Jamie Lee Curtis Elaborates on How Jake Gyllenhaal Helped Connect Her With ‘Halloween’

Jamie Lee Curtis has elaborated on a June report that Spider-Man: Homecoming star Jake Gyllenhaal helped connect her with the Halloween sequel script.

“Jake and I have been friends since he was a young boy. I think I’ve referred him as his ‘celebrity godmother.’… and he’s just been a friend for years,” Curtis told EW.

Gyllenhaal, who partnered with Halloween director David Gordon Green on true story Boston Marathon bombing drama Stronger, helped facilitate a meeting between Curtis and Green, who penned the 40-years-later sequel with co-writers Jeff Fradley (Vice Principals) and Danny McBride (Eastbound & Down).

“David made the wonderful movie Stronger, that Jake starred in and his company produced, and Jake called me out of the blue — it was June of last year, I remember exactly where I was — and Jake basically said, ‘My friend David would like to talk to you about something regarding Halloween,’” Curtis said. “And we spoke on the phone and he started to explain it, and I said, ‘You know what, just send it to me, and I will promise you I’ll read it.’”

The actress said the opening moments of the new sequel immediately conjured imagery from John Carpenter’s 1978 original Halloween, which saw Curtis’ then-17-year-old babysitter trapped and terrified in a closet under vicious assault by masked murderer Michael Myers (Nick Castle).

“From the opening scenes, from the first couple scenes, there’s a scene where my granddaughter is in Haddonfield, in the house where she lives with my daughter, and she’s in her bedroom, and she opens the closet door… and she pulls a bulb to illuminate what’s in the closet,” Curtis explained.

“And right away, I understand exactly in that moment where David was going, what they were trying to do, and really, at that moment I should have just called him at that point and said, ‘I’m on page three, yes.’ But it was very quick.”

Ignoring all other franchise installments except Carpenter’s Halloween, the new film catches up with Curtis’ Laurie Strode as a deeply traumatized survivor and mother to Karen Strode (Judy Greer), and grandmother to high school student Allyson (Andi Matichak). An isolated social pariah, Laurie’s over-protectiveness and paranoia has strained her relationship with Karen, but the grandmother maintains a better relationship with her granddaughter.

The Strode women will encounter a just-escaped Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney), whose obsessive compulsion for murder will once again haunt the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois.

Halloween opens October 19.