Movies

Neil Gaiman, Teri Hatcher look back on the otherworldly eeriness of LAIKA's Coraline

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Published on May 19, 2020 10:30AM EDT

It’s been a little more than a decade since Coraline Jones opened a door in her house and wandered into a peculiar world of dancing mice, doppelgangers, and extremely unsettling button eyes. Based on Neil Gaiman’s book and brought to gorgeous stop-motion life by director Henry Selick, the 2009 Coraline is a creepy classic, the rare children’s movie that can be affecting and sweet, while also downright terrifying. (There's also something rather, uh, timely in a story about being bored in your house and letting your imagination run wild.)

Recently, the film's studio, Laika, gathered Gaiman and Teri Hatcher (who voiced both Coraline’s mother and her unnerving counterpart, the Other Mother) on Zoom for a look back on the making of the film. EW has the exclusive video, in which the author and actress reflect on Coraline’s long path to screen — and its long life since.

“Normally films come out, and they kind of fade away,” Gaiman says. “Coraline just feels like it gets bigger and more important with every year that passes.”

Hatcher came prepared with her own personal collection of Coraline merch, as the two swapped stories and behind-the-scenes details (like the fact that Hatcher’s daughter, Emerson, voices the dragonflies in Coraline’s room). Hatcher’s appropriately black cat, Friday, even made a cameo on the call.

And even all these years later, Hatcher can still slip into the Other Mother’s soothingly spooky voice (as she does when she leaves voicemails for friends’ kids).

“Her voice is like the aural equivalent of a hug,” Gaiman says. “Just embraced by this lovely sweet, 1950s Donna Reed-ness.”

“Which everyone also needs right now!” Hatcher adds with a laugh. “Everyone also needs a hug right now.”

“Possibly not from an Other Mother with black buttons for eyes, though,” Gaiman says.

Watch the full video above.

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