The Point Radio: SALEM’S Wickedly Talented Janet Montgomery

Janet Montgomery is back as the devious witch Mary Sibley in a new season of SALEM from WGN AMERICA, Janet talks about the upcoming Witch War and how it shakes up the show. Plus, more goosebumps from the guys on GHOST ASYLUM from Destination America. Their second season may be terrifying, but they tell stories of the things that happened off camera that will really haunt your dreams.

We are back in just a few days with a look at the new season of SYFY’s werewolf drama, BITTEN. Be sure to follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Transcript

The Point Radio. It's my grab. I got to say it's more like the day before Halloween than the day after Easter. As we talk to Jenna Montgomery, star of the hit series Salem, and she reveals a couple of very terrifying things on the way this season there.

Plus the guys from Ghost Asylum are back, and what really scared them? Well, you'll find out here. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio.

Get The Point Radio. The WGN America's supernatural thriller Salem is back for a second season, and at the head of the cast again is actress Jenna Montgomery, playing the deadliest of witches, Mary Sibley. For those who may have missed the first season or aren't aware of the series,

Jenna was happy to fill us in. Yes, it's a show that's set in 1600 in Salem, and the Puritan Society, there's one girl called Mary, the indigenous Puritan Society, who gets pregnant out of wedlock. And her lover, John Alden, played by Shane West,

he goes off to fight in the war, and she's left pregnant, and the only way she can turn, because in Puritan Society, out of wedlock being pregnant, she would have been like on the outskirts of society and treated like a leper, she decides to return to witchcraft, which she's introduced to by Pichiba,

and she sacrifices this child in the woods. And then there's no going back from there, she believes that her lover is dead, and she sacrificed her child, and then she starts, over that seven years, she becomes less in touch with the human side of herself

and more in touch with the witch side, and then John Alden comes back, and throughout the season, you really saw Mary's, the conflict inside Mary, but what she was fighting for, being a witch, and then the human side, the love that she had for John Alden coming through,

so I think it's like an interesting character's play. So where do we find her character Mary this season? Interesting enough, you find her in a very similar situation to the beginning of the first season. Again, she believes John Alden is dead,

she is being forced to sort of complete the grand light, and she has not a choice really, because now she has her son back, the finale of the last season, they gave her her son back, she's doing everything now, all her love is for him, and to find a world in which she can live with him,

and create this world, and so that's her driving force now, it all comes from the love of her son. All right, so Mary's a badass for sure, but like so many other anti-heroes from Cable, like Jax Teller and Walter White,

she manages to walk a very gray line, at least the way that Jennifer trays her, and I ask if that was something they worked on intentionally. Yeah, I think so, I think that was something that me and the show creator, !

We discussed a lot, I think that it's rare to see a woman in a role that's so complicated, because people like to label things, and I think if you have a female character who's not been doing things that are morally wrong, it's easiest to be like,

oh, you hate her, so we really wanted to make sure that you found that you sympathized with Mary, and understood why she was doing what she was doing, and I think this season, a new edition of her character, a character called Hawthorne, he's like a really nasty puritan,

who talks to women in an awful way. He's sort of a new villain in a way, you kind of understand what, you just want Mary to kill him, you're like, go on Mary, just kill him, you can't help but want someone to do it.

There's season, some new cast editions of the show too. We do, yeah, we've got the lovely Lucy Lawless, all the way from New Zealand, she plays this incredibly powerful witch who is a blood witch who's much more experienced than Mary,

she's been around for centuries, and unfortunately for Marburg, Lucy Lawless's character, she needs Mary, so you know she wants to just kill her, and she could if she wanted to, she could just kill her, but she needs Mary at this point,

so these two characters absolutely hate each other, but they can't do anything about each other, so it's an interesting dynamic. We have Stuart Townsend, who joined the cast as well, and Joe Doyle.

