SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for “The Executioners,” the finale of “Cape Fear,” now streaming on Apple TV.
Nothing good ever happens on a houseboat in a “Cape Fear” adaptation — just ask Juliette Lewis.
In Martin Scorsese’s 1991 version — for which she was nominated for an Oscar at 18 years old — Lewis’ character Danielle was seduced, assaulted and terrorized on her family’s houseboat by Max Cady (Robert De Niro), a serial rapist who used her as a naive pawn to get revenge on her father (Nick Nolte), the lawyer who’d put him away. She survived that boat ride, but washes up on the banks of the titular North Carolina river with bumps, bruises, a bit of whiplash and a complete loss of her innocence.
Lewis, on the other hand, had a blast.
“That was so fun, which is probably weird to say, but it was because I was with Jessica Lange and De Niro, and they’re doing push-ups between scenes,” Lewis tells Variety. “We all did jumping jacks to get our heart rate up to play that terror. That’s where I cut my teeth, and I learned the tricks of the trade. I take what I learned from that movie, and it’s fed me my whole career.”
