It’s hard to believe, talking to David Dastmalchian, that he’s starred in some of the most terrifying films of the last year. He seems too kind, too honest and open to be the kind of person responsible for scaring the wits out of people, whether as a quartermaster in The Last Voyage of the Demeter or an unsettling therapy patient in Stephen King’s The Boogeyman. While we chatted during the height of this year’s solar eclipse (at least where I was), it felt like we could’ve gone on forever, he in Canada (shooting Murderbot with Alexander Skarsgård) and I in New Orleans, talking about everything and nothing all at once.
But anyone who’s seen Late Night With the Devil, which premieres on Shudder this Friday, knows that Dastmalchian’s talents are many and varied, allowing him to step into the shoes of all kinds of disturbing (or disturbed) characters — including the tragic talk show host Jack Delroy, who attempts salvage the ratings on his show with one last ditch effort that turns out to be more than he bargained for. Delroy was inspired in part by clips of Australian talk show host Don Lane, who Dastmalchian describes as a kind of Fox Mulder character who wasn’t opposed to believing in the impossible, much like the actor himself.
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