Credit: Courtesy Photo / Elizabeth Spumpkin.
San Antonio actress Miriam Spumpkin didn’t know much about the popular Five Nights at Freddy’s video game series when she auditioned for the 2025 movie sequel.
However, her brothers, longtime fans of the game, were confident that landing the role could take her career to new heights.
“I barely even heard of Five Nights at Freddy’s,” Spumpkin, 11, told the Current during a recent interview. “My brothers knew more about it than I did and were the ones that really pushed me to audition. They told me [the game] was really big, and that if I got it, I would be super-duper famous.”
In Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, which has earned an eye-popping $222 million in the worldwide box office since it premiered at theaters last month, Spumpkin plays the main character Vanessa as a kid. Actress Elizabeth Lail reprises her role as the adult version of Vanessa from the original 2023 film.
At the beginning of Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, young Vanessa appears in flashbacks that show events that happened at the original Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, where chaos caused by creepy animatronics begins. The scene builds on the lore that ties Vanessa to the trauma caused by her murderous father William (Matthew Lillard).
It’s still too early to know if Spumpkin’s role in the horror sequel will launch her into “super-duper famous” status, but the young actress is hopeful. She appeared in her first movie at the age of 5 and has since starred in a handful of short films, a music video and a podcast series called Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane.
‘Flurry of costumes’
Spumpkin said she knew she wanted to be in the spotlight when she started dancing at age 3.
“I liked being on the stage,” she said. “My mom started having me do acting stuff. I fell in love with it.”
Her parents, Rebecca and Tom, said their daughter developed an extraordinary ability to immerse herself in creative roleplaying even at pre-school age. When friends come over to hang out, a “flurry of costumes, sets, and makeup” come out for everyone to enjoy. Their daughter is genuinely entertained by acting and playing characters, Rebecca added.
“Miriam has always been very cavalier about portraying someone in a way that she finds authentic,” Rebecca said. “She never overthinks a character’s motivation but instead lives in each scene like she belongs there.”
When Spumpkin shot her scene for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, she had recently turned 10. When she saw the movie about a year later, she said she could tell how much she had changed in that short amount of time.
“I sounded so little!” Spumpkin said. “I sounded so high-pitched!”
Looking back at how youthful she was a year ago — facetiously speaking — it made losing a tooth on set feel fitting for a kid her age. It was an ordinary moment that forced filmmakers to get creative, so the continuity of her scenes wouldn’t be disrupted.
“Me and my mom were a little bit worried on how much work they would have to put in to make it look like I didn’t lose a tooth,” she said. “They had me take photos up close from each side, so they could see exactly where it was missing and how to make it look right. We all had to put in a lot of work, so it didn’t look awkward.”
The lore behind it all
Spumpkin’s scene at the beginning of the film isn’t the only time she’s on screen. The photos of a young Vanessa in the movie were actual photos from the Spumpkin’s household.
It worked out especially well because one of the photos that filmmakers used featured Spumpkin in an Easter bunny costume. It was a perfect tie-in to the lore of the series since the character’s evil father dresses in a Yellow Rabbit costume — also known as Spring Bonnie — to kill.
“It was super funny to see all of my photos lined up on the wall,” Spumpkin said. “They edited me in another photo to make it look like I drew Spring Bonnie in the sand.”
The lore behind Five Nights at Freddy’s is the main reason Spumpkin thinks the media franchise is so popular with kids today. Parents may not always understand it, but the mystery behind the narrative and the characters is what keeps pre-teens and teens so fascinated.
“You really have to know about the game and the lore to understand the movies,” she said. “That’s part of the fun of it — having to figure it all out.”
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