Nick Castle on passing the Michael Myers torch in Halloween

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

When David Gordan Green's HALLOWEEN was still taking shape, it was announced that Nick Castle would be returning to play Michael Myers for the first time since John Carpenter's 1979 original, however, the bulk of the performance would fall to stunt performer and actor James Jude Courtney. While speaking with The Daily Beast, Nick Castle explained how he got involved with the project in the first place.

After hearing that there was interest in him returning to the role, Nick Castle had a meeting with David Gordan Green on Skype, which Castle joked was likely because he "wanted to make sure that I wasn’t, like, decrepit." For his part, Castle had already decided that he'd turn the gig down if they were hoping that he'd play The Shape for the entire film.

That just wasn’t going to work for me, for time and health reasons and things like that. I didn’t see myself at four in the morning in a rubber mask waiting for the next take. So I told him and he said, “Oh, I figured, we’ll figure out something where you come in and do some scenes or a shot or something like that.” I said, “You just figure it out and I’ll be there. I just think it’ll be fun to be part of the thing.” I was always open to whatever he wanted to do.

Nick Castle said that he was on set for about a week, which culminated in a sequence in which he passed the torch to James Jude Courtney. "I remember them discussing with me that this would be the perfect time to have the pass-the-torch moment between me and Jim, because we were going to be in the same scene, basically, within a cut. So that was kind of neat," Castle said. "Of course, it was the last shot of the night—it always seems like it has to be something unnecessarily complicated. (Laughs) Like, two or three in the morning, and it’s the scene where Laurie first sees Michael in the flesh, so to speak, although it's a reflection in the mirror up on the second floor of the house where she shoots at him and it crashes through the mirror. So I’m the one in the long shot and then when they get to the close-up—you don’t see it in the movie, now that I think of it, but I think there’s a closer shot where it’s you, Jim, when it actually goes through the mirror itself."

For James Jude Courtney, sharing that sequence with Nick Castle was a wish come true.

We were hoping that we would get to share the same space, because we thought that would be just a really beautiful transition and we got our wish. I didn’t mention that to David, maybe you did, Nick, but I was just interested to see how they were going to make this transition and where they were going to put him and where they were going to put me. And for my money, I got exactly what I wanted. It’s so beautiful the way you say that, Nick, “passing the torch,” because it really felt like that.

Nick Castle was more than happy to let James Jude Courtney take the bulk of the work, joking that he said, "Let Jim do all that! He knows how to take a punch," before adding that he wanted to make sure that audiences knew that he didn't do more than what he did. "This is Jim’s ballgame this time. This is his time to shine, and he really shines. So I’m happy that word got out." HALLOWEEN is now playing in theaters, so be sure to check out reviews from our own Chris Bumbray and JimmyO and let us know what you thought of the film as well!