Sarah Abbott and Benjamin Byron Davis share what it was like to step into Roth’s long-awaited vision and help bring its wild, unforgettable world to life.
Sarah Abbott’s jaw was on the floor, while Benjamin Byron Davis wondered whether the movie could be made at all. Their first reactions to the script for Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man were different, but both spoke to the ambition of what Roth had created.
For Abbott, who plays Lizzie, that ambition made her eager to step into a role unlike anything she had taken on before.
“I have never read a script or auditioned for a film like Ice Cream Man,” she tells SWAGGER. “I knew it was going to be crazy, but it made me so excited to dig into my character Lizzie.”
Davis, who portrays the mysterious Priest, initially wondered whether the film could be made at all. But having known Roth for decades, he also knew better than to underestimate him.
“When I first read the script, I thought, ‘How on earth is he going to do this? This is impossible. I don’t think this could be made,’” Davis says.
Davis initially believed Roth had sent him the screenplay simply to get his opinion, but soon learned that the role of the Priest was intended for him.
“I went from admiring the script to finding out I was going to get to dig into the script in about a two-hour case of whiplash,” Davis says.
The role gave Davis another opportunity to collaborate with Roth, his longtime friend. Having watched Roth transform ambitious ideas into finished projects throughout their friendship, Davis understood the determination it took to bring Ice Cream Man to the screen more than 20 years after it was first conceived.
“A lot of us talk about things that we intend to do, and they’re sort of half-baked ideas,” Davis says. “Eli is one of those rare folks that when he says he’s going to do something, he’s going to do it.”
Abbott could feel that commitment on set. In addition to directing and producing the film, Roth appears on screen as the father of its central family. Despite everything he was balancing, she remembers him remaining enthusiastic and open to ideas from the cast.
“He had so much on his plate, but he always had a smile on his face,” she says. “He was super open to collaboration and our ideas.”
That openness helped Abbott build Lizzie’s family dynamic with Roth, Karen Cliche and Charlie Zeltzer. In the dinner sequence they share, the four improvised extensively, allowing their family chemistry to develop naturally.
“Charlie is so good at improvising,” Abbott says. “He was so funny and so open. It made it easier for me to be super present.”
The role became considerably more demanding as filming progressed. Abbott performed most of her own stunts and drew on her competitive dance background for one particularly difficult physical sequence. To shape Lizzie’s movements in that sequence, she studied Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance in The Wolf of Wall Street.
“It was kind of a full-send moment,” she says. “Then we just tweaked it from there.”
Another sequence required Abbott to reach an intensely emotional place after a long day of physically demanding work. Despite the pressure, the scene was completed in a single take, and that performance appears in the finished film.
Although the day was exhausting, Abbott remembers it as one of her favourite days on set.
“I was like, I can’t believe this is my job,” she says. “I get to hang around with cool people, learn from all these amazing actors and do things you don’t normally get to do.”
Davis found a different entry point into the story. He immediately recognized the Priest as a familiar figure within supernatural horror: the keeper of the lore who understands why something terrible is happening and may possess the information the younger characters need to survive.
The role also helped him recognize a larger idea beneath the film’s blood and spectacle.
“An ice cream man is an icon. A schoolteacher is an icon. A priest is an icon,” Davis says. “All icons in a young person’s life.”
Each of those figures is granted a degree of trust because of the position they occupy. Davis believes Roth is examining what happens when those seemingly reliable foundations of childhood become threatening.
“What happens if these things that we are counting on as sort of bedrock truths of childhood get perverted?” he asks.
At the centre of that unease is Ari Millen as the Ice Cream Man, in a performance Davis describes as elegant, magnetic and deeply frightening.
“I think he’s created an icon with this character,” Davis says.
Abbott was not a major horror viewer before making the film, but the experience has encouraged her to explore more of the genre. She believes Ice Cream Man works because it never confines itself to a single tone.
“It’s so funny and so gory,” she says. “I just want people to have fun with it and be ready for the craziness.”
Davis is most excited to experience that craziness with an audience. Having initially watched the finished film alone at home, he hopes its theatrical release recreates the communal thrill he and Roth experienced as young horror fans sharing VHS tapes at sleepovers.
“If it endures in the way that those films did when we were young,” he says, “that would be a very fond wish granted for me.”
Ice Cream Man opens in theatres on August 7, 2026. Find a theatre near you and purchase tickets now through the official Ice Cream Man website.
