Ted Raimi has a knack for bringing his own unpredictable spin to every project he joins. And with the Raimi name synonymous with the macabre, it feels fitting that he’s now inviting audiences into the frighteningly fantastical manor of “YOUR DEAREST, DARKEST FRIEND,” his new horror talk series, premiering October 30th on SCREAMBOX.
True to Raimi’s style, a traditional studio interview was never going to cut it. Instead, he welcomes guests into the manor for an immersive evening of conversation, strange discoveries, peculiar characters and unexpected surprises. As the mixologist of the macabre, he kicks off each evening with a craft cocktail custom-tailored to his guest. Each drink has its own distinctive flair, but remains approachable enough for viewers to make at home.
Part talk show, part cinematic experience, “Your Dearest, Darkest Friend” pulls back the curtain on some of the most fascinating figures from the world of horror and beyond, exploring their careers, creative influences and everything in between, while offering viewers a deeper glimpse into Raimi’s own wonderfully offbeat world.
Jason Price of Icon Vs. Icon recently caught up with Ted Raimi to discuss the series and his creative journey as he offers a taste of the strange surprises waiting inside the manor.
Hey, Ted! It feels like it’s been ages. It’s great to connect with you again!
It’s good to talk to you again, too!
First of all, I love the new show. It’s the perfect thing for this time of year. As somebody who loves doing interviews and getting a little more behind the scenes, you really delivered on all levels with this thing.
Oh, thank you! What a lovely thing to say. Thank you very much!
I wanted to go back to your roots. Obviously, your family name is forever tied to the macabre. As a storyteller, what drew you to the darker side of things in those early years?
There were two things. When I was very young, like nine or ten, I used to love watching original episodes of Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery.” Then my parents decided that was too much for a kid to be watching, and they cut me off. But what they didn’t know, and I didn’t know until I figured it out, was that CBS decided to revive the radio horror show. The last actual radio show on network was 1962. Then, about eleven years later, CBS went, “I think there’s a lot of the Greatest Generation that might still like some radio shows,” so they created the “CBS Radio Mystery Theater.”
This show was really gory and really scary. It came on at ten or eleven every night, so my parents never knew. I was listening, alone on a clock radio, to E. G. Marshall hosting this incredibly complicated and adult show that had murder, gore, backstabbing, and adultery. I’m this nine-year-old kid! It was worse than “Night Gallery,” but I loved it. [laughs] I loved every bit of it! Those two things got me loving it. The second I got out of high school, I went to New York City to be an actor. I was seventeen. I graduated early, and it started like that!
My next question builds on that. With so many years of experience in the entertainment business now, are there any lessons you learned early on that continue to resonate and guide you through the process?
Yeah. Find your courage a thousand ways! I don’t mean to be so esoteric about that, but what I mean to say is, just about every third or fourth audition in my life, you decide to give up because it’s so hard. Since I was a kid, I’ve probably auditioned over a thousand times for different things. You have to find your courage and pull yourself back up because if you don’t, what are the options? I would always tell myself two things: “Ted, you love this more than anything. But two, you’re not qualified to do anything else.” So I’d be like, “What else can I do?” The answer is nothing. I’m not a typist. I’m not an accountant. I’m certainly lousy in the building trade. I was stuck!
If you want to be an actor, don’t have a backup plan. I’m not even joking when I say that. Don’t have a backup plan. I know a thousand people through the years, through the decades, who’ve gone, “I’m an actor, but I’m taking law school just in case.” It’s like, “You’re never going to be an actor then. Are you kidding me? As soon as you see your first paycheck as a lawyer, you’re never going to come back to being an actor.”
Don’t have a backup plan. Go one path!
If you fall, you’ll only be able to fall forward! You’re not going to fall on your ass. You may fall on your face, but that’s a very different thing! And by all means, you better get yourself a romantic partner who understands that. I do, and I’m very lucky. My girlfriend totally gets it!
Your new series, “Your Dearest, Darkest Friend,” is a cool new outlet for you. How did this opportunity present itself, and how did it ultimately start to take shape?
I had a YouTube show about seven or eight years ago called “Deathly Spirits,” where I mixed drinks and told scary stories. Then I forgot about it because I started doing movies and TV shows and stuff, and I let YouTube go. Out of the blue, I got a call from SCREAMBOX, the streaming network. They said, “Look, we’re making a talk show. We want you to host it.” That was Tony Wash, Charlie Queen, and Lauren Leshansky. They wanted me, and they said, “We kind of want to make it a little like your show ‘Deathly Spirits,’ but it’s an insider talk show. It’s not just a general horror talk show.”
