Rachael Taylor stars in 666 Park Avenue, the new horror drama series on Fox8.
Michael Idato, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports
As the new series 666 Park Avenue opens, young couple Jane and Henry, played by Rachael Taylor and Dave Annable, move into a seemingly vast, ancient New York apartment building, which we slowly discover exerts a sinister influence on those who inhabit it.
In that sense, the premise seems writ large from cinema history, evoking the iconic horror film Rosemary's Baby, directed by Roman Polanski, in which a young couple, played by Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, find themselves a similar predicament.
''I think the pilot episode is absolutely evocative of Rosemary's Baby, and I think that's quite deliberate,'' Taylor says. ''Every episode seems to have this subtle reference to horror classics. The second is Alfred Hitchock's The Birds; the third is The Shining.
''But I think that's a universal theme in horror, the idea of innocence being perverted. To me that's a classic horror gesture, and I think 666 Park Avenue hits that right on the head. The most potent question that the show asks is, what are you prepared to do to get what you want?''
It is also a timely question, Taylor says. ''We live in a world of instant gratification, the world of the quick fix; we want wealth, we want status, we want power, and this show is a spooky look at that idea.
''Can people be bought or sold and, if so, at what price? If we tap into the things we want and the things we desire the most, are we prepared to do terrible things to each other? To ourselves? Are we prepared to endure horrific circumstances if we're getting something that seems very fulfilling?''
In the first episode, Jane and Henry take on the job of co-managing the building, the Drake, which is in real life the New York apartment building the Ansonia.
Its other inhabitants include a playwright, Brian (Robert Buckley), his wife, Louise (Mercedes Masohn), the dashing doorman Tony (Erik Palladino) and a couple of charming, but sinister, owners in Gavin (Terry O'Quinn) and Olivia Doran (Vanessa Williams).
Though the series is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Gabriella Pierce, it borrows little save the title. The book focuses specifically on witchcraft. The series, Taylor says, does not.
''That said, I don't know where they're going to take the series and in season two, should we be so lucky, perhaps some of the elements of the book might be introduced,'' she says. ''But at the moment we are eight episodes in and there are zero similarities between the book and the show.''
Writer-producer David Wilcox and director Alex Graves have made the show's more supernatural elements a slow reveal.
''The first episode was about setting up this very solid, optimistic, buoyant young couple and just the very first little suggestion that there might be some doubt they're going to survive in this world,'' Taylor says. ''The supernatural world is not present just yet, except in dream sequences. They're not privy to it, they're not aware of it, we're not yet doing full horror.''
In fact, Taylor says, the heart of the show is relationship-based. ''I think all television has to be about relationships, and I don't think horror for the sake of it can work unless you're able to ground it in some kind of relationship,'' she says.
As the series progresses, the differences between Jane and Henry will become clearer. ''Henry is probably the more likely of the pair to do bad things to get what he wants, whereas Jane is the moral centre of the show and she's not likely to be corrupted,'' Taylor says.
''But other things will happen to her; she will get to a place where her sanity is questioned, because she's the person saying, 'There is something going on here; there is something not right about this place'. Everyone else around them is just accepting of it.''
666 Park Avenue airs Monday nights on Foxtel's Fox8 channel.
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