An isolated island falls prey to evils both human and unholy in the genuinely scary horror drama, Midnight Mass, written and directed by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor).

The seven-part tale opens with prodigal son Riley Flynn (Friday Night Lights alum Zach Gilford) returning to his coastal home of Crockett Island after a prison stint for causing a fatal DUI crash. At the same time, the community is visited by Father Paul (Hamish Linklater), a new priest filling in for their ailing pastor.

As miracles — or would that be omens? — begin to occur, the locals zealously flock back to church, while Riley, his childhood friend Erin (Kate Siegel, above, who is married to Flanagan in real life), and an ostracized sheriff (Rahul Kohli) begin to suspect they may be witnessing the unimaginable…and otherworldly.

“It’s about faith versus fanaticism,” teases Siegel, who’s careful to avoid any spoilers. “[This show] is going to drop into people’s laps and they don’t know what they’re going to get.”

Siegel did, though. The story “has been brewing for Mike for almost as long as I’ve known him,” she says. “He’s like, ‘I’m leaving this show behind for my children.’ When they ask him things like, ‘What’s good and evil?’ and ‘What happens when we die?’ he can point to the show and say, ‘This is everything. This is my feeling.’”

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Kate Siegel is one of the stars of the highly-anticipated series ‘Midnight Mass.’ The actress spoke EXCLUSIVELY with HL about Erin Greene’s feelings about faith, her impression of Father Paul, and more.

Midnight Mass is the best new show of the year, hands down. Kate Siegel is part of this incredible ensemble cast as Erin Greene, one of the residents of Crockett Island and a local schoolteacher. HollywoodLife got the chance to speak EXCLUSIVELY with Kate ahead of the show’s September 24 premiere about Erin’s journey.

For Kate, playing Erin has allowed her to showcase the strength in being vulnerable. She opened up about Erin being a “reluctant hero” in the beginning, Erin’s feelings about the mysterious Father Paul, and how Midnight Mass affected her own personal faith. Read our Q&A below.

Each character in any Mike Flanagan project is so multi-layered and nuanced, and that’s definitely the case with Midnight Mass. What was it about Erin that made you want to play this character in this story?
Kate Siegel: What I love about Erin is that she’s your reluctant hero at the beginning of the story. You think it’s about two men facing off on different sides of the religious spectrum — an atheist versus a priest. By the end of the show, you’ve got your ragtag group of heroes that you never expected. I’ve played a lot of very sharp, tough women, and I love them. I love them without reservation. But the challenge of Erin was to let go of the idea that I have to be sharp and sarcastic and quick-witted to be considered strong. You can be vulnerable and strong at the same time, and I just love Erin for that.

There is absolutely strength in vulnerability. Erin embodies that completely. Father Paul comes to Crockett Island, and he seems to be great. What is Erin’s initial view of Father Paul?
Kate Siegel: I think Erin is entranced by him. His homilies hit to the core of her. She agrees with his interpretation of the Bible. She loves the way that he personalizes it for the island, and it feels a bit like he’s speaking directly to her. I think she’s inspired by him initially.

In addition to starring in Netflix and Mike Flanagan’s upcoming series “Midnight Mass”, Hush, “Hill House” and “Bly Manor” star Kate Siegel is also headed back to Netflix with Hypnotic, set to premiere on the streaming service October 27.

Bloody Disgusting has a first look at the film in which Siegel stars as a young woman seeking self-improvement who enlists the help of a renowned hypnotist, but after a handful of intense sessions, soon discovers unexpected and deadly consequences.

Jason O’Mara and Dulé Hill also star.

Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote (The Open House) directed. Richard D’Ovidio (The Call) wrote the script with Angel and Coote.

While he already had a number of projects under his belt, filmmaker Mike Flanagan’s breakout narrative came in 2018 with Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House, a compelling blend of horror and drama that resulted in him developing a follow-up season, The Haunting of Bly Manor. The success of the debut season was so major that he secured a number of additional opportunities, including Midnight Mass, a series that prevented him from directing Bly Manor. While he hasn’t ruled out a third season, actor Kate Siegel, who has appeared in many of Flanagan’s projects, is happy to star in whatever project he lines up, even if it means no more seasons of The Haunting. Midnight Mass lands on Netflix on September 24th.

“As a horror fan, I always feel sad that I never got to watch a Mike Flanagan show, and so there is at least one, the next one [Midnight Club], that I’m taking a backseat and not being a part of because I want to watch them,” Siegel confirmed with ComicBook.com. “Frankly, I’ll travel with this circus anywhere it goes. If I get to work with these people and say these words and be a part of the Intrepid team and work with Netflix, it just seems like a really lucky place to be.”

Midnight Mass tells the tale of a small, isolated island community whose existing divisions are amplified by the return of a disgraced young man (Zach Gilford) and the arrival of a charismatic priest (Hamish Linklater). When Father Paul’s appearance on Crockett Island coincides with unexplained and seemingly miraculous events, a renewed religious fervor takes hold of the community – but do these miracles come at a price?

