Were you a Goosebumps reader at all as a kid?
My mother [Carol Schneider] narrates audio books. So my first time getting exposed to Goosebumps, she was narrating the audio book for Night of the Living Dummy; that was put into my psyche growing up. But I wasn’t a big, hardcore fan.
Based on that limited exposure, do you have any sense of the particular power of the Goosebumps novels? What’s made them resonate for all these years?
I don’t know, dude. If I knew the recipe for lightning in a bottle, I’d hoard it for myself and make a billion dollars [laughs]. On a superficial level, it has these human stories and this kind of softer introduction to the horror genre, and that thing of “I don’t know if these people will survive this.” But it also has this R.L. Stine magic in there that I can’t . . . It’s like, “What makes Harry Potter special?” I don’t know if we can really quantify.
What’s the human story being told in this TV adaptation? How do the monsters and mayhem add to the exploration of real, grounded issues?
It’s interesting. There’s a lot of that — the shocks and the scares. But what’s more complicated, and something we all [know] is that people are hard. It’s hard to navigate family and know where you fit, and friends and love interests — and that is all augmented by being a young person and not really knowing your place in the world . . . Going out and dealing with these crazy things, in some ways, equips [our characters] to deal with the ordinary things, perhaps. I’m not sure if that then says in order to better connect with your family you need to fight some monsters . . .
What sort of journey does this fractured family go on? What do they have to learn and overcome?
Well, Devin and Cece [Jayden Bartels] have been living with their mom. They’re coming home over the summer to visit their dad. My parents are divorced [in real life] and when I was a little kid, I would go back and forth every week. I’d switch on Monday and when I’d get there, I’d be totally discombobulated acclimating to this new household. I’d have trouble connecting. Then eventually, you settle in.
I think Devin has a sense of protectiveness with his dad and love for his dad, but there’s a degree of separation there. I don’t know how close they are, because that’s really a level of time spent and time committed together, and trust. A lot of things get in the way of that over the course of the season, but just learning to co-exist and to love each other [is their journey].
Speaking of your TV dad, was it surreal to share a set with an icon like David Schwimmer?
I didn’t watch Friends — and I’m glad I didn’t watch Friends. If I had, I would’ve been losing my mind hanging out with David Schwimmer. But he was great. He was very kind to me and supportive towards me. Any time I had some questions, whether it be creatively or professionally, he was generous about helping me with that — on what it’s like to show up to work as No. 1 on the call sheet and be a balm for the whole production. He’s a really easy, down-to-earth guy.
He hasn’t lost his head. You learn a lot, in a lot of different ways, from working with him.
Goosebumps: The Vanishing, streaming on Disney+
MEMORABLE ROLES:
The son of “Brat Pack” icon Andrew McCarthy (St. Elmo’s Fire), 22-year-old Sam has also begun making a name for himself in showbiz. After small parts in The Blacklist and spy thriller Condor, McCarthy played the series regular role of grieving teen Charlie Harding on Netflix’s hit comedy mystery Dead to Me from 2019-2022.
CURRENT GIG:
Season two of Disney+’s take on R.L. Stine’s spine-tingling children’s books casts the rising young actor as Devin — a kid who goes to stay with his divorced father (David Schwimmer) for the summer and stumbles upon a nefarious, otherworldly chain of events connected to the vanishing of four teens three decades ago.