Trivia / The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)

• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • Napoleon Usher is the figurehead CEO of a video game development company; his actor, Rahul Kohli, is an avid gamer.
  • Napoleon also wears a Liverpool FC T-shirt in several scenes. That's the football team Rahul Kohli supports.
  • Kate Siegel suggested that Camille be a slob while at home and to have puppy play gear in her room without explaining why (it's because she demands adoration and attention and gets that through sex).
• Cameo Prop: The mask that Jenny wears in the second episode is The Man's from Hush.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Juno is an amputee just like her actress Ruth Codd.
• Dueling Works: Released the same week as Goosebumps (2023) another horror series that serves as an Adaptation Amalgamation of the works of a noteworthy horror author. Both shows even share the same composers in the Newton Brothers.
• Enforced Method Acting: Kyleigh Curran had not seen Crystal Balint in make-up until the shooting of the hospital scene, much less the full extent beneath the bandages. Lenore's horrified reactions when Morella begins ripping off her bandages are partially genuine.
• Fake American: Canadians Graham Verchere and Bruce Greenwood play the teenage and present-day Roderick Usher respectively. Only Zach Gilford, who plays Roderick as a young adult, is actually American.
• Fake Mixed Race: Leo, Victorine and Prospero are the children of a white father and Indian, Black and Asian mother respectively. Their actors are all fully non-white.
• Hostility on the Set: Multiple cast and crew members got along poorly with Frank Langella, reportedly due to his conduct with others on and off-set being highly inappropriate and offensive (which Langella defended as jokes). Many people reportedly felt uncomfortable around him and Ruth Codd outright left the set in the middle of filming a sex scene due to Langella's behaviour towards her. It was bad enough that Langella was booted off the show midway through filming and replaced with Bruce Greenwood; Kate Siegel stated in a podcast interview there was "palpable relief from everyone" over the recasting and that Greenwood, comparatively, behaved respectfully and professionally.
• The Other Marty: Frank Langella was originally cast as Roderick Usher before getting fired halfway through filming due to allegations of bad behavior on set. He was replaced with Bruce Greenwood.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Intentionally played with. For those who only know Mark Hamill from Star Wars, his role as Amoral Attorney Arthur Pym comes as a surprise. For those who are aware of his voice acting credentials, not so much.
  • A number of the actors who play the siblings (Kate Siegel, Henry Thomas, Rahul Kohli, and T'Nia Miller) are known for playing heroic, kind and compassionate characters in Mike Flanagan's previous works. Here they are all varying levels of immoral if not outright evil.
  • Molly Quinn is best known for her role as the title character's grounded, mature teenage daughter on Castle, but here plays Prospero's hard-partying junkie girlfriend Jenny.
  • Word of God from Flanagan is that when the writing process began, they tailored each character to a particular actor - though it's highly likely this process was modified when it came to Roderick Usher himself (see below notes re: Frank Langella).
• Production Posse: As per usual with Mike Flanagan, a number of actors he's worked with prior return including his wife Kate Siegel, Henry Thomas, Carla Gugino, Rahul Kohli, Bruce Greenwood, Michael Trucco, Zach Gilford, Samantha Sloyan, T'Nia Miller, Lulu Wilson, and Ruth Codd.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Camille has casual and forced relationships with men and women. Her actress Kate Siegel is openly bisexual in real life. Victorine is also a lesbian as is her actress T'Nia Miller in real life.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Frank Langella was originally cast as Roderick Usher, but was fired in April 2022 following an investigation into "inappropriate conduct" on-set; he was replaced by Bruce Greenwood three weeks later. Reportedly, Langella made many cast and crew members uncomfortable due to frequently making crass and insensitive jokes and remarks (especially of a sexual nature) and touching people without their consent; one of the main incidents that lead to the investigation and Langella's subsequent removal was him touching the leg of his co-star Ruth Codd (an amputee who wears a prosthetic leg) during a sex scene, which wasn't scripted or agreed upon by Codd and the intimacy coordinator beforehand, which upset Codd enough that she left the set.
• Those Two Actors: Rahul Kohli (Leo Usher) and Malcolm Goodwin (Young Dupin) had previously starred in iZombie together. The two became close friends behind the scenes and this led to Kohli, a frequent Flanagan collaborator, recommending Goodwin during the casting process.
• Throw It In!:
  • Pym playfully hitting Tamerlane on the head with the NDA in "A Midnight Dreary" was actually a mistake on Mark Hamill's part, but Flanagan thought it was hilarious and kept it in.
  • Tamerlane snarking about "35, is that what we're going with?" in regards to Camille's age in her obituary was adlibbed by Samantha Sloyan.
  • Pym's comment about 'having Richard Parker for dinner' was an ad-lib from Mark Hamill.
• Underage Casting: Roderick was already a young child in 1953, three years before Bruce Greenwood was born. This can likely be attributed to the role originally having been cast with Frank Langella who is eighteen years older than Greenwood.
• What Could Have Been: Flanagan's first choice to follow up The Haunting of Bly Manor was an adaptation of Hell House.
• Word of God:
  • Mike Flanagan confirmed on his tumblr that Leo didn't actually kill the original Pluto and that everything that happened with the second cat was a hallucination.
  • He also confirmed that had the Usher children taken Verna's advice when she gave it, they would have died peacefully like Lenore.