Exclusive Interview: Scream Queen Dee Wallace Talks Iconic Career, Dolls And More

That’s fascinating. I can’t believe you thought your career was going to be over.

Dee Wallace: Well, you sit there with something that you worked on for almost four months. And obvious places where people are supposed to laugh or places where you’re supposed to really feel a lot, and nobody’s even moving. That was back in my early career and I don’t understand that was the audience that I was sitting with, that this was always how they’d react. So then, I went and stood in line at the Cinerama Dome to see E.T. and went in and saw it with an audience. Then I knew how we were affecting people and their emotions. I mean, people were sobbing around me and laughing hysterically. It was palpable in the theater, the force of this film. It’s just not possible to see it with a bunch of people who are sitting there to critique it. It’s a different audience. It’s a different mindset.

Yeah, people who are looking at it from a money standpoint. I definitely understand that.

Dee Wallace: Well yeah, and “where should we put it in the lineup?” And “is there something that should be cut out,” because they never show the final cut to all the executives, and the studio personnel. It’s an interesting experience, and especially actors, who are babies, who are insecure babies. That’s why a lot of actors don’t even watch their work: because they can’t extract themselves enough so that they can be objective like your regular audience member.

Exactly, and I hope you’re like me and don’t see any E.T. remakes happening anytime soon.

Dee Wallace: Oh, dear God, no. I hope Steven sticks to that.

I hope so too. But what we are seeing are a lot of Stephen King remakes. Would you want to see another Cujo? Would you want to be involved in one?

Dee Wallace: Hell no.

No? Not at all?

Dee Wallace: No. There’s nothing more I could do with that part than I did. I went as far as I could go, as truthfully in that emotion as I could do it. And then they’d want to do the dog in CGI, which the fans [would not like]. That’s why I was so happy when they sent me the reboot of Critters. My first question was is this going to be CGI? And they said no, [they] were going to use a lot of the original design of the puppets. It’s all going to be puppets. And I went, “oh, let me read the script.” I liked the script and I liked my part in it – she’s a real ball-buster – but my first concern was if this was going to be CGI. Because in a film like that, the fans are adamant that they do not want to see it done in a different way. They’re really adamant about the purity of the original.

That concludes our interview, but you can see Dee Wallace once Dolls hits select theaters on July 2nd, and then again on Syfy when Critters Attack lands on July 23rd. And for those of you who are fans of her daughter, Gabrielle Stone, her latest book, Eat, Pray, #FML will be available on Amazon June 27th.