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Whether it be in his movies or TV series, filmmaker Mike Flanagan has made a name for himself for delivering audiences not only frightening narratives, but also ones that find ways to tackle some of life’s biggest questions. Flanagan continues this trend with his new Netflix series Midnight Mass, which stars Kate Siegel and Zach Gilford, a series that once again delivers an unsettling horror narrative while also exploring a number of existential themes. While Siegel noted just how fortunate she feels to get to discuss some of these themes in even a fictional setting, Gilford felt like his character’s morose demeanor meant he had the easiest job of all the cast. Midnight Mass hits Netflix on September 24th.

“What I loved about it was the writing was such a support in that system, because even though I may not have the same beliefs as Erin, on the page, it was very clear that her belief made sense to her,” Siegel detailed to ComicBook.com of the heavy subject matter. “I wasn’t asked to make logical leaps that I didn’t understand or tap into some emotionality that didn’t exist. And so there’s this sense that there are these huge, epic questions, like ‘what’s the meaning of life? What happens when we die? Where were we before we were born?’ that everybody grapples with and everybody has a truly individual point of view on that. It’s rare to ever get to be able to express that, and so I was just, mostly, Christmas-morning joyful to get a chance to tap into the consciousness.”

Midnight Mass tells the tale of a small, isolated island community whose existing divisions are amplified by the return of a disgraced young man (Zach Gilford) and the arrival of a charismatic priest (Hamish Linklater). When Father Paul’s appearance on Crockett Island coincides with unexplained and seemingly miraculous events, a renewed religious fervor takes hold of the community – but do these miracles come at a price?

The nature of the production meant Gilford was somewhat oblivious to the challenges his co-stars were tasked with embracing, only realizing the extent of those performances when he watched the series.

“I think I had the lightest lifting of everyone, I got to just walk through and be melancholy,” Gilford pointed out. “As long as I was genuinely believing what I was going through, I was blown away when I finally got to watch this show and the characters that people created. Everyone from Kristin (Lehman), who played my mom, to Samantha (Sloyan) who played Bev Keane, and Kate … I’m just like a guy who’s just struggling with, ‘I don’t know, this sucks.’ As long as I could go there, that was fine, I didn’t have to put, on top of that, create a person who’s feeling that. I was blown away by everyone when I got to watch it and I felt like I had the easiest job.”

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It feels like Kate Siegel has been traveling nonstop as of late. The actress has been splitting her time between New York, where she filmed a part in the HBO series adaptation of The Time Traveler’s Wife, and Vancouver, where her family has been based for months while Mike Flanagan, her filmmaker husband, was finishing up work on his latest Netflix series, The Midnight Club. Now the pair are in Los Angeles for one helluva night. Halloween Horror Nights, to be exact.

They were invited to experience the new haunted maze inspired by The Haunting of Hill House, the 2018 Netflix sleeper hit created by Flanagan and starring Siegel that became an overnight sensation.

“I can’t wait! It’s going to be bizarre, like time traveling, I bet,” Siegel says over the phone.

Siegel and Flanagan have worked together consistently for the past nine years, since they first filmed the movie Oculus in 2012. Fans will spot a connecting thread through all of their collaborations, whether it’s the indie film Hush, Gerald’s Game (based on the Stephen King novel), or Hill House: They love to scare the bejeezus out of people.

As Siegel notes, their children, most of whom are 5 years old and younger, “have no idea that Mommy and Daddy go to work and just murder everyone you love.”

In light of their latest collaboration, the upcoming Netflix series Midnight Mass, which continues this tradition, Siegel looks back on nearly a decade of working with the man she considers a horror “genius.”

Oculus (2013)
The first time Siegel met Flanagan was during an audition for one of his movies that ended up not happening. “It was quite the audition,” she recalls of the nine pages’ worth of material she studied for it. But, as things tend to go in Hollywood, the rights to the project reverted back to its previous owner and “another production company” got involved, so that was that… or so she thought.

Some time had passed before Flanagan called Siegel to fill a small, admittedly “thankless” role in a haunted mirror movie he was directing called Oculus. The actress he hired to play the role of Marisol Chavez, one of the mirror’s many victims who comes back from the grave as a terrifying illusion, had injured herself. Says Siegel, “He was like, ‘It’s a huge part of the movie, and I really want to work with you. I’ll keep you in mind for other things if you’re willing to come hang out with us in Alabama for eight weeks.’ I was like, ‘Sure!'” It’s a promise he kept.

The actress remembers her big moment in Oculus as “snakey arms,” a reference to producers describing how Marisol wraps her spindly limbs around her victim. “There’s a lot of physicality to Marisol because there’s very little to no dialogue,” Siegel explains. “If you notice her arms, we turned her hands out the opposite way so it looked like a mirror reflection. When I was talking about what I wanted to do at the end there, I was referencing the curlicues of the mirror. I said, ‘I guess I want my arm to be like snaking around him.’ And they were like, ‘Snakey arm!’ I guess it just stuck.”