I thought that was a great idea because, as people in the horror business, we generally get asked rather trite questions about filmmaking, such as, “Was the house really haunted that you shot in?” Or, “Did you feel the spirit of the killer that you were playing?” These were silly questions that no other actor or filmmaker ever gets asked. Horror is having a moment now, of course, and because it is, I think the network said, “Let’s make a horror talk show.” I think if this were five years ago, there’s no way this would’ve happened. We built sets, got guests together, and made the show thanks to SCREAMBOX and Tony, Charlie, and Lauren.
You have some truly iconic guests along for the ride. What went into prepping for your interviews?
I already knew their work and was a fan of it, and I certainly could talk to them as insiders. But the actual research and some of the more outside and poignant questions were created by a small group of writers, especially Holden McNeely, who many might know from “The Last Podcast on the Left.” He’s not only a very good comedic writer, but he’s a very insightful journalist who came up with great ideas. Between me and him, that was pretty much it. And, of course, Charlie Queen and Tony Wash also.
I was curious about the mixology element. What first got you hooked on that part of your journey?
I started making cocktails because I had a lot of failed auditions as a young man. After midnight, I’d be like, “That’s it. I’m having a drink. That was a really crummy day.” [laughs] Then I started to make fancier drinks as I got older because you don’t want to just do shots of Jack. It went on from there, and I started doing it as a hobby. I’ve always loved mixology. I think it’s a lost home art. It’s something we do when we go to a nice bar, and you have a fancy drink maker. But almost nobody makes drinks at home anymore for their friends and family. I wanted to do that, and I wanted to bring it back to the home, where it used to be.
It’s a really cool element because you and your guests get to experience that together as you’re diving deeper into both of your worlds.
Yeah. Also, it loosens lips, which is part of the deal! [laughs] It’s one thing to have a talk show where guests are terrified to say anything wrong in a studio environment, with the desk, the loveseat, and the armchair. But it’s quite another thing when you’re sitting in someone’s home parlor, or at least what looks like that, and you’re getting drunk. Suddenly, it’s much more intimate. There’s no studio audience. It’s just them and me, and I think that really made a difference in the conversations we were having.
Is there a drink you’re known for or something you like to whip up when you want to dazzle a crowd, especially this time of year?
You know what? I’m a classics guy. I’ll drink classics. I’m usually not a fad guy. I have a take on the old fashioned I call the Sir Graves Ghastly, named after a horror host from Detroit, Michigan, when I was growing up. It’s a classic old fashioned, but instead of traditional bitters, it’s cocoa bitters. If you have dry ice, go over the top of it with a little dry ice so it looks like it’s smoking.
The thing is, I wanted to make drinks on that show that anybody could make. On cooking shows, they’re making these crazy drinks with elaborate ingredients. If you were to buy all the ingredients most bartenders on shows tell you to buy, it would probably cost you between three and four hundred dollars. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Every cocktail I make, you can reasonably get all the ingredients for maybe forty dollars and have enough to make it fifteen times. Who the hell has five hundred bucks to throw at a bar set anymore?
Being in the industry as long as you have, you’ve rubbed elbows with a lot of amazing talents along the way. Is there a conversation you’ve had over a drink that really left an impact on you?
I don’t know if this is a drink conversation, but I will say I learned a lot. I was a character actor for forty-plus years, and I’ve been fortunate enough to act with some greats who taught me some great lessons.
From Charlton Heston, I learned never to leave a set until you have worked your entire day with every single actor you need to. A lot of stars, who will go nameless, if they’re not on camera, they just go home, even though they have lines with other actors. Those other actors are very commonly left to do scenes with script supervisors, which is quite challenging. But Charlton Heston never did that when I worked with him. That was something.
From Roy Scheider, I learned how to stand up for your fellow actors when they need you, against producers who might not have the best intentions for you. It goes on like that. I learned to do nothing but rehearse, rehearse, from Harrison Ford. Those actors were great teachers, and I never forgot those lessons. And probably about a dozen more!
This really hit me when you were talking to Barbara Crampton, but you touched on both your drive and work ethic. With this project and everything else you have going on, what do you look for in the projects you invest your time and creative energy in these days?
