Why ‘The Deliverance’ Director Lee Daniels Had an Apostle Visit the Set Every Day [Interview]

Netflix’s possession horror movie The Deliverance is loosely based on the 2011 account of Latoya Ammons and her family’s haunting, otherwise known as the Demon House. Director Lee Daniels (Precious, The Butler) didn’t want to take any chances when it came to broaching the horror tied to Ammons’ account and enlisted an apostle to anoint the set with prayer.

The Deliverance, out now in select theaters before arriving on Netflix August 30, stars Andra Day, Glenn Close, Mo’Nique, Aunjanue Ellis, Caleb McLaughlin and Tasha Smith.

Day plays Ebony Jackson, “a struggling single mother fighting her personal demons, moves her family into a new home for a fresh start. But when strange occurrences inside the home raise the suspicions of Child Protective Services and threaten to tear the family apart, Ebony soon finds herself locked in a battle for her life and the souls of her children.”

The project initially came to Daniels shortly after Precious, but the spiritual filmmaker was initially hesitant to broach a horror story based on real-life people. That shifted with the socio-political climate, and Daniels found new inspiration within the story.

“About five years ago, I realized that we were in dark times, and I really wanted to find my higher power,” Daniels says of the turning point. It then became an issue of, “How do I tell this story without making it your typical horror story with jump scares? Because that sort of was a bore to me. I didn’t really want to do that.”

Daniels continues, “I wanted to figure out a way to tell the story that you are invested in these people, these characters, so that when the horror does come, you’re terrified for them.”

The Deliverance. Athony B Jenkins as Andre in The Deliverance. Cr. Aaron Ricketts/Netflix © 2024.

The Deliverance, which Lee Daniels wrote with David Coggeshall and Elijah Bynum, spends a lot of time establishing complex characters that stand apart from their real-life inspirations. So much so that Glenn Close’s character, Ebony’s mother Alberta, is an invention of Daniels and Close’s making.

Daniels explains, “So, the Alberta character is something that I made up. She wasn’t white, she was black in real life, but I wanted to do something different. I wanted to show a character that we don’t really see. I mean, African-Americans know her well, but they’ve never seen her on screen, this white woman who is immersed into this black space with a black daughter and even blacker grandkids. How does she navigate and what is it like being biracial? What is that really like? We’re in that world before the rug is snatched out of us, and we’re into a place of horror. So I got you looking over here when this is coming at you.”

The director is just as candid when confessing what made Close perfect for Alberta, telling Bloody Disgusting: “I was just desperate to work with her, and I think she can do anything.”

Of course, the film belongs to lead Andra Day, a desperate mother battling her own demons long before the biblical demons come into play. Not only was the actor committed to the role, but Daniels revealed another vital characteristic he was looking for: faith. That faith led to surprising improv when the horror reaches its apex.

“It was important for me to find an actor that was a devout Christian, and I was blessed with her,” Daniels says of Day. “When she is speaking in tongue, that was not scripted, that wasn’t written at all. That was her going off the book and letting the Lord speak through her. My AD was like, “When she starts speaking in tongue, should we cut?’ I go, ‘No, it, this is God working. It’s God’s work.‘ And so we let her do her thing.”

The Deliverance. Demi Singleton as Shante in The Deliverance. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024

That also speaks to Lee Daniels’ unwavering faith and a commitment to ward off any ill omens on set. So much so that the filmmaker had an apostle come to the set every day.

“You know about that apostle, huh?“ Daniels grins. “The apostle was on set every day to pray for us because I had read books about Poltergeist, what was happening on set and on the Exorcist and on The Omen. There were some dark things happening, and it was not going to happen on my set.

“Prior to every scene, we prayed, and the first time we did it, Netflix sent somebody down from HR saying, you got to stop the prayer thing. I’m like, ‘Guess what? I can’t do this without prayer.‘ I did tell my crew that if you don’t want to pray, you can go away. But for the most part, everybody stayed. Everybody felt like me. They just wanted to get protected.”

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