From Broadway Dreams to Bramford Nightmares: Natalie Erika James on Crafting APARTMENT 7A

Photo Credit: Gareth Gatrell/Paramount+

By Shannon McGrew

Set in 1965, APARTMENT 7A tells the story before the legendary horror classic Rosemary's Baby. An ambitious young dancer, Terry Gionoffrio (Julia Garner), dreams of fame and fortune in New York City, but after suffering a devastating injury, an older, wealthy couple (Dianne Wiest and Kevin McNally) welcomes her into their home in the luxury apartment building the Bramford.

When fellow resident and influential Broadway producer (Jim Sturgess) offers her another chance at fame, it seems that all her dreams are finally coming true. However, after an evening she can't fully remember, disturbing circumstances soon have her second-guessing the sacrifices she's willing to make for her career as she realizes that something evil is living not only in Apartment 7A, but in the Bramford itself.

For the release of APARTMENT 7A, Creepy Kingdom's Shannon McGrew spoke with director Natalie Erika James (Relic). During our chat, we discussed everything from the film's connection to Rosemary's Baby to the surreal artistry behind its most chilling scenes. (TW: Talk of SA)

Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Natalie. Given the legacy and controversy surrounding Rosemary's Baby, what was most important for you to bring to life in this film?

Natalie Erika James: I was really excited about the idea of telling a story within this wonderful kind of mythology and this arsenal of colorful characters, but focusing on a journey like Terry's where I think so much of it is about this horrible event which causes a fracture from herself. Through the course of it and her connection with her friend Annie, I feel like there's a lot to do with returning to self, and that was kind of the arc or the journey that I wanted to convey. My original idea for it was this idea of a specter of sexual assault being shown through these darker forces, Satan in the basement, and her being preyed on by these forces in that way.

Photo Credit: Gareth Gatrell/Paramount+

I want to briefly touch upon the sexual assault that takes place specifically in your film. You executed it brilliantly through a Broadway number and a bejeweled demon instead of a violent, gratuitous metamorphosis. Can you talk about crafting that scene?

Natalie Erika James: What I love about the original film was that there were a lot of surreal sequences, and Rosemary's psyche and childhood played out through them. For Terry, it felt appropriate to have those sequences be within the world of Broadway, her ambitions, and films that she had seen growing up, imbuing them into the reality of what was happening. I liked the idea of almost pulling the wool over the audience's eyes and being so in the character's subjective experience that you don't realize how horrific things are until you see it play out for the rest of the film.

In terms of crafting the sequence, we worked really closely with production design, choreographers, and the Weta workshop, which created the sequin Satan. We wanted to create something that was unexpectedly beautiful but also quite terrifying. They did such a great job with fabricating. It wasn't something that they'd ever taken on before, but they had this wonderful textiles department, Flo Foxworthy, that basically hand-stitched all of these sequences everywhere. So much attention to detail went into creating that.

Outside of the infamous characters in Rosemary's Baby, the apartment has become an iconic piece from the film. For APARTMENT 7A, you have also utilized The Bramford as a character as well. Can you discuss finding the right building to convey this story?

Natalie Erika James: We were conscious of picking and choosing what we carried on from the original film. The Bramford was definitely one of them, and the design kept it consistent with the Dakota building. We shot in London, so a lot of VFX work was also done to bring it all together. My production designer, Simon Bowles, and I were really committed to recreating this gothic revival and oppressive atmosphere that was so effective in the first one. There are definitely points of departure that we took consciously with Terry's apartment, which isn't in the book, but it was something that we wanted to add on to give her her own space. Beyond that, the amount of detail that went into recreating not just the sets but also the furniture was a really impressive feat on Simon and his team's part.

APARTMENT 7A is now available to stream on Paramount+. Read our review here.