Before Salem, Janet had some great roles, including dancing on the edge, and in the Human Targets series as well, a couple of years back. I ask her if the types of roles she chooses,

strong women who are pretty much never a damsel in distress, is something that she's been working on. I think that for me personally, where I'm at, there's, I want to sort of inspire women, and it doesn't really interest me so much,

playing sort of like a girlfriend type, or a weak female character at the moment, and that just is not something that appeals to me. I also don't think that people would buy it, I don't know if I can pay that,

because it can't cost you ballsing. Alright, so with a solid acting path like this, any chance you'd like to produce your own material, write or direct? I would love to create my own material,

and the more I work in television, the more I really see how awesome it is. There's so many great television shows, and so I've had so many ideas for other shows, stories that I would like to tell,

so definitely in the future I would love to start creating shows, telling more stories, rather than just acting on other people's stories, maybe telling my own stories, that would be awesome. And as far as your dream role?

I would love to do, I would love to play Lady Macbeth at some point in my life, and that's something that's always been a dream of mine, so I would love to play Lady Macbeth, I would also love to play Sally Gold in Cabaret,

so can I have two? I'd love to do both of those. Please let me have two. Don't make me choose. Janna Montgomery stars in new episodes of Salem

every Sunday on WGN America, and you can see more too at WGNamerica.com. Alright, so Fast and Furious number one in the box office, that's a no-brainer, but what else is going on in pop culture? Come July, it's Wedding Bells in the valued universe

with a special wedding issue of XO Man of War. In July, number 38 will hit the comic store, so it'll be an oversized 48-page issue that'll feature the special matrimonial story written by Robert Vendetti as well.

There'll be lots of special events surrounding it, including a main wrap-around cover, some variant covers, and a blank invitation variant cover as well, but check with your retailer for that one. Rumors of that Full House reboot just won't go away,

but right now Netflix isn't saying anything, even though it was reported that that would be the home for the new series, which would be called Fuller House, and star original cast members Candace Cameron and Andrea Barber as well.

Reports of Dave Coulier, Bob Saget, and John Stamos would be involved, and Stamos supposedly is a producer on the series, but again, no official word from Netflix. Move over, Karaoke, it looks like Lip Sync

may be the next big thing. The series' premiere of Spike's Lip Sync Battle has delivered some 2.2 million viewers, making it the most watched reality series debut in that network's history.

That, of course, was the episode with Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Jimmy Fallon as well. More stars are jumping on board as Lip Sync Battle continues weekly on Spike. Time for the Muppet Show to be brought back.

It looks like ABC feels the same way with a project that involves Bill Prady from The Big Bang Theory co-writing a script for a possible straight-to-series variety show. At least this is according to The Hollywood Reporter.

No word yet on when officially it would begin production, but ABC and Muppet Studios are both involved as producing partners. WWE Studios is now partnering with independent British film production company, Rich Water Films,

and doing a partnership to co-produce and co-finance two upcoming features, the first of which will be called The Eliminators. It will be directed by James Nunn. It stars action star Scott Adkins

and WWE superstar Bad News Barrett as well. And that's getting set to go before the cameras with production to begin early in the summer. The point, the point. Time for season two of Destination America's

Terrifying It series, Ghost Asylum starring paranormal investigators Chris Smith and Scott Porter, who form a group called the Tennessee Wraith Chasers and find themselves poking around in asylums,

prisons, and a lot of other places that sensible people shouldn't go. Chris told me about how they got started in all this in the first place. You know, it's a funny story. We all had different paranormal experiences, but the way we got started is I was on a show called Ghost Hunters Academy.

It was on with the Ghost Hunters guys. And when I was on that show, I did pretty, you know, really well. And they were like, hey, Chris, when you get back home, you need to go find a local paranormal team and join, you know, get some more experience in here.

But I was like, okay. So I went home. I started looking around at some of these websites and paranormal investigators that were locally formed. And, you know, they just, they weren't my kind of people. And when I say that, it wasn't that I was judging them for who they were.

It was just everybody just seemed like they were so set in their way. And they took their stuff a little too seriously. And, you know, we were very passionate about paranormal. But here, we see, if anybody watches the show, we like to cut up. We don't take ourselves too seriously.

And I wanted that camaraderie. I wanted people from different walks of life. So I decided I am going to start my own thing. So basically, you know, Dewey, my co-founder, you know, I know each other from way back.

