It’s not the ravenous monster under the bed that steals Bryan Fuller’s Dust Bunny, but young lead Sophie Sloan as the adorably precocious 10-year-old Aurora.
In Dust Bunny, releasing in theaters on December 12, Aurora enlists her mysterious neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) to dispatch the creature that she asserts ate her parents. That her neighbor happens to be a hit man complicates things in this charming gateway horror adventure.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Fuller about his feature directorial debut after the film’s TIFF premiere about its conception and creation, including the practical puppetry and creature design behind his monster. For the filmmaker, nailing Aurora as a character was far more crucial.
Dust Bunny originated conceptually as an episode of Amazing Stories, Apple TV+’s anthology series executive produced by Steven Spielberg, but Fuller pivoted when that didn’t work out. “I was working on the story with a wonderful writer named David Graziano, whom I worked with on American Gods. We were working on this story for Amazing Stories, and it didn’t make it through the process. I was like, ‘I want to do something very specific with this.’ That was kind of the impetus for the big emotional component of Aurora’s life. Because every time I write a character, I have to chip off a Horcrux and put it in the character. So it’s a bit of a barometer, so I understand how they’re going to behave.
“There was a pretty big chip, there was a Nagani-sized chip in Aurora for my experience growing up. Which was, I think, when you grow up in a tricky home, and then you realize that it’s a different home than your friends, and then you get out into sort of semi-adult life, and you’re like, ‘Oh wow, this is really a different home than how things are supposed to be.’ Or usually that was the element of who Aurora is, how I’m Aurora. And how anybody who’s had a tricky childhood, hopefully, will see how they’re Aurora. So it was about giving the audience enough of Aurora so they could still see themselves in Aurora.”
Writing the character is step one, but finding the young actor to fill Aurora’s shoes would be a whole other process.
“I mean, it was easy for me because I had a fantastic casting director named Margery Simkin, who found her and went through a ton of folks to get her,” Fuller cracks. “I think there were 4,000 auditions that they had. There was a crazy amount of submissions, then a less crazy amount of auditions that were still in the hundreds, if not thousands. Then those got whittled down to 12 that I saw. [Simkin] has cast all the Avatar movies and has been around for a second and has worked with Sigourney [Weaver] multiple times. She also helped facilitate that happening. But Sophie really was Margery’s discovery. And she’s a Scottish actress, she’s a little Scottish girl.”
While Sloan’s audition process impressed, her accent was at odds with the film’s New York setting. If Fuller needed convincing to cast Sloan as Aurora, his leading man and frequent collaborator Mads Mikkelsen made it clear that Sloan was his choice as scene partner.
Fuller explains, “It was like with Mads and her heavy accents, and we’re supposed to be in New York, nobody’s going to buy this. They told her, ‘The director loves you, but your accent is very thick, and we can’t set it in Scotland.’ Mads was campaigning once we narrowed it down to three actors. Mads is my partner, and I was like, ‘Here are the final three.’ He said, ‘Just do it with that girl, but just set it in Scotland. Just change the setting because she’s so good.'”
Mikkelsen was right, and, as Fuller tells us, Sophie Sloan is the film’s not-so-secret weapon. The filmmaker also cites acting coach Lena Cruz as a vital component in Sloan’s affecting performance.
Prepare to fall head over heels for Aurora when Dust Bunny hits theaters this week.
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