DAYS’s Stacy Haiduk Co-Stars in First Project with Her Daughter

OConnor- Arroyo/AFF-USA.com / MEGA

All In The Family: Stacy Haiduk (Kristen, Days of our Lives , l.) with daughter Sophia Tatum.

Stacy Haiduk ( Kristen , Days of our Lives ) and her only child, actress Sophia Tatum ( Riverdale , Samaritan ), take their mother-daughter act on the road in Brand New Cadillac . The horror comedy centers on a vampire mom and her serial killer daughter, who embark on a killing spree through the desert hunting for their next meal and victim.

Passion Project

“We have a feature script, but because it was Sophia’s and my first time directing together, we thought it would be best for our vision to be seen,” explains Haiduk about the project. “So we made this conception piece to send to investors. We made it as a short, so that it would have a beginning, middle, and the end. The producer thought it would be nice to get it into a couple festivals, and so here we are. It got accepted to Screamfest, a cool horror festival, which I'm really, really excited about.”

Haiduk describes Brand New Cadillac as “a comedy horror with heart. It's got all these different layers in it, because it [centers on] a relationship between a mother and daughter that has been estranged for a long time. The daughter comes into her mother’s life this one week that she needs to feed, and she has to basically collect her food for her. There's a very specific way they have to collect that food, because they don't want to draw attention to themselves. So it's a very creative,” admits Haiduk with a laugh. “The week doesn't turn out the way that Mommy had hoped it would. Let me put it that way.”

The short film is the first time Haiduk and Tatum have shared the screen together. “This is why I wanted to work with her,” says Haiduk. “Sophia had just done Samaritan and I was like, ‘Before you even go anywhere, I want to work with you. I want to make a movie together.’ My idea was just a simple road trip that would be cheap. We could do it together and have fun. But she was like, ‘It has to have blood, Mom. It has to have a lot of blood.’ So up went the budget. We had to take it outside. We shot some of it at our house, and then we shot out in the desert in a Cadillac. We did it a little over a year ago. I think it was June, when it was at the hottest point. We went shooting in Palmdale, and it was like 109 in that convertible Cadillac. It was so hot and so miserable, but it was good.”

The concept of the film began with Haiduk’s original road trip idea and was coupled with Tatum’s desire that it include blood. Then it was handed over to Haiduk’s husband — Sophia’s dad, Bradford Tatum, who wrote the script. “He was like, ‘Well, what is a road trip movie with blood?’ We went through two years of trying to figure it out. And then one day he got an idea, and that was a year ago... about six months before we shot the short. He said, ‘Here's the script.’”

Haiduk and her daughter began reading it and contributing notes. “It was really a pleasant work situation, because we would just go into the office, pound out the story, and discuss the scenes we wanted,” recounts Haiduk. “I wanted it to have some fun. There's a few horror movies that I really like, but they're more fun. They're not just the slash or kill kind of story. You can laugh and giggle as well as feel uncomfortable. I wanted to see that as well as the suspense and the blood.”

When all was said and done, Haiduk was quite pleased with the results. “It's a little family film,” she proudly notes. “My husband wrote it, and Sophia and I are starring in it and co-directing it. And we all loved working together.”

Brand New Cadillac premiered at Screamfest Horror Film Festival at the TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, October 13.