“Rosemary’s Baby” tells the chilling story of an aging coven of witches who recruit a frustrated young actor, Guy Woodhouse, to let Satan conceive a child with his wife, Rosemary, in exchange for stardom.
The original 1967 novel by Ira Levin — and 1968 film by Roman Polanski — were set in New York, but NBC’s two-part “Rosemary’s Baby” movie, airing in May, has been moved to Paris and a beautiful apartment building in the posh 16th arrondissement.
That’s not the only change. Rosemary is not the Irish Catholic character played by Mia Farrow. She is now played by Latina actress Zoe Saldana (“Avatar”). Her husband, Guy, is played by Patrick J. Adams (“Suits”), and he’s a teacher at the Sorbonne.
The story is set in 2014. Making a contemporary “Rosemary’s Baby” presents several challenges, most of them associated with the movie’s legendary status. Speaking from the Paris set of the film, Saldana tells The Post that she wasn’t interested in recreating Farrow’s performance.
“Mia Farrow did do a very beautiful job. She was also playing a woman of that era, who was much more innocent,” she says. “Had I played Rosemary like that, I don’t think a lot of women would identify with that.”
Rosemary and Guy move to Paris from the US to put a painful episode behind them, and seem every inch the wide-eyed, innocent couple when they fall into the clutches of the Castevets (Jason Isaacs, Carole Bouquet), the meddlesome neighbors played so memorably in the movie by Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon.
“They’re fresh-faced Americans who appear to be happy-go-lucky, but deep down there’s this weakness that they both have which is she wants to be a mother. She might be willing to do anything,” Saldana says. “Guy’s a frustrated writer trying to make a name for himself.”
Their fortunes start to change once Rosemary becomes pregnant and her body tells her something’s wrong with the baby. By that point, Guy’s been so totally seduced by the Castevets that Rosemary feels their apartment turning into a cage.
“It’s the flower in the middle of this swamp of beauty and decadence. And they have no idea of what’s happening until it’s too late,” says Saldana.
— Additional reporting by Reine Marie Melvin