, Sam’s first day as a pizza delivery driver is not going according to plan. At the end of a long day and not enough tips, her last delivery turns out to be for a group of Satanists looking for someone to sacrifice. Now in a fight for her life, Sam must fend off witches, evil spells and demonic creatures, all while trying to keep her body – and soul – intact.

“Everything about it was so much fun. There’s nothing more fun than doing relentless evil,” Romijn told ComicBook.com. “Then, also, they had all this — it looked like gibberish on the page; they actually wrote it out phonetically — but all the parts where I’m speaking in tongues, I thought I could get away with just making it up as I went along, but I’m glad I asked. I said, ‘Is this a real dialect? Because if it’s a real dialect then I need to learn it.’ They said, ‘No, it’s an ancient dialect.’ I had to learn it word for word and it was hilarious. Like, rehearsing all that dialect was so funny, but it was worth it. There was so much good dialogue in the movie.”

Romijn’s character spends much of her time with her coven of witches, in part because the nature of the movie is that she is hunting Samantha (Hayley Griffith). The audience is with Hayley for much of the time, which means that while Romijn’s screen time is limited, she looms large over the story. Still, she said that it felt a little disconnected from Griffith and co-star Ruthie Modine at times.

“When I was with the coven I felt like we were often on a completely different movie than Ruthie and Hayley,” Romijn said. “Even through scheduling, they were scheduled on completely different nights than we were scheduled”

She added, “We shot all nights, by the way.”

That feeling — of making two different films that had to dovetail together and then break apart a few times along the way — involved a lot of faith in the filmmakers on the part of the cast.

“That was just our reliance on Chelsea Stardust and her vision,” Romijn said. “We had no choice but to trust that she knew exactly what she wanted from everybody and knew how she was going to cut it together and I thought it cut together very well. Of course, the coven provides some of the comic relief. I was so happy to have Arden Myrin there and the rest of the coven. They were so funny. It ended up just being like a bunch of bumbling fools.”

That said, all of the humor in the script and the good times on set had to be contextualized, as Romijn said she sometimes worries that the humor will undercut the seriousness of a story that is at its core pretty dark.

“I have a little bit of a rule when it comes to playing stakes, you always play the stakes before the comedy,” Romijn explained. “Because if you’re not playing the stakes, then the audience stops caring. You want to work in the comedy wherever you can, but the stakes come first.”

Satanic Panic will be in select theaters, and available on digital video on demand platforms, beginning on September 6, 2019. Check back with us next week for the rest of our conversation with Rebecca Romijn and more on the film.