Hellboy, the most beloved of demonic comic-book manifestations, made his big-screen debut in 2004 with Guillermo del Toro at the helm and Ron Perlman under the horned costume. Over three movies the Dark Horse Comics anti-hero has faced Nazi occultists in the Outer Hebrides, Gaelic underworld royalty at the Giant’s Causeway, Grigori Rasputin, and the Blood Queen.
These battles may pale beside the slings and arrows behind the scenes. Released in 2008, Del Toro’s Hellboy: The Golden Army left viewers with a cliffhanger when Perlman’s half-demon learned that his girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair) was pregnant with twins. Nine years later, Del Toro conceded defeat. He bowed out, making way for Neill Marshall’s bloated and unpopular 2019 reboot, starring Stranger Things’ David Harbour.
The director, who had no say over the final cut, called it the worst professional experience of his career.
Fans were understandably cheered when the trailer for Hellboy: The Crooked Man dropped this summer. Directed by Brian Taylor (of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and Crank fame) from a screenplay co-written by the Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, Hellboy: The Crooked Man offers a streamlined, back-to-basics horror fantasy.
The fourth film in the franchise lands Hellboy (played by the Deadpool 2 star Jack Kesy) and a rookie Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense agent (Adeline Rudolph) in Appalachia during the 1950s, where they must face the evil Crooked Man of the title and a community of witches, including one played by the rising Irish star Leah McNamara.
Reviews have praised this latest Hellboy iteration as the closest big-screen version yet to the comics. The expanded comic-book universe was a brave new world for the Limerick actor.
“It wasn’t something that I was into before,” she says. “I think Brian [Taylor] was actually happy to hear that. I was doing an audition over Zoom, and he asked me if I had deep knowledge of the previous movies. I had to confess: ‘I’m going to be completely honest – I don’t know a thing.’ And he said, ‘Good, because this is going to be absolutely nothing like the previous films whatsoever.’ That was a great start.”
That is no longer the case. McNamara grabs a nearby copy of the Hellboy comic and holds it aloft. “And now this is one of my favourite comics. The images are stunning to look at. The stories are amazing. You couldn’t ask for better source material. When you work on a script, you read 100 or 120 pages if it’s a movie. That’s what you are drawing from. But with Hellboy you can pull from these beautiful drawings by Richard Corden and Mike’s imagination. The film does an incredible job of staying true to their vision.”
Hellboy: The Crooked Man finds a rich seam of folklore in the Appalachian Mountains, the hilly stretch from West Virginia to Mississippi where folk magic continues to thrive under various names: root work, Braucherei, kitchen witching and – best of all – granny magic.
The movie concerns Tom Ferrell (Yellowstone’s Jefferson White), a native Appalachian returning from the second World War hoping to make amends for his earlier initiation as a witch. He has never practised dark magic but carries a “witch bone” that protected him from harm in Europe. His former mentor is McNamara’s Effie Kolb, a malevolent entity, who has transformed Tom’s father into a horse and ridden the unfortunate beast to death.
It’s a role that calls for a bravura performance from the Irish actor, who alternately cackles, seduces and levitates.
“At horror films I’m always the person watching between my fingers,” she says. “I saw The Ring when I was far too young, and I was absolutely terrified. I still jump out of my seat at every jump scare I see. So going on a deep dive into witchcraft was so interesting, especially learning about folk magic within Appalachia. That is a whole other world. I got all these books on witchcraft, the history of magic and the occult, to really get into the mind of Effie and how she operates. There is a fascinating real-life history of people who are seen as witches or people who practise magic. In certain parts of Appalachia some people still practise folk magic.”
McNamara grew up watching the Disney Channel and waiting for her chance to shine at the House of Mouse. It wasn’t such a far-fetched notion. Her parents were active in local amateur dramatic groups and her uncle, Paul McNamara, is an opera singer.
“I probably announced my attentions when I was three,” she says, laughing. “Sometimes when I’ve had a bad day and tell my friends, ‘Oh my God, I could have done law,’ everyone is, like, ‘Yeah, right. There’s absolutely no way in this world you would have ever have done anything else.’”
McNamara took a degree in drama and theatre at University College Cork, then trained at Bow Street school of screen acting, in Dublin. “I would have loved to go to drama school had I been able to get into drama school,” she says. “I had auditions for Lir, Rada and Lamda. I felt I did well in those processes, but in the end I didn’t get a place across two different years of auditioning.
“But everything happens for a reason. I actually feel really fortunate to have had that experience. I got to live out of home and have the full college experience at UCC, which is probably not something you enjoy if you are enrolled in those intensive drama schools. There’s always a path to anything you want to do. And it’s your own path. That’s something I’ve learned along the way.”
In 2017 McNamara landed a recurring role in the long-running historical mayhem of Vikings, playing Aud, the daughter of Aaron Copeland’s Kjetill “Flatnose” Eriksson. She had to keep her mouth shut while chums guessed possible plot twists in the 2019 drama series Dublin Murders. After that came Normal People. She remained firmly on “Team Conor and Marianne” when the former took McNamara’s mean girl Rachel to the debs. A nation gasped as Paul Mescal’s Conor was lured away from Daisy Edgar-Jones.
“No one could leave their houses at the time,” McNamara says. “There was a lot of excitement around the show, because Lenny [Abrahamson] is an incredible director and Sally Rooney’s book already had a huge following. A couple of us who had been on the show together were in touch, watching it blowing up online in real time. Suddenly, James Corden and all these people are tweeting about it. It was kind of mad.”
McNamara has just received an American visa. “Hopefully, this is another realm of opportunity for me,” McNamara says. “I can legally work and act in the US, which is a big deal. There is so much happening at the minute, but definitely Covid had a big knock-on effect on the industry. The [Hollywood actors’] strike has had a further impact. That contracted the business. I have been auditioning for great stuff. I’m still trying to land that next big thing. But people are still feeling it. For an actor, it’s more competitive than ever.”
She is faring rather well regardless. She recently impressed critics in Then You Run, an eight-part Sky Max nail-biter that casts McNamara as Tara, a youngster who visits her wealthy and estranged father, Orin (Cillian O’Sullivan), in Rotterdam only to go on the lam with the sinister source of his money. She makes her mark as Kellie Ann Ward, daughter of the Traveller kingpin JP (Laurence O’Fuarain) in Guy Ritchie’s TV series The Gentlemen.
“It’s exciting work,” she says. “There’s so much going on, and they are parts that I love. Then You Run was something I could really sink my teeth into. And to have The Gentlemen going out in the same year as Hellboy? That’s incredible.”
Hellboy: The Crooked Man is in cinemas from Friday, September 27th
