Even though they’re professionals at the end of the day, it must be difficult sometimes for actors to walk onto the set of a major franchise they’ve loved their entire lives without getting swept up in the emotion. Hell, Tom Holland cried just the other day, and he was only on-stage to talk about a trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home.
McKenna Grace may only be 15 years old, but she’s already built up a solid body of work during her short career, cornering the market in playing young versions of characters in film and television. It’s a niche she filled in The Vampire Diares, Once Upon a Time, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Captain Marvel, Scoob!, The Haunting of Hill House, I, Tonya, Captain Marvel and Malignant, but she gets to be her own person in Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Grace plays Phoebe Spengler, granddaughter of Harold Ramis’ Egon, and she bears more than a passing resemblance to the original buster of ghosts, given her thick-rimmed glasses and curly mop of hair. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the star revealed she burst into tears the first time she walked onto the Afterlife set.
“I cried. I cried when I first walked onto set. I cried whenever I stepped into the suit and held the proton pack. It was a really emotional project, so close to my heart being the massive Ghostbusters fan that I am.”
Such is the generational gap that Grace ended up crying on the Ghostbusters: Afterlife set, while Bill Murray was followed around by a man playing the bagpipes who he pretended wasn’t there. You never know, there might be some tears in theaters across the country when fans finally get to see the movie tomorrow.
