Vinessa Shaw has been acting since childhood, including a memorable early role as Allison, one of the kids who tries to stop the Sanderson Sisters, in Hocus Pocus. Since then, she has taken roles in drama and comedy, horror and Western in films like Eyes Wide Shut, 40 Days and 40 Nights, The Hills Have Eyes, and 3:10 to Yuma. She has had recurring roles in Vegas and Ray Donovan, and is currently working on the new series, Swagger.

During Shaw’s appearance at Creature Feature Weekend, she talked to Scoop about her experience filming Hocus Pocus and some of her other film work.

Scoop: Are you having a good time this weekend?
Vinessa Shaw (VS): This is so much fun. I have the best time engaging with fans. I’m interested to see what movies they saw as a child, what inspired them, and scared them, obviously. (laughs)

Scoop: What are your favorite memories from filming Hocus Pocus?
VS: I know it may be generalized to say that I loved every single day, but I did love every day that we shot. Because it was a magical time. The whole entire set that [production designer] Bill Sandell designed was unbelievable. Most of the scenes we shot were in one sound stage and so for me that was just amazing to have that visual upon working every day. The water mill was there, the Sanderson house was built to scale, everything was beautiful. The trees were shipped in from the East Coast, obviously, to dry Southern California. It was my first foray into knowing what East Coast smells were like from dank leaves sitting for a while – that particular mulchy smell is what I remember and I’m fond of. It was just beautiful.

Scoop: The Sanderson house is awesome.
VS: So awesome. There’re all these details you see in the movie that come about onscreen. The cobwebs were really thick, the red carpet they had in there for the museum part. You could really feel your way around it and understand where they must have slept and had their cauldron, of course. There was so much detail. It was beautiful. I feel like there was a lot of good woodwork in there as well.

Scoop: What do you think Allison did the following year on Halloween?
VS: (laughs) She probably stayed indoors. Hopefully with Max, hopefully they got further in their relationship and were cozy and just watched a movie.

Scoop: You two were adorable when you were all snuggly and falling asleep in Max’s room.
VS: So cute! Last night we got to see an outdoor screening of the movie and did our first commentary on it with me, Omri Katz, and Jason Marsden. I just looked at Omri in those scenes and said, “You know what, you are awesome. What 16-year-old guy in Hollywood would be comfortable saying he’s a virgin throughout a whole entire movie and being so sincere and sweet and cherubic faced falling asleep with Allison in that moment?” So cute.

Scoop: When did you realize that Hocus Pocus had become a pop culture touchstone?
VS: This is hard because I feel like someone needs to do some forensic study on this because it’s just my assumption – and I keep asking other members of the cast – basically we all say it must be after Disney Channel came out, after ABC Family came out. Then parents of young children at the time finally showing it to them. So the kids who watched it in the movie theater were having kids. It must have been the conjunction of all of that together that just literally steamrolled.

Scoop: Let’s go back to Ladybugs. Did you have to train for that movie or were you already a soccer player?
VS: Interesting, nobody has asked this question. We did have two weeks of soccer training. I have to say, I was very proud of myself. I learned to play soccer in a pinch, in two weeks. They had many soccer doubles that were used for us. For the ending kick it was between me and my double to make that shot, it ended up being her. It was really great because you can barely tell. I was very proud of myself. With two weeks training I started to really know what I was doing. (laughs)

Scoop: What was it like to work with Stanley Kubrick on Eyes Wide Shut?
VS: This is so intense of a question and I’m so happy to share it. He basically became – this is such a longwinded thing that I’ll try to keep shorter – he basically became my mentor in acting. Doing these movies that we just talked about are kids movies and as a child, you basically are told to perform well and the least amount of takes as possible and not worry at the producers. So, I don’t know why there’s so much pressure on children that way. They always say “Don’t work with children and animals” but that pressure as a child… you’re like, “Can’t I make a mistake once?” But it doesn’t feel like you can. I met my match with Stanley Kubrick who is the ultimate perfectionist and wanted to do things over and over again. He’s notorious for that. It made me relax in my craft, so it was like doing an acting class and rehearsing for a play all at once. I was able to just be in the moment and almost have a moment where I was in the zone like an athlete. I felt something come about from my work. I was going to go to school and find something else I was interested in, but he ended up pulling me back in.

Scoop: You had a kind of femme fatale role in 40 Days and 40 Nights. Did you like playing the bad girl?
VS: Interestingly enough, I decided to audition for that character. They wanted me to audition for the lead, for Shannyn Sossamon’s character, and I said that I found the ex-girlfriend part to be more interesting. People were shocked and maybe that was a strange choice to make, but I didn’t want to be cornered or labeled as the “it” girl, I wanted to have a long career, so that was my thinking. I did have so much fun playing here, she’s super badass, and a horrible, despicable human being. When do you get to play those characters? Not often. Interestingly, someone reviewed that character, they kind of did a deep dive into her psyche and said that she really just wanted to be loved and understood and acted out that way. That’s pretty compassionate, I think she was maybe just a dark lady.

Scoop: The Hills Have Eyes is an intense movie. How challenging was that to film?
VS: I felt like that I had a family on the set of The Hills Have Eyes, as I have many times. I’m feeling fortunate as an actor to have many experiences in my career where I didn’t feel alone or lonely while working. Because we were in the middle of Morocco shooting this movie, we were literally in the middle of nowhere. We’d never been to Morocco, so we bonded together, had all our meals together. I felt very safe in that world. There’s that one scene where my dad gets killed and we were in the hills and there was literally no one around. We were in the Sahara Desert, no one around except the crew, and I was like “Wow, this could really happen. Someone could come upon us and do something, and we would be totally surprised.” Because Morocco is kind of the Wild West of Africa, in that way. So, we were lucky enough that it was just in the film and that was it. I think because of the location we were in and feeling so fish out of water, we bonded together so none of us were actually dealing with the horrific parts of it, we could just laugh it off. We had our own parties in the hotel room to be silly as 20-something-year-olds.

Scoop: What do you have coming up?
VS: Right now, I’m doing this show called Swagger, it’s totally different stuff than I normally do. This is a TV show about Kevin Durant’s lifestyle and life when he was growing up as a young basketball player. I play a woman who, when he ends up in prep school on the basketball team, I play the chairwoman of the board. It’s a cool show, if you’re a sports fan you’ll love it, if you like stories about American life, because basketball is a backdrop for kids in America.

Scoop: Thanks, it was nice talking to you.
VS: Thank you. Likewise, I’m glad we talked, thanks for taking the time.

To read more about Creature Feature Weekend, jump to our Main Event.