I’ve always loved horror pictures. I’ve always been attracted to them. Since the 1980s, it has been my favorite genre and will continue to be long after this horror wave is gone. I promise you that. But I look first for a character you can relate to, that you can feel for. That’s the most important thing. I don’t care about cool scenarios or how much bloodshed you may or may not have in a horror picture. If you don’t care about that character, you won’t care about the movie. That’s number one, and that’s really rare. That’s going to cut out about ninety-eight percent of all scripts I ever read.
They go, “Oh, it’s cool. Ted, I want you in this movie because you’re in this thing and you’re fighting zombies.” I’m like, “Nobody cares. I don’t care, and I don’t know why anybody else would care.” Rarely, you find the character put first, and those are the ones I’m most attracted to. In fact, there’s a picture I’m about ready to go do in Australia in about three months that is such a picture. It’s one of the rare scripts I read where I’m like, “Wow, this is cool. This is great. This writer knows what he’s doing.” So I said yes.
Another cool feature of the show is the Oddities Room. Since you’re such a film fan, going back to your early years, what are some of the fun pieces or collectibles you’ve picked up through the years that hold a special place in your heart?
It’s pretty hard to walk away from a set with parts of the set, which is what I always want to do! But I have props and costumes from most of the movies I’ve ever done. Some I wish I had more of. My first TV show I was a regular on was called “seaQuest DSV.” It was an NBC show from the ’90s. I have the costume, I have the props, I’ve got the gun. I’ve got all of it. I have my full costume and many of the props from “Xena.” But mostly what I kept were crew and cast jackets. There’s an old custom that I don’t think they do much anymore in films. They used to give you these really nice puffy jackets. They don’t do it anymore. I’ve got those from all the pictures and TV shows I’ve ever done!
My big question about this show as a whole: What does it mean to you personally? What are your biggest takeaways from this experience and working with the creative team?
All of us, everybody at SCREAMBOX and myself, wanted to make a show that would not pander to horror fans, but rather cater to them. We wanted to make an insider show that insiders would love. We also didn’t want to make a meta show. In other words, when you’re watching this, you don’t have to have seen other talk shows or other bits and things. It lives on its own planet. We’re not referencing anything else. That was very important to me and to everyone making it, too. I think people are sick of that. For example, you couldn’t see this movie unless you had seen this, this, and this. You couldn’t understand whatever. That was important to us. We wanted to honor all the horror fans out there who never got a show like this, which certainly I would like to see. That was the main thing.
“Your Dearest, Darkest Friend” truly speaks to me as a horror fan and hits all the right notes. You guys definitely hit it out of the park.
Thank you. It’s goofy, and it’s light, and that’s how we wanted it to be. This is going to be on SCREAMBOX. Their regular watchers will watch, say, an hour of this gory Italian picture. They’ll watch this Japanese ghost story. They’ll watch all kinds of stuff. Then, if they catch this, it’s a little lighter kind of moment they can find and enjoy. I liken it to listening to nothing but hard, heavy metal, and then you put on one weird 1975 easy-listening song. Your brain kind of changes for a second. That’s kind of the idea.
I love it! You’re always keeping your tools sharp, and you don’t slow down creatively. Are there any projects or creative itches you’re still looking to scratch?
No. I just want to keep going as I’m going. I’m really happy. I’ve got this show. I’m also going to do a classics reading show, either on TikTok or Instagram, or it could be YouTube. I don’t know which of the three. But I feel like classic horror has not been read frequently out loud, performed. I’m first and foremost a performer who loves horror, so I’m combining those. There’ll be Daphne du Maurier and Poe, of course, and writers like that, who I’ll be reading. I think people are ready for it. In this age of AI, I think people want something genuine that isn’t just AI.
I think that really speaks to the show you guys created. It’s got such an authenticity. It’s so original, and it feeds horror fans who are looking for something different. Thank you for putting in all the hard work there.
Thank you for the kind words, Jason. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Ted, thank you so much for your time. You’re such an inspiration. We’ll keep in touch, and I can’t wait to spread the word on this. I can’t wait to see what else you have coming our way.
Thanks, Jason. It’s good talking to you again. Be well.
Pour yourself something good and settle in with Ted Raimi when “Your Dearest, Darkest Friend” premieres October 30th on SCREAMBOX, with new episodes arriving every Friday. For more from the Mixologist of the Macabre, follow Ted on Instagram and Facebook for updates on the show, upcoming appearances, and his latest projects. Stay spooky!
Jason Price founded the mighty Icon Vs. Icon more than a decade ago. Along the way, he’s assembled an amazing group of like-minded individuals to spread the word on some of the most unique people and projects on the pop culture landscape.
