“I was the weird girl in the library with the librarian who has hair down to her butt [and] never talked to me,” saysAngela Sarafyanwhen asked about her high school experience, during which she attests that she was a “nerd” and a “loner.” “I’m still a loner, actually. I spend a lot of time by myself. When people ask me [if I have friends], I go, yeah, like three in the world […] and they’re all loners, too.”
The subject comes up because we’re talking about Sarafyan’s new filmKing Knight, a comedy from Richard Bates Jr. that finds Thorn Adams (Criminal Minds’s Matthew Gray Gubler) being exiled by his coven of witches — he and Sarafyan’s Willow serve as the married high priest and priestess of the group — and attending his high school reunion in order to confront his, interestingly, self-proclaimed shameful past as a popular jock. Indeed, true to Bates' other work,King Knightis set in a heightened reality and, in this world, being a former Prom King and voted “Most Likely to Succeed” aren’t things to be proud of. In fact, they’re the very secrets that, once unearthed, get Thorn kicked out of his coven and subsequently send him on a journey of self-reconciliation.
“I was in a fitting for [season 3 of]Westworld,” says Sarafyan, recalling the moment she first received the script forKing Knight. “My brother was also there, and I got an email from Ricky. I asked my brother, ‘Would you do me a favor and read the script while I’m doing the fitting?’ He started reading it, and he [thought it] was really good.” Once Sarafyan was finally able to get her hands on the script herself, she was practically hooked. “I had never seen humor like that before. I was laughing. I was like, ‘This is kind of ridiculous.’ It was so funny.”
What’s especially remarkable is that, prior toKing Knight, Bates had built his career on horror films likeExcision(2012), which tells the story about an outcast aspiring med-student who fulfills her (increasingly) violent psychosexual fantasies, andTone Deaf(2019), wherein a Millennial woman rents a country housefrom an old-fashioned widower with psychopathic tendencies. Though there isalmost always a degree of comedy— and, in some cases, absurdity — in his films, they are foremost horror features.Speaking to Forbes, Bates says the idea forKing Knightcame about from a need of “something to sort of remind myself kind of how much fun making movies is.”
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On Jumping Immediately From Westworld to King Knight
“I reached out to [Richard] right after [reading the script] and said, ‘Yeah, let’s talk about this. Let’s do this,’ which was, I believe, on a Tuesday, and then I got into fittings on Friday / Saturday, and, [on] Monday, we started filming,” Sarafyan says of how quickly she went from the high-stakes, sci-fi realm ofWestworld, whichreturns to HBO Max for its fourth seasonlater this year, to the intimate space ofKing Knight. “It was a very quick turnaround, but it was great. Such a cool experience.”
Indeed,King Knightwas shot speedily in nine days, and Sarafyan had to jump into Willow’s world in such a short amount of time. “We had one rehearsal — Ricky, Matthew, and I. And Matthew is such a funny actor, like he’s really got a great sense of humor,” the actress says. “I had one rehearsal where we were finding who Willow was. Matthew and I [were] reading and Ricky was listening, and then something clicked like, ‘Oh, that’s it!’ I felt like I was being guided by both Ricky and Matthew.”
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On How Playing It Straight is the Key to King Knight’s Comedy
When it comes toKing Knight, the comedy is in the script. What’s striking is the juxtaposition of the coven experiencing intense feelings of betrayal when Thorn’s past comes to light with the absurdity of their dialogue. The morning after Willow uncovers Thorn’s secrets, for example, she breaks down, heartbroken that the Thorn she had previously known and love was actually an Abercrombie-wearing overachiever named Thorton. “You might as well have been named Chad,” she says, clutching a sword for protection as tears run down her face.
“I played it straight. I played it like it’s real,” Sarafyan says. “Usually with people like me, comedy comes from the truth, so I was just playing the truth of what that betrayal is. But [the cast] all were so touching. I was so touched by their work and laughing at the same time because it was so sincere [but] ridiculous.”
When asked ifKing Knightignited a desire to do more comedy, the actress said: “Yes, definitely.” This isn’t, of course, to say Sarafyan is a stranger to the genre. In 2011, she starred alongside comedy legends like Jason Sudeikis, Will Forte, and Nick Kroll inA Good Old Fashioned Orgy. “A lot of people in my life think I’m funny [in the sense that] I’m quirky, I’m klutzy. I say things that seem very real to me but [are] absurd to other people, so I feel like there is space for my dryness. I tend to deliver things in a single tone, and I think there’s a world [onscreen] where I can kind of bring that to films and television, and tell stories.”
“I love comedies,” Sarafyan says. “It’s really funny, the timing of [King Knight] because it’s been a very difficult two years” — here, she’s referencing the pandemic — “and I find that there’s so much heart and love in this story. So, for me, that’s the kind of movie I want to do as well. I want to bring joy to people if I can.”
(King Knightis available in select theaters and on demand / digital August 18, 2025.)
