Here's How Badly Winona Wanted to Be in Beetlejuice Sequel

The Venice Film Festival kicks off for the 81st time Wednesday night with the world premiere of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Tim Burton's sequel brings back several key players from his 1988 original, including Michael Keaton, Catherine O'Hara, and Winona Ryder as Lydia, a widowed mother to daughter Jenna Ortega (Justin Theroux, Willem Dafoe, and Monica Bellucci also join the cast).

"I'm not out to do a big sequel for money," Burton said in advance of the premiere. "I wanted to make this for very personal reasons." The AP reports Burton said he had become disillusioned with the film industry, and "I just realized if I'm going to do anything again, I just wanted to do it from my heart. Something that I wanted to do. It's a bit like the Lydia character. Sometimes your life takes a little bit of a turn, you go down a different path. I sort of lost myself a little bit." As for Ryder, she always hoped her own path would take her back to the role of Lydia.

In an interview with Esther Zuckerman for the Los Angeles Times, Ryder explains that when she joined the cast of Stranger Things—which is wrapping up its final season—she put language in her contract that dictated that if a Beetlejuice sequel ever happened, she would get the needed time off from the Netflix show to participate. That there would be one was far from a sure thing. "She says she was shocked when there was finally a script," writes Zuckerman. (Read the full interview, which has great nuggets, like Ryder naming the two actors she exchanges handwritten letters with.)