And we were talking one day. He saw me on that show. He was like, hey, you know, I didn't know you were into this. I was like, I didn't know you were into this. So we kind of started Ghost-Sudden together. And then along came Porter, then my brother, and then

you know, the production company noticed us. And we're like, hey, you guys think about making a non-scripted Dewey show? And we're like, hey, let's do it. So it's all history from there. So this season, even more terrifying? Well, that's what they promised.

And Chris pretty much explained that that's going to be true. Well, man, well, we're hitting a plethora of different buildings. You know, last season, we were restricted only to asylum. This year, we're doing prisons. We're doing mills, forts.

We're even going to the Bell Witch Cave in Adams, Tennessee. So I mean, we've kind of spread out a little bit other than the pl I mean, it's really opening things up for us. And just the amount of energy and trauma that was left behind that some of these places endured.

I mean, it's still stuck there in the wall. And according to Porter, the most terrifying thing so far this season is Oh, wow. I'm going to tell you what, man, they're all terrifying. I mean, like Chris said, this season, we're doing some of the most horrifying, most haunted

places in the nation. I would have to say some of the prisons. You know, we went up to Moundsville and Mansfield Reformatory. And I mean, you go in there and just think of all the negative energy that was in there and everything that happened.

I mean, those places, they were horrific in life and they're horrific in death now, too. Chris and Porter, neither one are lightweights, but they both had a couple experiences that pretty much left them. Well, shall we say just a little scared? Chris begins with his story.

Oh, man, I've got a good story for you. I'll try to make it quick. But we were investigating a free Civil War home. This has been a couple of years before we started doing the show. And the guy was renovating it because that was a paranormal activity.

We went in there. We got some great stuff. And I left that night feeling like, you know, something was in my back seat. I can't explain it, but it felt like something followed me. At that time, I drove a Ford Explorer.

And on the back of the glass, I had our website, our phone number, all of our information, you know, all those, all people, what we did. And you know, for months there, I just had that feeling that something was back there. I can't explain it. I've never had it since.

I would be driving off for a walk at night and just get a cue down my spine. I'd keep looking at my rear view, thinking I was going to see something. Well, I drove that car back and forth to work, like I said. And one day we get this email from this lady who claims that she's a psychic. And she was like, hey, I saw your car on the interstate.

I went to your website. I checked it out. I think what you guys are doing is really cool. But she said, be careful. There's something in your back seat.

And for Porter, you know, it's, it's, it's, you know, mine's not as extraordinary as Chris is there. I mean, where somebody else saw it. But, you know, I mean, when I first started doing this, you know, you, you, you have an idea of what it's going to be like.

You know, you think I'm going to go into these dark places and I'm going to use these night vision cameras and I'm going to listen to this audio and, you know, and something may rattle, something may knock or something may move across in front of me and, and all of that. But we were investigating a hospital here in Tennessee and I had never been touched

by something that I couldn't see before. And so I was at this hospital, I was in the pharmacy and was trying to elicit some inner action and trying to collect evidence and nothing was really happening. You know, it was kind of just, it was, it was kind of dead. No pun intended.

And so as I was wrapping up and saying, you know, okay, well, if you're not going to, you know, talk to me, I'm going to get out of here. I felt something touch my shoulder and it wasn't just a touch. It was, I could literally feel the thumb hit the back of my shoulder. And then I held, I felt all four fingers individually, the index finger, middle finger,

ring finger, pinky finger land on the front of my shoulder. And so I spun around thinking it was one of the guys and there was nobody there. It was just a wall. So you know, that was the, that was really probably the first time that, that I had a physical interaction and it scared the bejesus out of me.

Goes to silent season two right now with new episodes every Sunday on Destination America and see more at destinationamerica.com. That does it for right now. We're back and on the agenda. First a look at Bitten returning to the sci-fi network for another new season and actress

Jo Beth Williams, who for decades is entertain us, talks about her new series as well. All that and more waiting for you on websites like ComicMix.com, michaeldavisworld.com, give the point radio.com and the iTunes podcast directory as well. On Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were easy to find. Just look for the point radio.

And then look for us right back here in a few days.