Isabelle Fuhrman Talks Returning As Esther In Top-Notch Horror Prequel ‘Orphan: First Kill’

When the psychological horror Orphan landed in theaters in the summer of 2009, it was a solid enough hit. Made for $20 million, it went on to gross $78.8 million at the worldwide box office. When it arrived on DVD, the film became a cult favorite as it found a solid fan base amongst horror fans.

Thirteen years later, fans get a prequel. Orphan: First Kill is a rarity in Hollywood because it’s as good as, if not better in some ways than, the original movie. Isabelle Fuhrman, who was ten when she filmed the first film, returns as Esther, the psychiatric patient who can pass as a little girl. She escapes an Estonian mental health facility and heads for America, where she pretends to be the missing daughter of a wealthy family.

I caught up with Fuhrman to find out why he remains the only actress who can play Esther, what it took to create director William Brent Bell’s vision, and whether we’ll see more of the vertically challenged maniac.

Simon Thompson: I have to be honest with you about something. I was slightly worried about this. When people do prequels or sequels to great horror movies, if we’re honest, they often aren’t very good.

Isabelle Furhman: That’s true.

Thompson: This is almost as good, if not as good, as the original Orphan. I don’t mean to be rude, but were you surprised this didn’t suck?

Fuhrman: (Laughs) When I read this script, I remember reading the first couple of pages of it, and anybody who sees the movie will know, you’re engaged because you’re interested in Esther and where she came from, but it follows a very similar track. I was sitting in my room reading it and then suddenly, my jaw was on the floor, and I could not stop turning the pages. I was like, ‘What? This is crazy.’ I was so excited by the prospect of being able to come back and play Esther again to take on this challenge that I couldn’t think of anybody else possibly stepping into these shoes and doing it. It just wouldn’t have been possible. Every single day we were trying to make me look like a kid, and I was doing my best as an actress. Still, we have a whole team of people doing lighting, forced perspective, and all the wardrobe tricks, plus Julia Stiles, who plays ‘my’ mother, is wearing these massive shoes, and I’m squatting as I’m doing scenes with her. Watching the finished movie, I realized that Brent was right that the only reason this works is because you can’t figure out how we did it. It looks too real. There’s no CGI on my face, and you can’t figure it out. That makes it click, and I’m honestly just so excited for people to see it.

Thompson: The forced perspective part of this is highly effective. You now know it worked but when it was sold to you, did you have doubts?

Fuhrman: When it was sold to me, Brent and I were having coffee at Soho House in 2019, and we were like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be really cool,’ and then Covid happens, and we don’t know if the movie is going to be made. Suddenly it is being made, and they were doing casting, maybe they were going to cast a kid, and then they couldn’t find anybody, so Brent calls me. He’s like, ‘We’re going to do a camera test because the only people who don’t believe that I can make this work is the studio, and we have to convince them.’ I remember spending the entire day sitting on an apple box on my knees (laughs). I remember looking at him at the end and saying, ‘If this is how we would film the movie for three months, then it is impossible. It’s not going to happen.’ The sizzle reel we made had worked, they believed that we could do it, and then it only left us wondering how we do this comfortably in an intelligent way for the entirety of a film shoot and still get the performances we want. We didn’t want just to make a movie, we wanted to make a good movie, and it really was a team effort. Karim Hussain, our DP, and Brent worked tirelessly on each camera angle and how they would set everything up. All the other actors had to do scenes with me where we weren’t even looking each other in the eye; we were looking in entirely different places because I was so much farther back than them. Sometimes Julia was wearing these Gene Simmons-type boots that were so hilarious. You can’t find platform shoes that are that high unless they have leather fringes, bedazzling, and sequins all over. I’m squatting simultaneously, and she’s wearing these shoes so that the height works. Sometimes I’m sitting on a little wheelchair that someone else is operating to make it look like I’m walking, and I also have contact lenses to make my eyes bigger. There were also these two lovely actresses who were my body doubles, Kennedy Irwin and Sadie Lee, who were there every day. We were doing all these things and just hoping that it would work. And I was like, ‘I will do the performance part, and I trust that everyone else will handle the visual things,’ but it wasn’t obvious until I saw the finished thing that I was like, ‘We actually did it.’

Thompson: Since Orphan, you’ve established yourself as an actress, and Julia Stiles has been around for decades. I can imagine the two of you on set, seasoned professionals, and she’s in these ridiculous shoes, and you’re on a box in the distance, both thinking, ‘Ah, this is the glamour of show business.’

Fuhrman: (Laughs) Literally. The number of times on a daily basis that it was the elephant in the room that no one wanted to bring up. We were like, ‘We trust and believe that we’ll make this happen but also how?’ Every day Julia would say to me, ‘Looking at you and doing scenes with you, I forget that you’re an adult.’ That was the one thing that I held on to. I knew at least I was acting like a kid, so that would work. If people say I look like old young me, my performance will be okay because none of us knew. But it is that glamor of show business. Sitting on a box and just being like, ‘Well, I’ve got no control over the other half of this, so we’ll see how this goes.’

Thompson: How many times did ideas for prequels, sequels, or spin-offs come your way? Often talent doesn’t get to hear all the ideas that are offered, so maybe you don’t know.

