The Munsters, the latest film from Rob Zombie, is a far cry from his typically frightening output. Shifting away from his more horror-centric impulses, the reinvention of the classic monster-focused sitcom is a colorful love letter to the unabashedly silly source material. The film focuses largely on Herman (Jeff Daniel Phillips) and Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie), two sweet-natured goofy takes on classic monsters who quickly fall in love with one another in their home country of Transylvania.

It's an overtly silly film that leans into a broad form of comedy that gels with the material -- all delivered by a cast that is firmly aware of what they're doing and how to do it well. Ahead of The Munsters' Sept. 27 debut on Netflix and on home video, CBR spoke with Jeff Daniel Phillips about what it was like to step into the role of Herman Munster. He dove into the joys of starring in a Rob Zombie comedy instead of his traditional place in his horror films and the joys of going big with a film that could be accurately described as a live-action cartoon.

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CBR: Coming into this film, what was your relationship with The Munsters? Was it a show you watched at all growing up?

Jeff Daniel Phillips: I definitely grew up with it. I used to watch all the reruns. Rob and Dan Roebuck, they're Munsters historians. Those guys know every writer and every guest. I definitely watched as a kid, and I realized, as we started this production, I was like, "Wow, I really know this show. I remember this episode. I remember that one." When I was in Cub Scouts, you do a pinewood derby and have to carve a car... I don't know why I blocked it up, but I just remembered recently [that] I had made a coffin car. It was obviously lifting from The Munsters.

I think when you're the third child [in] the family, they don't take pictures of things as much, so I didn't even have a photo of it. I wish I did. I loved it. I'm from a blue-collar family. We identified with them. My father had that same lunchbox [as Herman]. You know, it was just funny. It's just a funny kind of way of looking at... we're the oddballs in the neighborhood.

Herman is such a sweet character. He's funny and likable -- and so, so silly. How did you find the balance between making him comically goofy without losing any of those likable edges the character needs?

So, in The Munsters TV show, Herman was more established. He was a father. He was an uncle. He was married. They lived in this house for a while. In this case, he was just created, so here's his brain trying to make this thing work. It's like his brain is used to driving a Ford Fiesta, and now he's in a GTO muscle car. So it is just like a big child... He's a little more, I guess, like a teenager just out of the gate. He's overconfident, and he's cocky.

So when he meets Lily, his life comes together, and he's ready to take on the world. So yeah, there is that childish wide-eyed element. He's a big baby man, but I think he's trying to figure it out as he goes, and hopefully, towards the end of the film, he kind of gets that. Hopefully, you see the evolution of somebody who was just created on a mad scientist's table, and now he's trying to take over Hollywood.

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You and Sheri Moon Zombie get to develop such a cute rapport in the film. What was it like finding that with her?

So I've done five films with Rob, and I've worked with Sheri a number of times, and obviously, in more extreme situations. As an actor, she is just always prepared and present and open. We kind of had the same feeling as far as our friendship -- we just wanted to make the scenes better. We wanted to make each other's performance better.

It's egoless. That's what I love about working with her because I really think it elevates the whole movie and the relationship. You believe that they care about each other, and we certainly do in real life, too. It helps to have that chemistry and have that history together, doing other films like Lords of Salem first.

Like you said, you've done a lot of work with Rob Zombie in the past, but this is an entirely different beast than most of his films. What was unique about this production?

[Rob Zombie] definitely has a great sense of humor. He's a very funny guy. I'm surprised he doesn't do more comedies, but yeah, we were all kind of amazed while we're making it. We were like, "When is somebody's head gonna get cut off?" We're there to make everybody laugh... I've done a bunch of stuff. I was the Geico Caveman for ten years. It's like, I had comedy experience on-stage -- and Dan, too. We all have our background.

So it was fun just to get the chance to do that and make people laugh and make each other crack up. It was obviously very strange. In my past, I've done tons of commercials when I would always kind of keep an eye out at the cameraman or the sound guy and see if I got a chuckle out of them. In this case, we were filming in Budapest, and everybody has a mask on and a face shield up, and you could just see two eyes.

I don't really think they understood a lot of what I'm saying. So it was tough to do comedy in that situation. It was just crickets -- except for Rob. I could just see him in the back by the monitor. and I think he's smiling. That's good. It was a trip. The people were super sweet, and the crew and the Hungarians, they really helped us a lot.

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the munsters - 2022 netflix original film directed by rob zombie

This film is so big and bombastic. It's got so much color and movement -- what is it like, as a performer, to essentially step into a live-action cartoon like this?

I think we all relished the idea that we were going to be able to do something like this. A lot of us, even like Richard Brake, for instance -- he's not known for being an over-the-top comedy guy, and you see his performance... I think he really enjoyed having that moment and that opportunity, like we all did, to go over the top and swing for the fences and be as physically comedic as we could.

For me in this muscle suit, on seven-inch heels, trying to make it as loose and cartoony as possible, we had a gas doing that. I mean, it was exhausting, but it was fun, and we took the challenge. Hopefully, it works. I've been out there promoting it at these conventions. One of the reoccurring comments I get at these cons is everybody said, "I used to watch this with my father and my grandfather and my mother, and I want to revisit that with them," or "I want to show this to my kids because I have such great memories of it." It's just about laughs. It's about hanging out with your loved ones. It's just a sweet ride and romance. It's a love letter to The Munsters, and we're just trying to bring it back. It's just family fun.

What would you say surprised you the most about Herman Munster over the course of production?

That's a tough one... I started directing [the comedy] towards a vaudeville delivery, you know? More like Bob Hope or something like that. That kind of helped guide me and how [Herman] spoke and how he would react. I felt like it was always like a vaudevillian thing that I didn't know I was going to rely on as much... I didn't know [it was] going to be as big and cartoony. I thought it was going to be more like Groucho Marx or some kind of quick-witted thing.

Just marrying those two with this group of people, I just felt like it really came to life. It wasn't as stagey as I thought. Sometimes when you watch the TV show, it's a certain type of acting. We definitely pushed it like that, too... I can only hope that people really believe that Herman loves Lily. He really wants to try to make a family and lead them to the promised land. I guess I didn't expect it to seem as real as it was.

I guess that would be the thing. I was thinking more from an actor's perspective, and while we started doing it, you just kind of fall into that world and were surrounded by that, and I think also the fact that it was so isolating... We lived in it for months because we couldn't interact with the people. It was during lockdowns. There was a curfew. All the restaurants were closed. We were in a bubble for three months, so we all became a family... It's just like, wow, we really did it. We really pulled this off.

The Munsters debuts on Netflix and on Home-Video on Sept. 27.