Tiffany Shepis was 15 years old when she got her first role as a bodyguard in the 1996 horror-comedy Tromeo and Juliet. Ditching school to attend the audition (and lying about her nonexistent prowess in jiu-jitsu), Shepis says she had no idea this was the start of a 27-year career in which she’d appeared in nearly 100 titles, including Sharknado 2, Victor Crowley, and The Violent Kind.
Shepis will appear as a celebrity guest at Horror Realm, a three-day horror convention that, from Fri., March 1 to Sun., March 3, will assemble horror actors, enthusiasts, and vendors at the Crowne Plaza Hotel & Suites Pittsburgh South in Bethel Park. Shepis was one of the convention's first guests at the inaugural Horror Realm in 2009, and she's been attending on and off every year since.
"[Shepis] fell into that category that they call the ‘scream queen.’ And when we started Horror Realm, she was the scream queen at the time," Rich Dalzotto, co-founder of Horror Realm, tells Pittsburgh City Paper. "She went above and beyond just being a celebrity guest and has been a real friend of the show — and she's a lover of Pittsburgh."
Ahead of Horror Realm 2024, City Paper caught up with Shepis to discuss horror's existential themes, the Pittsburgh aesthetic, George Romero, and more.
Let's take a quick look at your career between the ‘90s with movies like Tromeo and Juliet and more recent performances in Tar (2020) and Deathcember (2019). In your opinion, how have the themes explored in horror movies changed from the ‘90s to today? What practical effect has this had on you as an actor in terms of roles and technique?
I always felt there's stuff in the world that's so dark. At the end of the day, you still have to go and pay your bills and worry about how you're going to put the kids through school or worry about healthcare. Whatever that is, there is a really fun, cool, cathartic release in horror movies because, you know, it comes to an end after an hour and a half. No matter how dark it is, it's going to stop. I just think the themes change.
Many of the artists and actors I've met hate labeling themselves, though when you look up Tiffany Shepis, you can't avoid the term “scream queen.” What does that term mean to you, and does the 90s horror movie culture it came out of still exist today?
I love the term scream queen. I was really honored when, I believe, Jewel Shepard, a famous scream queen from the ‘80s, coined me that originally in a Timeout magazine article, and I was like, “Oh my god, like, she called me scream queen.”
A long time ago, you had to have the press coin you that. Now, a lot of people self-title themselves, and it's sort of become easier and easier with the YouTube generation or Instagram fame. But I held it as a badge of honor that people were lumping me in with the likes of Brinke Stevens and Linnea Quigley.
Pittsburgh has George Romero's corn syrup-and-red-dye blood running through its veins, with the city and surrounding area serving as the set for Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, and Creepshow. Can you tell me what draws you every year to Pittsburgh and why you think it inspired Romero's gothic imagination?
The aesthetic. This may sound offensive, but [Pittsburgh] has a creepy vibe ... There's a very cool horror movie aesthetic with a bit of a gloom to the skies that you're like, “Damn, I want to go hang out at a creepy cemetery here and make a movie.”
It's reminiscent of me being a teenager wanting to hang out at cool abandoned places and make scary movies and meet really awesome friends that are going to help me fight zombies all my way through it.
I understand that you've been a part of Horror Realm since it started in 2009. What space do these conventions serve for people in the horror movie industry and fan base? What about just lay people?
Who doesn't love Halloween — I mean, you find somebody who hates Halloween, though they're super weird. Everybody loves Halloween. So this is a chance to have Halloween all year long, bust out that costume early.
More often than not, you find somebody going, “Man, I never knew [Horror Realm] existed.” “What a great time.” “These people are so nice and so cool.” And, “Holy shit, I got to meet Ernie Hudson, or I got to meet the guy from Rob Zombie's movies,” or “Oh, there's Tiffany Shepis; she was in Sharknado! How neat!"
What do you have scheduled this year for Horror Realm, and how can Delta Delta Die-hard fans get the chance to meet you?
I'll be there all weekend. I believe they have me set up doing a panel where basically we'll just rehash the same things we just talked about in this interview with fan questions. There's that, there's professional photo ops.
What I really like at shows like Horror Realm, which is kind of neat, you'll find all of these actors and filmmakers mostly just hanging out at the restaurants and the bars after. I'm not necessarily saying to run up and interrupt their spaghetti dinner, but it's kind of fun that it's not just “Oh, come see us behind this table.” It's like everyone's there just doing the same thing.
