Midnight Mass Star Kate Siegel Reveals Show's Big Connection to Mike Flanagan's Hush

Midnight Mass dropped on Netflix this weekend, and it marks the third horror series by Mike Flanagan to hit the streaming service. Midnight Mass features many familiar faces from The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, including Flanagan's wife, Kate Siegel. The actor has been featured in most of her husband's projects, including Oculus, Hush, Ouija: Origin of Evil, and Gerald's Game. In fact, some of those films have a surprising connection to Midnight Mass. Siegel stars in Hush as a writer who is the author of a book titled Midnight Mass. The book is also seen in the lake house belonging to Carla Gugino's character, another frequent Flanagan collaborator, in Gerald's Game. Recently, Siegel spoke with Pop Culturist about the connection between Midnight Mass and Hush.  

"The first time I heard about Midnight Mass was when we were making Hush. Because it was a low-budget movie, we needed a story that Maddie, the main character could write- she's an author in the story. We needed a book that wouldn't cost us any money. We didn't have to buy the rights to anything. Mike was like, 'Oh, I have this now-defunct idea for a novel called Midnight Mass. I have three chapters written. We can use that so we can use those pages, and we can use that story," Siegel explained.

She continued, "We used it. If you look, there's a screengrab in Hush where you're looking at Maddie's computer screen and it says, 'The red and blue lights of the cop car twinkle off the Jesus fish.; That's the first shot of Midnight Mass, which is, for those of you who haven't read anything about it, a series about a small fishing community on an island that is very insular, and they have closed ranks. Then, a young priest arrives at the church and miracles begin to happen."

Siegel also recently spoke to ComicBook.com about the heavy subject matter of Midnight Mass.

"What I loved about it was the writing was such a support in that system, because even though I may not have the same beliefs as Erin, on the page, it was very clear that her belief made sense to her," Siegel shared. "I wasn't asked to make logical leaps that I didn't understand or tap into some emotionality that didn't exist. And so there's this sense that there are these huge, epic questions, like 'what's the meaning of life? What happens when we die? Where were we before we were born?' that everybody grapples with and everybody has a truly individual point of view on that. It's rare to ever get to be able to express that, and so I was just, mostly, Christmas-morning joyful to get a chance to tap into the consciousness."

Midnight Mass is now streaming on Netflix.