Halloween writer Danny McBride was too scared to meet Michael Myers on set

For more on Halloween, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands now, or buy it here. Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

Eastbound & Down star Danny McBride has loved horror movies since he was a kid, which is one of the reasons director David Gordon Green tapped him to write the script for the new Halloween (out Oct. 19) with the filmmaker and a third scribe, Jeff Fradley.

“Always a horror fan,” McBride tells EW. “I think any kid that grew up in the ’80s, that was the best section to walk through in the video store, just like looking at all those movie cover boxes and trying to figure out which one you could convince your parents to let you rent that weekend.”

But McBride freaked out when stuntman-actor James Jude Courtney arrived on the set of Halloween for the first time dressed as masked killer Michael Myers. In fact, he was so unnerved by the presence of “the Shape” that he refused the opportunity to meet with Courtney.

“That day, they were testing the mask [with] James for the very first time,” says McBride. “They weren’t even shooting with him. They had brought the mask onto set and were doing lighting tests inside the house. We creeped in early to see that… and there he was at the end of the hallway, just sort of lit from a little bit of light coming in from a bedroom shining on the Shape standing at the end of this hallway, just looking at us. We were all like, ‘That’s incredible! I don’t want to go back there. I know what happens when you go back there!'”