What might be the most iconic part of 1988’s Beetlejuice isn’t the stop-motion or the dark fantasy weirdness, but the casting. It’s a career highlight of Michael Keaton, it lets Catherine O’Hara’s comedic brilliance shine, and it’s a star-making turn for Winona Ryder. While all these performers turn in brilliant performances, there is one cast member who stands out as the best side character. Within Tim Burton’s eccentric collection of mortals and ghosts that includes L.L. Bean hater Otho (Glenn Shadix) and the green-skinned Miss Argentina (Patrice Martinez), we also have the cranky but hilarious afterlife caseworker Juno, played by the underrated Hollywood actress, Sylvia Sidney.
Beetlejuice was one of Sidney’s last film roles, and she wasn’t so sure it was a project she wanted to do. Burton, himself, had to help her see his vision. Getting her cast has since given fans of Beetlejuice a cantankerous, chain-smoking short queen, who was a crucial anchor to help balance the film’s horror and comedy. With Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) now out, the legacy sequel shows what happens when you don’t have a character like Juno in the afterlife’s gothic wonderland.
Don’t Waste Juno’s Time in the Afterlife
Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis) Maitland die after a car accident and find themselves confined to their house as ghosts. After their home is sold to the Deetz family, who aren’t a perfect match for the ghosts, the Maitlands attempt to haunt them. But these ghosts don’t have a bad bone in their bodies and can’t scare them one bit. A supernatural book left behind for them, the “Handbook for the Recently Deceased,” does little to give the couple answers to their problems, as does a trip they take into the afterlife for an unscheduled appointment with their caseworker.
Adam and Barbara encounter the impatient and grumpy Juno, who tells the couple, “I evaluate individual cases and determine if help is needed, deserved, and available.” When Adams asks if she is, indeed, available, Juno offers a blunt reply, “No.” Sylvia Sidney’s role is ghoulishly funny as the overworked Juno, bringing a sense of realism to the fantastical settings with her husky voice and tough personality. The actress plays the film’s best side character, and Beetlejuice fans may not know it, but Sidney had a legendary career before she stepped into Tim Burton’s version of the Netherworld.
Tim Burton Needed To Convince Sylvia Sidney To Be in ‘Beetlejuice’
A 1990 LA Times interview with Sidney provided a retrospective of the actor’s esteemed career. She appeared in films by influential directors, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage and Fritz Lang’s Fury, both released in 1936. She earned an Oscar nomination in 1973 for her supporting role in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams. In 1985, she gave a memorable and powerful Golden Globe-winning performance in the TV movie, An Early Frost which follows a man coming to terms with an AIDS diagnosis. Beetlejuice has continued to introduce her to new generations, but she wasn’t so keen on joining the cast at first. “I turned it down so many times because I couldn’t understand the script,” she said in the same LA Times interview.
Sidney went on to say, in a response Juno would approve of, “I finally had a long conversation with them, and they said, ‘Read the script again.’ I said you’ll have to send another one because I threw the other one away.” It took an extended meeting with Tim Burton for Sidney to love his “sensitivity” and accept the part. Beetlejuice’s German Expressionism, with the slanted hallways and crooked doorways, may not be particularly recognizable to most viewers. However, everyone has surely encountered their version of Juno before, whether at the DMV, the bank, or the doctor’s office. Juno is not a villain, but she isn’t particularly helpful to the spirits that cross her path either.
The Afterlife Isn’t Very Helpful for the Maitlands
Juno’s advice for the Maitlands on how to get rid of the Deetzes is vague at best: “Do what you know, use your talents, practice!” This is what pushes the couple to cause the best dinner party scene in a comedy, from Adam’s love of Harry Belafonte music, which has the opposite effect in driving the Deetzes out. Sidney’s deadpan, exhausted line delivery makes her irritation at the Maitlands and other ghosts funny rather than mean-spirited (pun intended). Surrounded by a pack of recently deceased football players, she’s tiny, but her brash voice maximizes her size as she yells, “I’m not your coach! He survived.”
Juno’s character design doesn’t call attention to itself right away until she takes a drag from her cigarette and smoke escapes from her slit throat. It’s just as distinct as the other waiting room ghosts, without being as outrageous as a hunter with a shrunken head or a woman split in half. This helps viewers take her seriously, unlike Otho’s buffoonery or the playfully colorful appearance of Miss Argentina. Juno’s role in the story is more important than dumping exposition about “the Ghost with the Most” or making viewers laugh at her perpetual annoyance, and it’s something that was left out of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Could Use a Character Like Juno
While it is a mostly successful legacy sequel, the return of Betelgeuse and Lydia (Ryder) slips further into zany than the original’s balancing act with the mundane. Willem Dafoe’s Wolf Jackson was an action movie star who did his own stunts when he was alive but now works as a hard-boiled detective in the afterlife and he constantly confuses these two parts of himself. As the new ghostly authority figure, Wolf Jackson is not strait-laced like Juno was. Instead, he matches this sequel’s campy energy. Dafoe is having a blast, but in the end, his character doesn’t tie into the main narrative as well as Juno did. That caseworker’s no-nonsense persona is a major reason why the original’s tonal balance is achieved.
Within the afterlife, the Maitlands have to deal with frustrations not too different from their time being alive. If it weren’t for the spooky office layout or that slit throat, Juno could belong in an ordinary workplace. She doesn’t have time to utter catchphrases like Wolf Jackson — she has a lot of paperwork to do! After 30-plus years, it does make sense why Beetlejuice Beetlejuice embraces the supernatural chaos, separating it enough from the original to not become a total retread. But Sylvia Sidney is an underrated highlight from the 1988 classic. She was seen in Tim Burton’s 1996 alien invasion, B-movie, Mars Attacks!, her final film role before she died in 1999, but her best collaboration with the director was in Beetlejuice. Sylvia Sidney’s performance as Juno is where the supernatural comedy is at its best, and yet another reason why rewatching it never gets old.
