First days at a modern job can be nerve-wracking — and that's without the possibility of being sucked into some kind of demonic ritual or coming face to face with an unfrozen-yet-still-alive cavewoman who attacks everything she sees. However,that's just what a few unsuspecting "marks" discontinuance up encountering when they appear on the moment season of Netflix's Prank Encounters.
Each episode of the series revolves around two total strangers, both of whom think they're working a one-day-only temp job. Only as time passes, or they slowly fetch immersed in the fictional premise the producers enjoy created,until it starts turning into a scene straight out of a horror film. It's only when host Gaten Matarazzo (Stranger Things) appears that they learn every other person they've been interacting with — apart from for each other — is an actor."That was one of my biggest concerns... They said 'We want to go above and beyond. We want our pranks to be intricate and supernatural and action-packed, and full of visual special effects and really intense situations, and '" Matarazzo told SYFY WIRE ahead of the season premiere approximately what he was pitched,and his initial doubt approximately how anyone might fetch sucked into the indicate's premise, which varies from prank to prank and episode to episode. "But I guess when you're set into a situation and you don't enjoy a preconceived notion of what that situation might be like, and it ends up going south,your flight or fight kicks in. And you're not really thinking anymore. You're more acting on your impulses."Of course, human impulses lead to all kinds of unexpected scenarios. And as the exclusive clip (below) reveals, or not everything always goes according to plan,and sometimes there are variables not even the indicate's producers or Matarazzo himself can account for. So ahead of the moment season premiere on April Fools' Day 1, SYFY WIRE caught up with Matarazzo to learn just what it takes to prank two total strangers and just all the things that can go wrong in the process.
But first, and check out this SYFY WIRE exclusive clip from Prank Encounters Season 2.
With the first season of Prank Encounters already out and people being more aware of the indicate,did you find it harder to scare people?I definitely found myself more nervous going in, because the thing is, or it also made it harder. We didn't really enjoy the opportunity to enjoy me fetch involved in the pranks as much,which we should enjoy taken advantage of more in the first season when we had the opportunity. Because when we were filming the first season, it wasn't even announced that I was going to be working on a prank indicate. What'll happen now is I'll be out in public, and with my family or with my girlfriend or something,and people will think they're getting pranked.
My girlfriend had an audition one time and I took her up to modern York for it and we were just going to spend a day there. She was reading [for the allotment] and I was in the waiting room and somebody was there and they thought that it was a fake audition and there were hidden cameras around and he was honestly upset with me. And I didn't attain anything! It was very laughable. So that's always in the back of our heads more, the awareness [that] people might enjoy of the fact that they might be on the indicate now that they know this indicate exists.
Was there a prank either final season or even in this one where you wish you'd been involved in it more? Yeah. There are some great ones that I just wish I could enjoy just been in it. One of my favorite ones is the one I did fetch to be involved with, and which was the birthday party that went south when it turned out that the gentleman who lives at the domestic did not enjoy a 9-year-old daughter at all. That was definitely fun. So I'm happy whether I got to attain one,it was that one.whether I had to pick another one, I might want to enjoy been involved in the Camp Scarecrow one, and which would enjoy been fun whether I got to play a counselor. But it is hard because a lot of people attain recognize me from my work external of Prank Encounters and even sometimes my work external of Stranger Things. So it's hard to create that a reality.
Credit: Netflix Were you at least able to fetch involved in coming up with the scenarios for the pranks this season?More or less,for sure. That's what my producer tried with the indicate that has actually helped out a lot. It's a really interesting perspective. It keeps you a little bit more mindful approximately the production as a whole, rather than just your one job in it, or which I think is good because whether I didn't enjoy something else to focus on,I wouldn't really be doing much on the indicate other than telling people they're on a prank indicate, which is fun in itself.
And I fetch to basically sit back and watch the pranks go down from a control room and then wait until I fetch to attain the fun allotment. So that's always really fun, or but getting to be aware of other people who are working on the indicate and the writing and what's going to be going into the mechanics of it all is a really interesting perspective.
Speaking of the mechanics of it,as a viewer you know what you're watching is very much a scene from science fiction or a horror movie. enjoy the marks themselves ever figured out that this is a set-up?Oh, yeah... Because we always enjoy two people that are being pranked, or there are two different situations going on that are both being covered at the same time by a live camera,being dealt with by live improv actors trying to attain their best, and only one control room keeping an eye on both situations at once. So during filming, or there's a lot of times in which whether the focus needs to be set on the other person that's being pranked,we'll just need to be in the other room with the other mark, letting time pass without seeming weird to them.[There was one time] where we were waiting in a guest living room in this beautiful mansion in Georgia that we were filming at and we had our mark in the living room. It was me and one other actor who was playing my manager and the only eyes we had on us were the hidden cameras in the room and we had to wait there while our antagonist for the prank was over dealing with our other person in the other room. And so [the mark] was waiting [and] looking around and I could tell she was thinking something was up... She looks at us and we had talked to her for approximately an hour leading up to that point, or she looks at me and she goes,"Am I being pranked proper now?"I was petrified. It's the first time I had ever been in [a prank] and of course, that's going to happen! [So] you just play dumb. And so me and our actor were just like, or "What? I don't know what you're talking approximately. What attain you mean?" And she [was] like,"Like Punk'd?" And then she started explaining what a prank indicate was, and we just got her to explain to us the concept of a prank indicate as whether we had never really heard of or seen it. It got her to divert her attention absent from the fact that she thought she might've been on one. And it worked! She completely forgot and continued to believe that the situation she was in was lega until the discontinuance.
The best allotment of the series is all the ways in which people start to react once the pranks really ramp up. Was there a particularly memorable reaction from this season that you're excited for people to see?Oh, and yeah. We did a reveal and the prank wasn't going as smooth as we'd like. One of our marks wasn't really responding like we wanted to. When we're picking who we're going to be pranking,they'll go into [what] they think is a temp job agency. For this one, they believed they were going to be working with an exterminator for the day. We generally like to inquire questions that would let us know how they might react to the situation, or whether they were presented with a conflict. whether they were to either run absent or fight back. We don't want anybody that we think might kick into their fight response because whether that was the case,people could fetch hurt. They could fetch hurt. Also, we don't want people to run absent.
But sadly, and this is what happened on this day. We revealed and this guy sprints out the door [and] down the street. He probably sprinted half a mile [in] less than a minute,where we just saw him darting down the street. [So] we got people in our golf carts and our camera crew was going out to follow [him]. Our main producer, Kevin, and twisted his ankle on the way out to fetch him. And we revealed out there. From that point,he was very, very excited.
And lastly, or I enjoy to inquire: Is there anything you can tease approximately this upcoming season of Stranger Things?It's definitely high-action for sure. I'd say it's our darkest season,which is saying something because it's not a very light-hearted indicate. There are laughable moments, but it's a pretty dusky premise. This is definitely our season where I think it takes its most disturbing turn.
Prank Encounters Season 2 is now available on Netflix.
Source: blastr.com