In every battle between good and evil, there’s always chaos — and generally, fire. The same is true for the climactic battle of Netflix’s new film, “The School for Good and Evil.” And yes, that fire was actually present. In fact, according to director Paul Feig, and movie stars Sofia Wylie and Sophia Anne Caruso, most of that battle was done very practically.
The movie centers on Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) and Agatha (Sofia Wylie) as they’re plucked from their village and taken to the schools of good and evil, which are responsible for training all the storied heroes and villains of the world. But when Sophie ends up in the school for evil and Aggie gets dropped in the school for good, Sophie breaks down. After all, she believes she’s a completely good and pure princess, and Agatha didn’t even want to come to the schools.
Eventually, Sophie fully embraces the evil in her, and uses her magic to trick the students of the school for good into attacking the school for evil. See, in this world, the ironclad rule is that good can only defend. So, when the prince and his comrades storm the castle, their attack causes a seismic shift in the magic of the world. Now, evil is good, and good is evil.
Naturally, all hell breaks loose. Within the battle, there are magical costume changes, spells hurled, and even a fire demon. And that chaos was very real during filming.
“There is actual fire coming out of the ceiling throughout the entire scene,” Wylie told TheWrap. “And I remember like, during the five minutes that the scene lasted, it would get so hot because there was like, fire in the ceiling! And it was also so distracting because we’re trying to do our lines. But all you hear is boom, boom, boom, boom, like over and over and over and over again. It was really crazy, but it felt like it gave it like a very evil and dramatic vibe.”
And that’s exactly why director Paul Feig opted to use actual flame bars, rather than add it in via CGI.
“John Schwartzman, my DP, he said, ‘I like the way this looks,.’ Like, ‘I don’t want to augment this, let’s just have that going,’” Feig explained to TheWrap. “So we had, I mean, weeks of these fireballs coming out, lighting everybody up. That’s why you see everybody’s, you know, the light’s constantly changing on people’s faces. And I just, I think it gives us such depth and texture.”
Of course, Caruso was well aware of how much fire was being pumped in, as she was fully decked out in prosthetics — “very hot, hot prosthetics” — to make her look like the evil witch Sophie briefly became. But for her, the scene also required a lot of imagination too, as Sophie used her magic throughout the battle. According to Caruso though, the magic came pretty naturally to her mind’s eye.
“It just kind of happened. I think, doing fantasy, you have to have really big imagination. So I tried to keep myself always in that kind of imaginative headspace,” Caruso explained. “Sofia Wylie had a lot she had to imagine too, I was so impressed by her always. But yeah, I don’t know. It’s just like, I just would imagine that it would be like, I could just imagine the smoke coming off of my fingers. And then that’s kind of just how I did it.”
As an added perk though, those finger glows were real, making it a touch easier — though according to Feig, the prosthetics involved in there made their fingers look “like they hit ’em with a hammer.” Really, the biggest struggle was getting it all done in time.
“We had a very short schedule. We were only 66 days on this, which, a movie like this would normally be, you know, much more,” Feig explained. “So we had to kind of, ‘OK, second unit’s gotta help us out here because I gotta go and finish all this stuff with with my main cast.’ So it’s great. But I love — that’s why I love making movies. It’s such a collaboration, and you know, to work with these talented people and to let their imaginations go wild. And I go, like, ‘I don’t even know how you’re gonna do that. But if you know how to do it, let’s do it.’”
You can watch TheWrap’s full interview with Sofia Wylie and Sophia Anne Caruso in the video above.
“The School for Good and Evil” is now streaming on Netflix.