Abigail directors explain the movie’s unexpected cameo

SPOILERS for Abigail. Turn back now or consider yourself warned. Scream directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have delivered a fun, blood-filled horror comedy with Abigail, and the film concludes with a cameo which has people talking, particularly fans of a beloved historical drama series.

Abigail follows a group of would-be criminals who kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure. All they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl. The kidnappers are played by Melissa Barrera (Scream), Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey), Kathryn Newton (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), William Catlett (Black Lightning), Kevin Durand (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), and the late Angus Cloud (Euphoria).

The titular Abigail (Alisha Weir) is a vampire whose father is the notoriously violent crimelord Kristof Lazar, which comes as bad news for the kidnappers. Throughout the film, we hear a lot about Lazar which paints him as a terrifying figure. When the big daddy vampire is finally introduced, he’s played by none other than Matthew Goode, who was featured in Downton Abbey after Stevens had left the series.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett spoke with Games Radar about Matthew Goode’s Abigail cameo. “We cast great f***ing actors to be in our silly movies,” Bettinelli-Olpin said. “I think that they ground everything in a way that you need, you need to have amazing dramatic performers to make this tone work right. You have to treat the absurdity of this premise with as much seriousness as you would treat like the most earnest drama, and I think the hack with our tone is casting amazingly talented people that just believably take you along for this ride. Dan and Matthew are just two examples from this cast who we think just absolutely brought the most and the best of themselves to it. The two of them are wildly entertaining and talented actors and they make the movie work with those performances.“

Abigail is now playing in theaters, so be sure to check out a review from our own Michael Conway right here.