There was some bad juju on the set of Lee Daniels’ latest film The Redemption — even with some intensive prayer circles.

After reading what happened on the set of The Exorcist And PoltergeistDaniels decided to have a real delivery person on the set of his Netflix film, the director revealed in a new town hall interview hosted by SiriusXM’s Bevy Smith. Despite his efforts, several bad things still happened, from his star being hospitalized to his dog dying.

“Things happen, and I wasn’t going to allow things to happen on my set, and I needed it for myself, too,” Daniels explained. “And so we prayed for every — and there are people who don’t believe in prayer.”

While Daniels admitted that the prayer was “really beautiful and I think we needed it,” there were still some unfortunate incidents.

“And even with that, there were still things that happened on set that — my sister is my good luck charm on every movie I’ve ever done, and she was in the scene with Glenn in the chemo scene, and she’s the one who kind of gave her attitude in the chemo scene,” Daniels said. “And two days later, after she was in the chemo scene, she was diagnosed with lung cancer — literally. My dog ​​died on set.”

The horror film’s stars — Glenn Close, Mo’Nique, Andra Day and Demi Singleton — were also on hand for the interview. Mo’Nique reminded her director that she also had to go to the hospital during the making of the film, which follows a family in Indiana who discover strange, demonic events that convince them and their community that their house is actually a portal to hell.

“Mr. Daniels had me do a scene, okay? And we’re outside,” Mo’Nique explained when asked what led to her hospitalization. “It was just, the demon was supposed to be on top of the building, so they kept blowing this — I mean, at one point I was like, ‘Lee, have we got this s— because I can’t breathe.’ They kept blowing. He was like, ‘One more time. One more time.’ So when I got done, my thyroid was big, I mean, it was just sick. Oh, baby. I was like, ‘What the s— is this?’ There was all this stuff going on with The Redemption.”

Whether it worked or not, the prayer circles were an interesting part of the experience for Close, who admitted it was the first time she had been seen “praying in a circle on set.”

“Yeah, with someone, with the savior who spoke in tongues sometimes,” she admitted. “I thought it was amazing, it was unbelievable, but (Lee) said, ‘Okay, we’re going to pray now. Does anybody want to come? We’re going to do it now.’ You know, so everybody knew what we were doing, and they could choose to come or not, and it didn’t matter.”

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