During the audition, DeSouza-Feighoney mimicked the voice of the Pope, incorporating German and Italian dialects, before transitioning into the unholy growls of a demon. “We weren’t quite prepared for the fact Peter had developed a demon voice,” says producer Doug Belgrad. “In the audition, he gave a performance that is not too different from the final performance he gives in the movie. He exceeded our expectations at every turn.”
Inspired by the actual files of Father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican, The Pope’s Exorcist, directed by Julius Avery, follows Amorth as he investigates a young boy’s terrifying possession and ends up uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy the Vatican has desperately tried to keep hidden.
“I love horror films and I’ve always wanted to star in one,” says DeSouza-Feighoney. The young actor explains that he was able to empathize with his character’s experiences. “Henry’s father died in a car accident, and he’s traumatized – that’s why the demon is able to go into him – and Father Amorth is trying to get the demon out. There are parts of the film when Henry is aware that Father Amorth is helping him – and he wants the priest to help him – but these moments don’t last very long because the demon soon takes over.”
Playing a boy possessed by a demon did not just require acting the part; DeSouza-Feighoney had to look the part too. Practical effects and prosthetics required the young actor to spend three hours in the makeup chair, giving the young actor a crooked nose, a prosthetic forehead with no eyebrows, and a jaw glued to his neck. “I also had an evil grin prosthetic, which made me look constantly smiling,” recalls DeSouza-Feighoney, who found the whole process quite awesome. “I loved getting the prosthetics done, because the finished product was really cool.”
“His favorite thing is playing the demon,” shares Alex Essoe, who plays Henry’s mother Julia. “He played an excellent little boy, but he just wanted to get on the prosthetics and talk like the demon.”
The Pope’s Exorcist is distributed in the Philippines by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Connect with the hashtag #ThePopesExorcist
“It’s more than an exorcism; it’s a conspiracy.” So says director Julius Avery about The Pope’s Exorcist, the terrifying new horror thriller opening in cinemas April 19. “There’s something much bigger going on. The stakes are massive,” To give the audience the feeling of how big the stakes are, Avery shot the film in larger-than-life international locations that reflected everything the characters uncover. “We shot on location in Rome. We shot in Ireland. We found amazing, old architecture, where we built some of the biggest sets I’ve been involved in,” he adds.
Building an abbey in Ireland
Central to those is the abbey. In the film, Vatican’s chief exorcist Father Gabriel Amorth (played by Russell Crowe) has to cast out the demonic possession of a young boy named Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney), whose family had just moved to an old and abandoned abbey in Spain, as a fresh start and a new project for his recently widowed mom Julia (Alex Essoe).
Director Avery specifically wanted a Northern European gothic milieu – grey, cold, and foreboding – and they decided to look for locations in Ireland. Following an extensive search around the country, they settled upon an abandoned castle in Limerick. “It was a gothic type building structure, deep in the woods. It offered us an elevated site, a clear skyline behind us, and an approach road,” explains location manager Eoin Holohan. The design team dressed the grounds with dead vegetation and built an exterior entrance gate and a cloister.
The filmmakers captured the interiors of St. Sebastian Abbey on stages in Ardmore Studios outside Dublin, Ireland. “We created a composite set of what a Spanish abbey might have looked like, and built a huge set with multiple bedrooms, a giant entryway, a bunch of hallways, catacombs and chapel, all to create the reality of the environment,” recalls producer Doug Belgrad.
Henry’s bedroom, site of the demonic possession, was a crucial set at Ardmore Studios. This space incorporated a vaulted ceiling, a large window (which matched the exterior of the castle), and a mirror. “The room has the shadows of its former life as an abbey,” explains production designer Alan Gilmore. “There are religious symbols on the windows, a gothic arched vault; architecture from a bygone era, 400 years ago. In the movie, poor Henry gets possessed and a horrible transformation happens to him in his bed.”
Designing for the Devil
During pre-production for The Pope’s Exorcist, director Avery and director of photography Khalid Mohtaseb discussed the film’s visual language, tone, color scheme, and style. He and production designer Gilmore pulled together photography references and used mood boards to craft a muted world where colors are quashed and serene.
Costume designer Lorna Mugan helped achieve this aesthetic. “Color plays a huge role in the Catholic Church,” she explains. “From the humble black of priests, which represents poverty and simplicity, to the Pope in pure innocent white. In between, cardinals wear blood-red to represent shedding their blood or sacrifice for Christ. Their purple comes from the old notion of royalty.”
The characters were enhanced not only with their clothing, but with prosthetics. From the beginning of his involvement with the project, director Avery did not want to rely heavily on CGI. “The hardcore horror fans and audiences can smell something fake. They know it from a mile away when it’s not real,” says producer Michael Patrick Kaczmarek. “It was important to make these effects grounded in reality.”
