![\"Elvira](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Skeleton1.jpg\")
Courtesy of Cassandra Peterson, 2025\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Cassandra Peterson, 2025\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
As Cassandra Peterson sits in front of me, it\u2019s immediately clear she\u2019s just as stunning in person as everyone says. Outside of her iconic Elvira persona, she looks strikingly different. Her long, gorgeous red hair is mesmerizing, and I can\u2019t help but tell her she reminds me of one of my all-time faves, Tori Amos.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that\u2019s a good compliment\u2014I love her,\u201d she tells me, pausing to think.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s funny is, well, I was here thinking I looked more like Weird Al. But I like looking like Tori Amos better than Weird Al.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peterson\u2019s first-ever cookbook is officially out after years of planning. But calling it a cookbook doesn\u2019t quite do it justice. It\u2019s more like a lifestyle survival guide for goths with good taste.\u00a0Elvira\u2019s Cookbook from Hell<\/a>\u00a0is a generously sized tome packed with inspiration for sexy, spooky soir\u00e9es and celebrations for every occasion. In honor of the riveting new release, out now, Elvira has taken over Dread Central\u2019s Digital Cover Story<\/a> for October. And we couldn\u2019t be prouder.<\/p>\n \u201cI used to jokingly call myself the Martha Stewart of the Macabre because I love to entertain and cook. I have all of Martha\u2019s books; I\u2019m a big fan,\u201d she tells me, then leans in with the goss. \u201cBut I\u2019m not so much a fan of her calling herself the Queen of Halloween.\u201d<\/p>\n Peterson is joking, but there\u2019s only one true Queen of Halloween, and I\u2019m sitting across from her. But as it turns out, Peterson really is a fan of Stewart.<\/p>\n \u201cI have probably every book she\u2019s written. And I always thought that Elvira should have a lifestyle book like Martha does. On cooking, flower arrangements \u2026 but for the goth lifestyle. I\u2019ve been out there pitching this damn book for so long, you wouldn\u2019t believe it. Years and years and no publisher would buy it. They\u2019d go, \u2018There\u2019s a million Halloween cookbooks!\u2019 And I\u2019d say, \u2018It\u2019s not only a Halloween cookbook. It\u2019s a goth lifestyle for all year round, 365 days.\u2019 They didn\u2019t think there was that kind of audience out there, but there is. I certainly know it.\u201d<\/p>\n I ask if she\u2019s ever met Martha in real life.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I haven\u2019t. I would love to,\u201d she shares. \u201cI walked by her house in East Hampton recently. I guess she\u2019s not there anymore though. But I very much respect her. She is an older woman like myself, a little older, and she really came from not a wealthy background, pulled herself up. She was the first woman on Wall Street. I mean, it\u2019s just amazing. She made this thing out of thin air that became so huge. So, as a woman, I very, very much respect her.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then she gets, of course, busted and put in jail. Meanwhile, 9,000 other guys who did the very same thing, much worse actually, walk free. But no, of course she\u2019s a woman, so she has to suffer. And then she gets a bad rap about being so tough and mean, but that\u2019s kind of how a woman has to do it. They don\u2019t do anything differently than a man does. They just get labeled as you-know-what.\u201d<\/p>\n Because Peterson is such a fan, I ask if she\u2019s seen the recent Netflix documentary about Stewart.<\/p>\n \u201cI sure have. I loved it. She\u2019s a woman who I very much relate to. It\u2019s a whole different world than Elvira, but I really look up to her.\u201d<\/p>\n So, has Peterson ever considered doing a documentary of her own, in the spirit of Martha\u2019s?<\/p>\n \u201cFunny you should say that\u2026\u201d she tells me.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m thinking about it. I have been asked quite a few times to do a documentary and I always said I wanted to wait until I wrote my autobiography, because I wanted the autobiography to be a blueprint for it. Like an instruction booklet. So yeah, but I can\u2019t say much about that right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking of Martha, what sort of music would be played at an Elvira-hosted dinner party?