Tyra Banks has aired her long-held grievance with the 2002 slasher sequel “Halloween: Resurrection,” saying she was sold a career-making turn that never materialized.
The model and television personality, 52, said in an interview published Friday that she never wanted the role of Nora in the first place. Banks recalled pushing back when her agent pressed her to take the part, arguing that horror would do nothing for her acting ambitions.
“I was like, ‘I’m not going to do that.’ What is it going to do for my career? I’m a model, and I need to do things that are kind of different to get this acting career that I want,” she said.
Her agent, she remembered, kept pointing to Josh Hartnett’s trajectory after the actor appeared in 1998’s “Halloween: H20.”
“No, Josh Hartnett did ‘Halloween,’ and look what he’s doing now!”
Banks eventually relented. “So I was like, yeah, OK, this is going to do it for me,” she recalled of her decision to join the eighth installment of the Michael Myers franchise.
The payoff she envisioned never arrived. The death scene that was supposed to cement her place in horror history ended up largely excised from the final cut. While Nora does fall victim to the masked killer, the actual killing unfolds mostly off-screen.
“Not only did it not do anything for me, they cut the damn death scene,” Banks said.
She told the outlet she had been “promised the career of Josh Hartnett, of an actor, and promised an iconic death scene that will last forever, and neither of them happened.”
The “America’s Next Top Model” creator boiled her frustration down to a blunt assessment: “So, I have beef with ‘Halloween 8!'”
Banks made clear her disdain extends to the entire experience. She doesn’t look back fondly on the film “like, not even a tiny bit.”
The disappointment stands in contrast to other screen work Banks had around that era. In 2000, she starred as a doll brought to life opposite Lindsay Lohan in “Life Size,” and that same year appeared alongside Piper Perabo and Maria Bello in “Coyote Ugly.” She would later find her greatest success on television, headlining “America’s Next Top Model,” co-hosting “Dancing With the Stars,” and fronting her own talk show, “The Tyra Banks Show,” from 2005 to 2010.
The “Halloween: Resurrection” role came at a moment when Banks was actively trying to pivot from modeling into acting, making the broken promises about the part’s potential sting all the more sharply. She had additional television credits including “The View,” “Project Runway” and “Celebrity Watch Party.”
The “Modelland” author did not name the agent who made the Hartnett comparison in her interview.
The slasher sequel, released in 2002, followed a group of college students running a live internet broadcast from the Myers house, with Busta Rhymes and Bianca Kajlich also starring. The film received largely negative reviews and underperformed at the box office, though it has gained a certain cult following in the years since.
Banks’s candor about her frustration arrives as the horror franchise continues to expand, with recent installments from director David Gordon Green and Blumhouse Productions reinvigorating interest in Michael Myers’s legacy.
Banks remains active across multiple ventures, with her entertainment empire spanning production, modeling competitions, and various television appearances.