Practical effects and prosthetics required DeSouza-Feighoney to spend three hours in the makeup chair, giving the young actor a crooked nose, a prosthetic forehead with no eyebrows, and a jaw glued to his neck. “I also had an evil grin prosthetic, which made me look constantly smiling,” he recalls. “I loved getting the prosthetics done, because the finished product was really cool.”
About The Pope’s Exorcist
Inspired by the actual files of Father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican (Academy Award®-winner Russell Crowe), The Pope’s Exorcist follows Amorth as he investigates a young boy’s terrifying possession and ends up uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy the Vatican has desperately tried to keep hidden.
The film is directed by Julius Avery, screenplay by Michael Petroni and Evan Spiliotopoulos, screen story by Michael Petroni and R. Dean McCreary & Chester Hastings, based on the books “An Exorcist Tells His Story” and “An Exorcist: More Stories” by Fr. Gabriele Amorth.
The cast is led by Russell Crowe, Daniel Zovatto, Alex Essoe and Franco Nero.
In cinemas starting April 19, The Pope’s Exorcist is distributed in the Philippines by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Connect with the hashtag #ThePopesExorcist
“It was just something I hadn’t done – a genre I’ve never really touched at all. Scary movies put me off my sleep,” says the Academy Award®-winning actor with a laugh. “I’m incredibly superstitious. Moving in circles like this where you’re examining situations that the characters face… It’s not necessarily a comfortable place for me. Certainly, there were a lot of unusual things happening around us, but you keep your balance and see them as coincidence, otherwise you’re going to drive yourself a little bit insane.”
Lucky for Crowe, there were plenty of things to keep him busy throughout the making of The Pope’s Exorcist.
In order to understand his character and what made him tick, Crowe dove into research, amassing all the material he could about the late Father Gabriele Amorth, the real-life Pope’s exorcist who was able to chronicle his stories in the best-selling memoirs on which the film is based. Crowe travelled to Rome, where he spent a week meeting people from the Vatican who knew the Pope’s exorcist. For all of the rumors of the secretive Church, Crowe says, “I have to say that the Church was very open. We were given some extreme privileges by those in charge at the Vatican.”
Director Julius Avery says that on that trip to Rome, he and Crowe saw firsthand how fondly Father Amorth is remembered, admired, and loved – which Crowe wanted to honor in his portrayal. Of course, the film is not a documentary, and some elements would have poetic license, but within that, “he never went against his real character. It remained grounded and real. That’s why I feel his performance is so wonderful; because he was able to embody the spirit of Father Amorth.”
In his research, Crowe uncovered a man who could make a perfect lead for a mystery thriller – the ultimate insider with the trust of one of the oldest and most powerful organizations on the planet… but also a person of strong convictions and an unflinching thirst for the truth. Crowe says that Amorth’s colleagues and friends from the Vatican told him that the exorcist “never had any disagreements with anybody and always followed the line of the church,” while at the same time, the actor notes, “Father Amorth said some very controversial things in his time. He made some very strong statements, at various points in time, about his beliefs – which weren’t always 100% in line with the Church.”
“He had a certain, particular irreverent take on things that I tried to bring into the film,” Crowe continues. “He’s an individual, not a cookie cutter man of the cloth. He rides a Lambretta motor scooter!”
About The Pope’s Exorcist
Inspired by the actual files of Father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican (Academy Award®-winner Russell Crowe), The Pope’s Exorcist follows Amorth as he investigates a young boy’s terrifying possession and ends up uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy the Vatican has desperately tried to keep hidden.
The film is directed by Julius Avery, screenplay by Michael Petroni and Evan Spiliotopoulos, screen story by Michael Petroni and R. Dean McCreary & Chester Hastings, based on the books “An Exorcist Tells His Story” and “An Exorcist: More Stories” by Fr. Gabriele Amorth.
The cast is led by Russell Crowe, Daniel Zovatto, Alex Essoe and Franco Nero.
In cinemas starting April 19, The Pope’s Exorcist is distributed in the Philippines by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Connect with the hashtag #ThePopesExorcist
Check out the official trailer below and watch the film exclusively in cinemas across the Philippines very soon.
About The Pope’s Exorcist
Inspired by the actual files of Father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican (Academy Award®-winner Russell Crowe), The Pope’s Exorcist follows Amorth as he investigates a young boy’s terrifying possession and ends up uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy the Vatican has desperately tried to keep hidden.
The film is directed by Julius Avery, screenplay by Michael Petroni and Evan Spiliotopoulos, screen story by Michael Petroni and R. Dean McCreary & Chester Hastings, based on the books “An Exorcist Tells His Story” and “An Exorcist: More Stories” by Fr. Gabriele Amorth.
The cast is led by Russell Crowe, Daniel Zovatto, Alex Essoe and Franco Nero
The Pope’s Exorcist is distributed in the Philippines by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Connect with the hashtag #ThePopesExorcist
