How the Wolf Man Worked a Real-Life Injury into the Story - What Happened?
Wolf Man writer/director Leigh Whannell reveals the story behind Blake Lovell's injury in the film.
Henry Hull (Werewolf of London), Lon Chaney Jr. (The Wolf Man), David Naughton (An American Werewolf in London), Benicio Del Toro (The Wolfman)... each actor has put his unique stamp on playing a human who goes full werewolf in a Universal Monster film.
In Wolf Man (now in theaters; get tickets here), Universal's latest reimagining of the werewolf lore, writer/director Leigh Whannell and his wife, Corbett Tuck, scripted a contemporary story that follows the Lovell family of San Francisco. In this iteration, actor Christopher Abbott (Poor Things) gives the werewolf a lot of pathos, starting out as Blake Lovell, a very human, stay-at-home dad with a journalist wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), and their 10-year-old daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth). After the passing of his father, Blake talks his family into spending the summer at his extremely rural family farm in Oregon where he grew up. It's there that family secrets and past trauma catch up to them.
At a recent Wolf Man screening in Los Angeles attended by SYFY WIRE, Whannell participated in a Q&A where he revealed that Abbott was immediately mentioned to play Blake, and that the actor ended up being so committed to his profession that he even got injured for his art.
Leigh Whannell on finding Wolf Man star Christopher Abbott in an Off-Broadway play
When it came time to start casting Wolf Man, Whannell said he traveled to New York City to see Abbott in action during his late 2023 performance in the Off-Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley's play, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.
"He did a two-hander, Off-Broadway with Aubrey Plaza," Whannell recalled. "I went into the theater. It was a small theater, like smaller than this room, and his energy on stage was palpable. There's something about being in the same room as somebody, where they can just hit you in the chest, like you feel that energy. His character was such a pent up ball of rage in that play.
"As soon as the play was over, I emailed the poor people at Universal in the middle of the night," he continued. "I was like, 'We gotta use Chris. He's the guy.'"
Backstage, Whannell said he met the actor for the first time and that Abbott was laid back, having a glass of wine. "He'd just been on stage, sweating, this furious ball of energy. Then, he was just chilling out so I could see how he could switch on and off. He's intense. He's a relaxed guy when you're just chatting to him, but when you call, 'Action,' it's just this intensity."
The director said soon after Universal emailed back and said, "Okay" regarding casting Abbott.
"I said, 'Really, that's it? No negotiation?' And they were like, 'Yep.' And then to get Julia [Garner] as well was the best."
Christopher Abbott's stage injury follows him to Wolf Man
Interestingly, Abbott's play ended at the beginning of January 2024 and principal production on Wolf Man began March 17, 2024 in Wellington, New Zealand.
Whannell said the very night after he attended the play, Abbott broke his knee halfway through the play while on stage. "He shattered it and had to perform the rest of the play's [run] on a broken knee," he explained. "Then he had all this reconstructive surgery. When he got to New Zealand, he was still in rehab for it, but we kind of used it."
He told the audience to look for moments where Abbott's leg looks badly injured from his transformation into the werewolf. "If you watch the film, there are certain moments where you can sort of see him move like he has slight problems with that knee. Luckily, he's playing this character who's crumbling on the inside."
Wolf Man is now in theaters everywhere. Get tickets at Fandango.