Trivia / Midnight Mass (2021)

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• Celebrity Paradox: Riley has a poster of Gillian Anderson on the wall of his unmistakeably '90s teenage bedroom, clearly a promotional shot from The X-Files. Annabeth Gish, who plays Sarah in Midnight Mass, was a series regular who actually replaced Anderson as the female lead in the final season of The X-Files' original run.
• Creator-Chosen Casting: Rahul Kohli was offered the role of Sheriff Hassan while filming the pilot of The Haunting of Bly Manor.
• Creator's Favourite Episode: Mike Flanagan considers this show his favourite among all his work, because it captures so much of himself and he had such a great experience making it.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Rahul Kohli was required to gain 30 lbs to look older. As he was going straight from Bly Manor to this show, he can visibly start looking bigger in the final episodes. When the production was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, he ended up having to maintain the extra weight for five months, with serious health problems resulting. He then recalls Kate Siegel telling him "you're a leading man, make the sheriff hot" and they agreed he could lose the weight for the sake of his health.
• Fake American:
  • British Rahul Kohli gives a fairly passable American accent. He had never done one before and had to learn on the job.
  • Louis Oliver, who plays Warren's friend and fellow alter boy Ooker, is also British.
• Production Posse: A huge number of cast members from The Haunting of Hill House (2018), The Haunting of Bly Manor, and other Mike Flanagan projects reappear in this show.
• Friendship on the Set: Kate Seigel and Rahul Kohli became very good friends on this production and remain incredibly close.
• Reality Subtext: The song "Nearer My God to Thee" is best known by modern audiences for its association with the sinking of the RMS Titanic, allegedly being the final song played by the band before the ship went under — while this has been disputed, it has since been ingrained into popular culture through frequent use in adaptations of the story (including Titanic (1997)). In this series, it's sung by the vampiric townsfolk, who are without shelter as the sun rises to destroy them, and the song's heavy association with impending doom adds to the tension of the scene.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Before the reveal, some viewers noted that Annabeth Gish and Hamish Linklater shared a physical resemblance.
• Spoiled by the Cast List: While the casting of the more recognizable Henry Thomas could be justified by Mike Flanagan's well-known fondness for a Production Posse, and Kristin Lehman is very young for her role (she's only a decade older than Zach Gilford, who plays her son), if you've seen Alex Essoe before, you're likely able to guess the twist. Essoe is twenty years younger than the actress who plays her daughter, Annabeth Gish, meaning that the roles would be more believably cast the other way round. If you're aware of this, the role of an elderly woman seems so jarringly miscast that it can only make sense Essoe is going to be significantly de-aged at some point in a way that could not be achieved by double casting.
• Underage Casting:
  • Hassan Shabbaz specifically talks about how he was 21 during the attacks on September 11, but Rahul Kohli was only 15 at the time. The character needed to be older than the actor to match the story of him enlisting in the NYPD right away, since 21 is the minimum age to be appointed an officer.
  • Taken to extremes with 29-year-old Alex Essoe portraying the elderly Mildred. Justified by the character’s supernatural de-aging, though even then she's a more extreme example as most of the other de-aged characters are played by actors in their 30's and 40's.

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