<\/p>\n \u201cI always like something mellow \u2026 creepy, slow, or sexy. Background music should be like you were watching a film and the music in the background is complimentary, not overwhelming. It\u2019s what you want behind you, it\u2019s not the star of the show. You want the food to be the star of the show. So in my case, for a dinner party, goth film scores would be the way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSpeaking of music,\u201d she adds, \u201cthe movie that just knocked my socks off was\u00a0Sinners. Now that wouldn\u2019t necessarily be the music I\u2019d play at a dinner party, but the way they incorporated music into that film, man, it just made it! I loved it. It was very emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n When we discuss the famous intergenerational dance sequence at the center of the film, she lights up.<\/p>\n \u201cI just loved that. It was the best utilization of music in a film I think I\u2019ve ever seen. The way it melded music and what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n With\u00a0Sinners\u00a0firmly in the current Oscars conversation, talk turns to last year\u2019s\u00a0The Substance.<\/p>\n \u201cI love\u00a0The Substance,\u201d Peterson says, laughing. \u201cI just loved it! I went to a theater here, and I just couldn\u2019t stop laughing. Everybody else was giving me these really angry looks, whipping around as though to say, \u2018What\u2019s wrong with you?\u2019 I was just hysterical during the whole thing. I thought it was so funny. I absolutely love that movie.\u201d<\/p>\n So. Between Peterson and her partner, who\u2019s the one doing the cooking? From the entire\u00a0Elvira\u2019s Cookbook From Hell\u00a0collection, what\u2019s Peterson\u2019s favorite cocktail?<\/p>\n \u201cThe Bloody Brewsky,\u201d she tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s basically a michelada and it\u2019s fantastic. It\u2019s not really a cocktail, but it is my favorite thing. I drink it all the time. I only discovered them when I was on a vacation down in Costa Rica. It\u2019s beer and spicy tomato juice and a lot of lime\u2014but I mean a lot of lime juice. And then you put Taj\u00edn around the glass and it\u2019s the most refreshing, best drink. I love it. What\u2019s great is I\u2019m trying to cut down on alcohol, and so you\u2019re drinking a big drink, but only half of it is actually alcohol.\u201d<\/p>\n To unearth all of Peterson\u2019s deluxe, goth-lifestyle secrets, you\u2019ll want to take a peek into\u00a0Elvira\u2019s Cookbook from Hell. Like everything she touches, it\u2019s equal parts outrageous and seductive, a reminder that after four decades in the spotlight, Elvira still knows how to make the darkness feel like home.<\/p>\n Elvira\u2019s Cookbook from Hell\u00a0is out now from Hachette<\/a> and available wherever books are sold.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTags: Cassandra Peterson<\/a> Dread Central Cover Story<\/a> Elvira<\/a> Featured Post<\/a> <\/p>\n Categorized: Cover Stories<\/a> Interviews<\/a> News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Courtesy of Cassandra Peterson, 2025 As Cassandra Peterson sits in front of me, it\u2019s immediately clear she\u2019s just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[51146,51147,51148,156,51149,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-62593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cassandra-peterson","tag-dread-central-cover-story","tag-elvira","tag-entertainment","tag-featured-post","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/elvira-good.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/FOR-WEB-02_CP_0140-2.jpg\")
Cassandra Peterson, 2025. Photo by Matt Beard. <\/p>\n
\u201cOh, she\u2019s fantastic. She does the prep work. She\u2019s like my sous chef. And she does the dishes! I get to decide what we\u2019re going to eat. She goes and buys it at the store. She preps it. And I make it. Isn\u2019t that a fantastic partner or what? I mean, come on!\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/9780306832864_RetailCover_RetailAndCatalog.jpg\")
Courtesy of\u00a0Grand Central Publishing, 2025<\/p>\n