Friends, Band of Brothers and Madagascar icon David Schwimmer says he was drawn to Goosebumps: The Vanishing because it gave him the rare opportunity to work in the horror genre.
The eight-episode season follows teen twins Devin (Sam McCarthy) and Cece Brewer (Jayden Bartels) as they spend the summer in Gravesend, Brooklyn, with their dad Anthony (Schwimmer), a botanist haunted by the mysterious disappearance of his brother and three other kids in 1994.
"I'm a genuine fan of the genre. I love horror, action-comedies, and then when I read the script and talked to the writers and I also watched the first series, I was like, 'This is going to be a blast,'" Schwimmer, 58, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
"I really was looking forward to jumping in and being an actor in this kind of a genre. It was really fun."
Because Stine first began publishing his Goosebumps books in the early 1990s when Schwimmer was already an adult, the actor had heard of the series but not actually read it himself."I was 25 when they came out," Schwimmer noted.
"But, as soon as I started asking around, other parents and kids and everyone were like: 'Oh, my God. You have to do that!'" he recalled.
Reading Stay Out of the Basement, the book that loosely tells his character's story, further assured Schwimmer that taking this job was a no-brainer, he said.
The fact that the show, at its heart, is a relatable drama about a family caught up in extraordinary circumstances sealed the deal.
"We find in the first episode this guy is at a really, really challenging moment in his life," Schwimmer said of his character, Anthony.
"He's put his career as a botanist on hold, moved back to the home he grew up in as a kid to take care of his mom who has dementia," he added. "At the same time, he's a divorced dad of these two 17-year-olds, these two fraternal twins, that he's trying to be present for."
Anthony is aware his son and daughter would rather be in Manhattan with their wealthy mother and her new husband.
"It's kind of a heavy start for where he is in his life," the actor added. "Having said that, he's really determined to make it a really fun, safe summer for the kids, and there's a lot of humor and, before we know it, everyone's kind of enmeshed in this frightening, suspenseful mystery."
Anthony's plant experiments in the basement, coupled with what the neighborhood kids tell Devin and Cece about their uncle's vanishing, quickly take a toll on the family.
"We immediately start to change. Everyone is immediately affected by what's happening," Schwimmer said.
"You really feel how grounded and connected they are as a family," he added. "What happens is then they're ruptured. They're torn apart as a family. At the very end, they will find their way back together, and we'll have to work together as a family to kind of save the situation."
Schwimmer hopes viewers who grew up watching Friends and reading the Goosebumps adventures will tune into The Vanishing with their children.
"I think it's going to be really fun. I can't wait to watch it with my kid," Schwimmer said.
"It's going to be a great opportunity for families to watch something together," Schwimmer added. "You really feel both perspectives: the parent perspective and the kid perspective, although the real protagonists are the kids, this group of kids that are just off on this exciting, sometimes scary mystery."
