Trivia / The Midnight Club (2022)

• Actor-Shared Background: Georgina Stanton lost her son to cancer, and was inspired to open up Brightcliffe to help terminal young people as a result. Her actress Heather Langenkamp also lost her son to brain cancer in 2018.
• Dark Horse Casting: Some of the actors like Sauriyan Sapkota, Adia and Ruth Codd hadn't acted in a major show before. The latter was even discovered on TikTok and invited to audition.
• Dawson Casting: Brightcliffe is a hospice for teens and yet...
  • Ruth Codd (Anya) was in her mid-20s.
  • Aya Furukawa (Natsuki) was 22.
  • Iman Benson is borderline. She was 20, and Ilonka is about to graduate high school at the start of the series. Then however there's a Time Skip of about a year and their ages match.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Amputee Anya is played by newcomer Ruth Codd, a real life amputee.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • The basement sets were genuinely dark to film in, and the actors had to use flashlights. Iman Benson also wasn't acting when Ilonka gets scared by rats; she had assumed they would be done with CGI but actual animals were used.
  • In order to get in the mood for Amesh and Natsuki's Big Damn Kiss, Sauriyan Sapkota and Aya Furukawa ran laps around each other in the green room.
• Fake American:
  • Kevin's girlfriend Katherine is played by Canadian actress Emilija Baranac. As is Rhett from "The Two Danas", whose actor Daniel Diemer hails from British Columbia.
  • The twist in Amesh's story in "See You Later" is that Vincent is actually Luke from the future. When Vincent first appears, Rahul Kohli uses his natural English accent, but then switches to an American one after The Reveal.
• Fake Irish:
  • Averted. Anya is Irish and played by Ruth Codd who is genuinely Irish (from Wexford, specifically).
  • Her parents however are played by Canadians, Kurt Evans and Jackie Blackmore.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Natsuki's avatar spends the majority of her screen time driving two hitchhikers. Aya Furukawa not only cannot drive, but she is terrified of driving.
• Production Posse: In classic Mike Flanagan fashion, actors he worked with prior show up, Zach Gilford and Samantha Sloyan first and later Rahul Kohli, Robert Longstreet, Michael Trucco and Alex Essoe, all of whom appeared in his previous series Midnight Mass (2021).
• Reality Subtext: "See You Later" has the in-universe story, where Amesh's avatar Luke is in awe of Vincent. Sauriyan Sapkota was a huge fan of Rahul Kohli from iZombie and thus "it was easy to play because I myself was like 'oh, I get to play with Rahul'."
• Throw It In!: William Chris Sumpter accidentally cut his hand on a screw while filming the scene in Episode 9 where Spence's avatar is strapped to a machine. The crew didn't notice and kept on rolling.
• Typecasting: Iman Benson also starred in Alexa & Katie, another Netflix series about teens with cancer.
• What Could Have Been: After Netflix declined a second season, Mike Flanagan posted a rough outline of what would have happened on his tumblr, including answers to many lingering plot threads. This included:
  • There would've been a new patient, who'd be Ilonka's roommate. Ilonka would've initially been cold to her as Anya was to her, but they would've developed a strong friendship.
  • Amesh, Natsuki, Kevin, and Ilonka would've died. The advances in the 90s of the HIV cocktail would mean that Spencer's treatment would've progressed to the point he was no longer terminal, and Cheri, who never told a story to the club, would've ended the series telling the story of the Midnight Club to a new table of patients.
  • Dr. Stanton would've been revealed to be Athena, Aceso's daughter. She would've been revealed to be undergoing chemo, hence her baldness, and it would be successful
  • The janitor would've been revealed to be Death and the Shadow would've been the Unknown/themselves, who takes patients to a place of catharsis and understanding to prepare them for the next step.
  • Ilonka and Kevin would've been revealed to be reincarnations of the Mirror Man and Cataract Woman respectively and soulmates who'd met and fallen in love in multiple lives. Whenever Ilonka saw them, she was seeing glimpses of their past lives. Ilonka/Stanley built Brightcliffe for him and his wife, and when she began to suffer dementia he painted the basement for her to help her. They knew that their new lives as Ilonka and Kevin would be short ones, so they agreed to meet back at the house they built. When Ilonka dies, she and Kevin go Together in Death with the understanding that they'll be reborn and find each other again.

---