Nearly 25 years later, Tyra Banks had one very clear feeling about Halloween: Resurrection: absolutely not. The model and actor said the 2002 horror sequel remained one of her least favorite career moves.
Banks initially rejected the Halloween franchise role. An agent changed her mind by pointing to Josh Hartnett’s career after Halloween H20, making the sequel seem like a shortcut to bigger things.
Tyra Banks says she wasn’t sold on joining the ‘Halloween’ franchise
Entertainment Weekly asked Banks if she looked back fondly on making Halloween: Resurrection. Her answer left little room for nostalgia. “No,” Banks said. “Not even a little bit. Like, not even a tiny bit.” She explained that she wanted acting roles that felt different from modeling.
Her agent argued that Hartnett had landed Halloween H20 before his career took off. Banks eventually agreed, hoping the eighth Halloween movie could give her a similar boost. “So I was like, yeah, okay, this is going to do it for me,” she recalled. Unfortunately, the movie delivered neither the career launch nor the death scene she expected.
Banks played Nora, a producer documenting teenagers trapped inside Michael Myers’ childhood home. The film followed the group as they tried to escape the killer during a live internet streaming show. Nora did die, but the movie cut the full sequence. Viewers only saw a brief shot of her body, while the deleted scene later circulated online.
Banks found that especially frustrating because she expected the death to become a memorable horror moment. Instead, she joked that she was “promised the career of Josh Hartnett, of an actor, and promised an iconic death scene that will last forever, and neither of them happened.” That left her with one lingering complaint. “So, I have beef with Halloween 8!” she told the publication.
Halloween: Resurrection was not Banks’ only major screen credit. She appeared in Higher Learning in 1995 before starring in Coyote Ugly and Life-Size in 2000. She later returned for Life-Size 2 and took television roles in The Tyra Banks Show, America’s Next Top Model and Bel-Air. She also appeared as a recurring judge on Project Runway.
Still, the Halloween franchise remained one chapter Banks was happy to leave behind.
