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UNIVERSAL CITY -- The girls who play Patricia Arquette's TV daughters on NBC's Medium shriek in terror and burst into tears.
The cause? Not the talking corpses or serial-killing ghosts Arquette encounters in her Emmy-winning role as seer Allison Dubois, but actors in ghoulish masks and makeup at Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights.
Arquette, 38, is with the young actresses -- Sofia Vassilieva, 14, (who plays daughter Ariel) and Maria Lark, 9 (Bridgette) -- on the outing. (Twins Miranda and Madison Carabello, 4, who alternately play Arquette's youngest daughter, Marie, and Arquette's daughter, Harlow, 3, were deemed too young to join in.) And they are all dressed for the occasion: Arquette in a sailor uniform from her closet, Sofia in an elegant medieval princess costume she found in France, and little Maria as a battle-damaged Roman gladiator.
The close-knit cast returns for Medium's third season Nov. 15 with a two-hour opener (9 p.m. ET/PT) before the show settles into its regular 10 p.m. time slot. Arquette's real-life husband, Thomas Jane (The Punisher), guest-stars.
On the Medium set, the child actresses are generally shielded from any gore. "They meet the special-effects guys who make (corpses) out of rubber and watch them paint them," Arquette says.
But this October night, the actresses encounter unanticipated frights. On a tram headed toward the studio's backlot, a video shows a psycho killer slicing a woman's eyeball, and Arquette tries to cover both girls' eyes. When the tram passes two victims being attacked by a chain-saw-wielding maniac, tour guide Jason Ginsburg quips, "Look -- it's the cast of Ghost Whisperer," referencing the Jennifer Love Hewitt show to which Medium is often compared.
Arquette, who has appeared in such horror films as Stigmata, tells the girls a scary memory. "When I was 18, I kissed this really cute guy, but something about him gave me the creeps," she says. "He was the first guy I gave a fake number to. Years later, he killed a girl. So you've got to trust your instincts."
Arquette has always had a taste for the bizarre. She made what she calls "a human baby teeth necklace" from the lost teeth of her son, Enzo, now 17, and plans to add Harlow's teeth to the chain.
Setting out on foot, the actresses pass the Bates Motel under Norman Bates' famed Psycho house. Putting on a brave front, Sofia flashes the peace sign and tells the ghouls to "Go get a facial!" while Maria shouts, "Extreme Makeover should come over to your house!"
But the actresses' bravery fades as a boisterous crowd of teens closes in and the buzz of chain saws intensifies. "On the show, you know when the scary things are going to come, but here things are actually popping out at you," says a spooked Sofia.
Maria turns particularly squeamish. Arquette reminds her, "You're the gladiator; you're supposed to protect us." Recovering, Maria says, "I want to keep going."
Halloween for Arquette and her famous siblings -- David, Rosanna and Alexis -- has always been special. "Alexis always made these amazing, elaborate costumes. And my grandpa was in vaudeville, so we had old theater stuff, like beards made out of real hair."
Now adults, the Arquettes gather together in masks every Halloween. "We're going to go trick-or-treating with my sister and probably my brother, and their kids."
"It's really nice to go out as a family anonymously," she says. "Once you put on a mask, we're just regular trick-or-treaters."
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