"The Midnight Club" Cast And Creators Shared 15 Behind-The-Scenes Secrets About The Show

The series broke the Guinness World Record for having the most scripted jump scares in a single episode of TV — Episode 1 has 21 jump scares.

Mike Flanagan's newest series, The Midnight Club, dropped on Netflix just last weekend, and people are already buzzing about how perfectly spooky it is.

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This year at New York Comic-Con, the cast and creative team behind The Midnight Club sat down to chat about all their favorite behind-the-scenes secrets and stories.

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Here's everything they shared about the show:

1. Mike Flanagan and his team of creators actually broke a Guinness World Record for the amount of scripted jump scares in an episode of TV — there are 21 total in the first episode of The Midnight Club.

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Hilariously enough, Flanagan doesn't even LIKE jump scares. At New York Comic-Con, he said, "So, funny story...I hate jump scares; I just hate them. For most of my career, people have come to me while we're working on scripts or while we're working on edits and said, 'Add more jump scares.' 'Put more in!' 'Faster, faster, faster!' And so in this project, we thought we were just gonna empty the missile silos and put as many jump scares as we could ever fit into one scene so that hopefully by the end, they would be meaningless." 

2. Natsuki's story from Episode 1 is the scene with the most jump scares overall, and Aya Furukawa revealed that the planning was "pretty extensive." There was stunt training and three other body doubles needed while filming it.

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She said, "The planning for [the scene] was pretty extensive. I'd say we had some stunt rehearsals here and there and some body doubles as well. I think there were about three other mes on set. It's really cool. So much of it is like the editing, the timing screams, all the sound, and everything. But yeah, I could tell right from the get-go that I thought it was gonna be a success."

3. Many Flanaverse alums appear in this series too, but Kate Siegel, Carla Gugino, and Hamish Linklater make special, uncredited cameos in The Midnight Club.

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He said, "They do make an appearance. I won't say if it's visual or auditory, maybe one or the other or both."

During Episode 7, when Anya dreams of being healed and returning to her life, she starts watching an episode of a detective show called Order and Reprimand. If you listen closely, you can hear Carla's voice narrating the episode, while Kate and Hamish voice the two detectives starring in the episode. 

4. The stories that the characters tell are based on actual novels written by Christopher Pike — the overall concept of the series is even based on Pike's book, The Midnight Club.

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Flanagan shared, "I'll tell you what I love about this show is we had a chance to do something we've never gotten to do on any of the other shows. And it's all about these other stories. We call them the B-stories in the writing room. We had a chance to kind of open up any subgenre that we wanted to. And after the pilot episode — which was a little more invented as far as what the stories were going to be — all of the other stories for the rest of the season are actually other Christopher Pike books. And that meant that we got to work with an incredible team and fantastic filmmakers who got to throw all sorts of different stuff up onto the screen. We got to hit reset every single episode on the tone and the aesthetic when it came to our B-stories, which means you're going to see cyborgs and demons and Satan and ghosts and witches and all sorts of crazy stuff that otherwise we'd never be able to kind of get into."

5. Pike's book Gimme a Kiss was the hardest to adapt for television because it was one of the bigger "departures" from the genre.

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Executive producer Trevor Macy said, "I think the most challenging of the bunch from script to screen was maybe Gimme a Kiss. And it's one of my favorites. I love Double Indemnity and that kind of vibe to it. Because I think tonally, it's not straight horror and it's one of the bigger departures. But, you know, like most of the other adaptations, we took the essence of it and it supports that episode in a way that I'm really proud of."

6. Co-creator Leah Fong shared that she based the character of Ilonka on herself and how she imagined she'd deal with a similar life-changing diagnosis.

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She said, "I guess Ilonka, I wrote a lot of myself into her. She's from Sacramento, but also she's a control freak. I'm a little bit of a control freak, I'm a Virgo. I always sort of had a life plan. And I was thinking, like, what would it be like to be on the precipice of your life and have this big bomb thrown into it? And how would I react? I think I would not react gracefully. Ilonka acts more gracefully, but she has to learn to let go, which is the arc of my life too. And I also had a baby over the course of making this whole thing. Doing that, you have to really, really, really learn to let go."

7. Fong even revealed that in her decade of writing for TV, Natsuki was the first Asian female character that she's ever been able to write for.

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8. Heather Langenkamp, who's best known for her role as Nancy Thompson in The Nightmare on Elm Street, said she never wanted to go back to the horror genre unless she found a role better than Nancy. After reading the first page of The Midnight Club dialogue, she knew she'd be "so proud" to play the part.

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She said, "Well, you know, my whole life, I've been known as Nancy Thompson. People call me Nancy at the grocery store. I've become very used to being extremely proud of playing that character. And it's one of the better, maybe the best, young female roles written in that period of time. So, in my mind, I would always say, 'I don't really want to go back unless the part is better than Nancy.' There's so much potential as a woman at a certain age now that I just wanted to hit a lot of notes that I've never been able to see in characters on TV. And when I had this opportunity, and Mike Flanagan just approaches me kind of out of the blue. ... I knew when I read the first page of dialogue I'm going to be so proud to play this part because she is a very, very wonderful woman. Maybe better than Nancy."

9. Igby Rigney and Annarah Cymone previously starred in Mike Flanagan's series Midnight Mass and shared that their positive experiences on set were the reason they wanted to return for The Midnight Club.

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Rigney shared that he "learned to trust Mike [Flanagan] with every fiber of [his] being during Midnight Mass." And he'll also be starring in Flanagan's next project,  The Fall of the House of Usher.

10. Rigney and Flanagan even created their own shorthand while working together. Rigney explained that whenever he was feeling insecure about a scene, he would go up to Flanagan and say, "Cool, cool?" And if Flanagan was happy with the performance, he'd respond, "Cool, cool." And the scene would be left alone.

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11. The Midnight Club is actually Ruth Codd's first professional acting gig, and she's already set to return for Mike Flanagan's next series, The Fall of the House of Usher.

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12. Ruth also said that because she has the "memory of a goldfish," she created "The Jellybean Method" to learn her lines. Basically, if she correctly recites a chunk of lines three times, then she can eat a jellybean.

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13. During their downtime on set, Chris Sumpter and Sauriyan Sapkota would actually break out into song and get their other cast members to join in.

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Sumpter said, "We got really bored a lot in that green room. I mean, just being trapped in that little small box with just the eight of us for like six to eight months. I mean, sorry, I needed to have fun. And we started doing musical theater. Even today, we were all practicing our harmonies in the bathroom."

14. Mike Flanagan shared that the mirror from his 2013 movie Oculus (which has made appearances in several of his other projects) can also be spotted in Episode 6.

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15. Finally, Sumpter revealed that as filming was winding down, he ended up having no place to stay because the lease on his apartment had ended. Zach Gilford actually opened up his home to Sumpter, similarly to the way Mark found Spence on the street and brought him to Brightcliffe.

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Sumpter shared, "I remember towards the end of filming, I actually didn't have a place to live because my apartment just ran out. I booked it wrong. I was 18. And everyone was trying to give me a place to stay. Zach was like, 'Do not be on the streets tonight.' And I was like, 'Zach, I won't I swear to God.' He offered me his home with his children and his wife. I mean, Zach Gilford. I can't say anything better. He's just one of the greatest guys I've literally never met."

Be sure to watch The Midnight Club, which is currently streaming on Netflix.