Oliver Jackson-Cohen Talks ‘Haunting Of Hill House 2,’ Says Creator Mike Flangan ‘Knocked It Out Of The Park

Oliver Jackson-Cohen, who plays the titular character in The Invisible Man, says that The Haunting of Hill House director Mike Flanagan has “knocked it out of the park” with the second installment of the Netflix anthology series. The British actor stopped by Yahoo Entertainment to talk about what’s in store when The Haunting of Bly Manor drops on the streaming service later this year.

For those not familiar, The Haunting of Hill House was quite possibly the biggest thing on Netflix in 2018. The show was tacitly based on the 1959 novel by Shirley Jackson. Indeed, the only real connection between the source material and the Netflix series was that the show and movie both took place in a creepy old haunted mansion. That, and show creator Mike Flanagan snuck in several sly references to the book and its author, such as in the names of characters.

Apart from being well-written, well-acted, and intensely scary, the show was also popular with viewers who loved poring over every pixel of every frame, looking for hidden ghosts in the background, or for elements that foreshadow something that happens elsewhere in the series, or other Easter eggs.

Fans are hoping that the second installment of the series, The Haunting of Bly Manor, will bring more of the same.

Reuniting most of the main Hill House cast for the second go-around, Bly Manor promises to be based on the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw.

Whether or not Flanagan intends to stick to the source material this time, or whether he intends to use the source material simply as a starting point, as he did with Hill House, remains to be seen. Also unclear is whether or not this second outing in the horror anthology series will be another gift to the fans, filled with the same sort of references and Easter eggs that were hallmarks of the first.

Jackson-Cohen will be returning to the anthology series, this time as a “charming fellow” named Peter.

Other than the fact that he’s going to be in the show, Jackson-Cohen isn’t saying much about the second anthology. He does tell fans, however, that Flanagan brought his A-game for his next effort.

“Mike has knocked it outta the park. It’s pretty phenomenal what he’s done,” Jackson-Cohen said.

He also noted that neither he nor any of his cast mates had any idea, at the time, how big of a deal Hill House would become.

“It’s weird because Hill House [S1] we did, and we had no concept of how massive the show would become,” he said.

The Invisible Man hits theaters Thursday; The Haunting of Bly Manor is expected on Netflix some time later this year.