‘Haunting of Bly Manor’ Star T’Nia Miller Reacts To Episode 5’s Reveal About Hannah
By now horror fans have had a chance to binge The Haunting of Bly Manor, Netflix’s follow-up to The Haunting of Hill House. Creator Mike Flanagan and many cast members returned. T’Nia Miller joined the new season as Hannah Grose. If you’ve made it to episode 5, you’ll definitely want to hear her reaction.
[Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for The Haunting of Bly Manor.]
Miller spoke with reporters in a roundtable Zoom interview. Showbiz Cheat Sheet and other reporters asked her about the monumental fifth episode of the series, which is now streaming on Netflix.
T’Nia Miller didn’t read episode 5 of ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’ until later
Miller recalled when she started prepping for The Haunting of Bly Manor, she was busy. Flanagan was eager to get her reaction to episode 5 as well.
“I was still in London,” Miller said. “I was shooting something else. They sent episodes one to three and I hadn’t got to four and five yet. Mike was like, ‘Have you read up to five?’ I was like no. So it was me and the costume designer and then I come to it, I was like, ‘Shut up! What? I’m a ghost? I’ve never played a ghost before. This is bloody exciting.’ I love a good prank. I will prank you and scare you and jump out. I live for those moments. So to play a ghost is super exciting.”
Episode 5 of ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’ gave T’Nia Miller more questions
Apparently, Miller was as surprised by the script as viewers will be when they see the episode. Then, she also had to figure out how that impacted her performance in the first four episodes of The Haunting of Bly Manor.
“And then, I was like, ‘How am I going to play a ghost?’” Miller said. “I don’t know how to play that. I can’t base it on real life because I’m alive, I don’t know what it feels like to be dead. But, she’s a ghost who doesn’t know that she’s a ghost, so okay, I’ll just play her as someone who wanders off into these memories, into these moments. I’m a bit ditzy in real life but I play these very educated, well put together women. I’m actually rather ditzy so it sort of lent itself to Hannah in that way.”
Figuring out the timeline was a team effort
Episode 5 of The Haunting of Bly Manor sends Hannah jumping through time. It’s supposed to be disorienting for her, but the filmmakers had to keep track of where she was.
“We shoot things out of order all the time,” Miller said. “I actually kept watching playback so we jumped from this scene and this has just happened. So you’re not only shooting out of order, but you’re also jumping different times, different years and what’s just happened while shooting not in order. It was a headf*ck.”
Liam Gavin directed the episode.
“It was great because the director, Liam Gavin, and I would work out ‘So this just happened. She’s just coming from the garden. Now it’s nighttime.’” Miller said. “Liam’s very good. He did a timeline and I did my own timeline. Sometimes they matched and sometimes they wouldn’t match and we were like oh, what’s going on. The script supervisor, director Liam and I would like ‘Oh, that’s right. Now we’re ready to shoot.’”
