Jessica Chastain on ‘Other Mommy’ Going Viral and Challenging Friend Aaron Sorkin at the Box Office

Jessica Chastain is back in Scream Queen territory, playing dual roles in the much buzzed-about horror Other Mommy.

The film, based on Josh Malerman‘s 2024 novel Incidents Around the House, follows a family whose house is haunted by a sinister entity that looks and sounds identical to the mother, with both versions played by the star.

Chastain, whose resumé includes horror films It Chapter Two, Mama and Crimson Peak, has a deep love of the genre, recalling at the new movie’s Los Angeles premiere on Thursday that “when I was a kid going to the movies, it was very rare to see a female character that I looked up to. And then I realized that the horror genre had a lot of incredibly strong women that I could recognize as the women around me in my life. Usually the women defeat the monsters in the genre, they’re the heroes, and the other genres that I grew up with I didn’t see that.”

In the months leading up to its release, Other Mommy has gotten lots of attention online for its campy title and premise, as well as its major jump scares — which were first on display when the trailer debuted in theaters in front of The Odyssey, spooking plenty of moviegoers who were not prepared for the horror moment.

“I got really funny texts from my friends and family who went to go see The Odyssey, because I have a lot of friends who love to go to the cinema, so it was really funny,” Chastain noted of the trailer’s viral impact.

Director Rob Savage also weighed in on that unexpected tie-in, revealing, “The thing that was so insane about launching in front of The Odyssey was the movie was far from finished. My phone was blowing up and we were there in the color grade, in the mix, approving VFX shots, being like, ‘Are we going to make release?’ Working for 18 hours a day to get it done. So it was a nice shot in the arm but it was also like, ‘We better have a movie at the end of it.'”

And despite the attention it has brought, the original title of the film was actually not Other Mommy, but Incidents Around the House to line up with the book. Savage — while lamenting how the internet was “annoyed it wasn’t Other Mother” — explained of the change that Other Mommy was simply “a better title,” and “if we’re trying to create the next iconic horror villain, that’s gotta be the foot you lead with.”

The film has faced some harsh reviews but is still set for a big weekend at the box office, opening against Aaron Sorkin‘s The Social Reckoning. Chastain starred in Sorkin’s 2017 film Molly’s Game and is also close friends with Social Reckoning star Jeremy Strong (who takes over from Jesse Eisenberg in the Mark Zuckerberg role), so is she feeling any competition as the two movies debut?

“The funny thing is actually Aaron wrote me an email, he’s the one who brought it to my attention. I don’t know if you know this, he’s a bit of a wordsmith, and he sent me a very fun email about it, that we were going head to head. But no competition,” she teased, though is open to a Barbenheimer-style collaboration. “Can we get Zuck in Other Mommy, doing press together?”