Residents of original “Beetlejuice” town met Jenna Ortega with their old memorabilia (exclusive)

The actress also notes how the town of East Corinth, Vt., screened the original movie in their small theater as the sequel shot on location.

Not only did the characters of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice return to the town of Winter River, Conn., but the actors themselves went back to their old haunt from the original 1988 film.

The town of East Corinth, Vt., once again served as a prominent filming location for the Tim Burton-directed sequel, premiering in theaters this Sep. 6. For Entertainment Weekly's Around the Table video series, star Jenna Ortega, playing Lydia's teenage daughter Astrid, shares a story about meeting some of the East Corinth townsfolk who still had their memorabilia from the first movie.

"I remember one time we were rehearsing outside of Winter River. We built it on the same hill, the same town, the same house, the same measurements, everything. They had all the old notes from the original," Ortega says in a conversation with costars Michael Keaton, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe, and Justin Theroux. "And it was strange 'cause we'd be shooting, and people who lived in that town in Vermont were coming over with books signed by Tim from 30 years ago or photos from the original Beetlejuice, like, 'Oh, we were here when they first came back!'"

Related: Jenna Ortega, Winona Ryder on shooting the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Sandworm scene (exclusive)

According to Ortega, East Corinth also has a small movie theater where they screened the original Beetlejuice all week while the cast of the sequel filmed there. "It felt like you were in the model [of the town] shooting," she says. "I would call my mom, and my mom would try to talk to me about the day, and I would describe something to her, and she'd be so excited."

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice picks up years after the events of the original, where Winona Ryder's Lydia Deetz is now a single mom raising Astrid while working as the host of a TV show called Ghost House. When her father dies, Lydia takes Astrid back to the house in Winter River with her stepmother Delia (Catherine O'Hara) to pay their respects and mourn their loss. Of course, spooky shenanigans transpire, and a portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened, prompting Lydia to enlist the aid of a certain demonic bio-exorcist who once tried to force her into marriage.

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"Tim and I had a deal where... First of all, how do you do this again? It's not like we sat down on the first one and thought, 'Remember now, in the first act, this happens. And here's your character's arc,' and all that," Keaton says. "He'd just kinda go, 'Oh, this is gonna be fun, this is gonna be cool.' And then it just got created. Up here [in his head], he had it created, but then it took on a life of its own. So those things don't come around often in anything, really, but especially, that's what makes — and I don't throw this word around loosely — art, really, in a lot of cases. So I always think people didn't realize what was underneath them wanting to look at this stuff and hear this stuff and live in this world that was so unlike anything that you could compare it to."

Related: Michael Keaton calls Beetlejuice 2 'a big roll of the dice': 'Should we have left it alone?'

Watch EW's full Around the Table conversation with the stars of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in the video above. The film opens in theaters Sep. 6.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.