Fuhrman: I had never heard that there could be a prequel. However, I reached out to David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, our producer and the person who wrote the first movie, because there was a story about a girl adopted by a family in the US, and they bought her an apartment because they claimed she was trying to kill them. Everyone was sharing it and saying, ‘It’s just like Orphan.’ I texted David and suggested we get coffee, so we sat down, and I asked if he’d ever thought about making a sequel or prequel. He said, ‘Well, actually, we have a script for a prequel, but we tried to take it out a couple of years ago, and nobody was interested.’ I said, ‘Well, this story is everywhere, so why don’t you take it out again? I feel like everybody was talking about Orphan because of this story, so it could be the right time.’ Sure enough, within a month, Entertainment One signed on, then Brent signed on, and everything started moving. I don’t think I even realized at the time that it would be possible for me to reprise the role of Esther. I hoped that it would be the case, but when the studio said they were going to go out and cast, I remember my agents being really pissed about it. I felt they weren’t going to be able to find anyone because I remembered when I was a kid, and I auditioned for the role, they tried out everyone from kids to adults and spent months trying to find someone. I had never done anything before. It was my first movie, and they cast me in it. What I created, I knew that nobody could possibly recreate. I understood Esther. I created her, I built her, and she was mine. When they returned and couldn’t find anyone, it was a question of whether or not the movie would be made. Brent was the one who put his foot down and was like, ‘I will make it happen.’ I trust him implicitly. He made it happen, and it is because of him that the movie is the way that it is.

Thompson: Because this has been a success and not a horrible car crash, has it made you think maybe we can do more of these?

Fuhrman: It definitely has made me think that, and I think it’s made everybody else think that. Right after I finished watching the movie the first time, our producer Alex Mace looked at me and said, ‘Well, we’ve been talking about what it would be like to do another one.’ I definitely wouldn’t be closed off to the idea, but I think what’s important for me right now is that I want the fans to see the movie and know what they think of it. I’m so proud of it. I know that they’ll love it because it’s like everything they probably want and more. If they want me to come back as Esther, I totally will. Totally.

Thompson: How much of what William Brent Bell explained to you as his vision match that final product?

Fuhrman: Absolutely all of it. Honestly, what I loved about his vision for the movie was that he loves Esther. He’s obsessed with her and her character. He was such a geek about all the little things we could do to make the fans happy about the movie and not just make us happy. Brent was reading every message board, every single DM, and I think that shows in the care that he took in the film, like the paintings being blacklight. It’s something that is such a little nugget that we as an audience know, but obviously, in this movie, as a prequel, you don’t know what’s going to happen next unless you see the other film. There was so much thought put into everything, from the “Glory of Love” record to the costumes and lighting. I felt like his vision for the movie and his belief in me coming back as Esther played out precisely how the film was described. Still, the result was actually even better.

Thompson: How did you get back into being Esther? Orphan was 13 years ago, so you were very young. Did you watch your performance to try and copy yourself? Or did you want to try a more organic, raw version of her?

Fuhrman: It was a combination of both. I watched the movie back over and over again mainly to get the voice because I don’t talk the same way anymore. I knew we would work with a dialect coach, Eric Armstrong, who also did my dialect coaching in the first movie. I was adamant about that because he made the voice and would tell me if it didn’t sound the same. He knew me 13 years ago. I was also trying to remind myself of where I was when I was ten years old when I visited the role. I came at it with a very different approach, as you do when you’re a kid. I did so much work and research on it, I worked with an acting coach for my original audition, and I had all these like notes written down about Esther’s backstory. Luckily for me, the original script had so much more information about Esther’s past that it got cut out because it took away from the mystery of her secret in the first movie. I found this lovely marriage of being able to look at each scene in Orphan: First Kill from my perspective as a 23-year-old and what I would do now as an adult, having worked in many movies, having way more control over my craft as an actor, while at the same time asking what choice would I have made it as a ten-year-old? Those choices were the ones that most people fell in love with, and I can’t separate the two. I might be in a different place in my life, but I have to play myself again at aged ten. Revisiting that and finding that balance helped me find Esther again. Even the discovery of working with the doubles and having them bring new ideas. They would do little things with each other as kids that I would be like, ‘I’m going to use that.’ It was the same thing I did when I watched Vera Farmiga on set for Orphan. I would use her womanly qualities in the movie as Esther.

Thompson: Orphan was a success when it landed in theaters but were you surprised that it became this huge cult horror movie on DVD and streaming?

Fuhrman: I was definitely surprised. What’s funny, as you say, is that it did well in theaters but took on a new life when it arrived on DVD and went all around the world. Everyone was watching it. What’s remarkable about returning to it was that Esther became this icon but didn’t completely turn my life upside down. I got to live a normal life but also do this amazing movie and play this iconic character. Now I get to come back to this character with so much love. I love Esther. She was the character that made me fall in love with acting. She was entirely what brought me into this industry. I feel like I’m in this really interesting pocket in my career where I’m traveling all over; I don’t know where I’m going to be next; I have so many things that I’m working on simultaneously, and I feel like all of that is because of Esther. If I could kiss Esther on the lips, I totally would. I’m grateful for her. I’m grateful for us.

Orphan: First Kill lands in theaters, on Digital, and streams on Paramount+ from Friday, August 19, 2022.