Here’s How The Goldbergs Creator Got Robert Englund To Come Back As Freddy

While the return of A Nightmare on Elm Street star Robert Englund to his most famous role would likely be enough to get fans hyped regardless of the context, you do have to wonder how TV sitcom The Goldbergs became the place to deliver our first slice of classic Krueger since 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason.

Fortunately, in an interview with Bloody Disgusting, show creator Adam F. Goldberg was good enough to shed some light on this surprising turn of events, explaining that Englund’s appearance was the result of months of contact with the actor and his manager.

“Convincing Robert Englund to come out of retirement to play Freddy Krueger one last time is a true bucket-list moment for me as a writer,” Goldberg said in a statement sent out this morning. “I’ve been a longtime obsessive fan, collecting Freddy artwork and action figures. It took me months to convince Robert to revisit the character. Luckily, his manager Joe Rice is a big Goldbergs fan and helped me convince Robert that the world needed to see Freddy one last time.”

As a big Freddy fan, Goldberg feels that his understanding of the character came through in the episode’s script.

“The moment Robert read the scene, I envisioned he recognized that I was a true fan who knew the voice of Freddy,” he continued. “On our first call when we went over the script, I told him ‘of course I knew how to write lines for Freddy. He traumatized me as a child and is burned into my brain!’”

Though we’ve yet to see whether Freddy’s return was worth the journey, Goldberg already seems pretty ecstatic about bringing his idea to life.

“Watching Robert spend four hours getting back into makeup and bringing our script to life was a true dream and by far a highlight of the show for our cast and crew,” added Goldberg. “The story in this episode is actually true — after I saw Elm Street 3, I didn’t sleep for a week and my mom was beside herself and desperate to fix the problem.”

Based on the first images we’ve seen from the upcoming episode – titled “Mister Knifey-Hands” – the team have done an admirable job of recreating the killer’s look from his ‘80s heyday, while dressing up the nightmare sequences with some eerie fog effects and a few little girls with a jump rope. The pics also suggest that Freddy will be featuring in the dreams of the overprotective mother of the family, Beverly Goldberg, who looks to be doing a pretty good job holding her own against the famed killer.

Though Englund continues to offer new ideas of how the story and mythology of A Nightmare on Elm Street could be continued in future films, it doesn’t look like the actor feels ready to reprise his role for a full movie anytime soon. With that in mind, The Goldbergs episode could well serve as the last hurrah for the character when it airs on October 24th.