The New Yorker Radio Hour - Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Willem Dafoe has one of the most distinctive faces and most distinctive voices in movies, deployed to great effect in blockbuster genre movies as well as smaller indie darlings; he’s played everyone from Jesus Christ to the Green Goblin. His most recent project is the highly anticipated “Nosferatu,” which opens Christmas Day. Robert Eggers’s film is a remake, more than a century later, of one of the oldest existing vampire movies, and Dafoe plays a vampire-hunting professor.  After “Twilight” and hundreds of other vampire stories, “Nosferatu” aims “to make him scary again,” Dafoe told The New Yorker Radio Hour’s Adam Howard. It’s his third collaboration with the director, after “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse.” “When you do a Robert Eggers movie,” he says, “there’s a wealth of detail and it’s rooted in history. … So you enter it and the world works on you. And I love that.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Adam Howard. I'm a producer on the show, and I'm filling in for David Remnick this week. Willem Defoe is one of the most versatile actors working in Hollywood. He's played everything from Jesus Christ to the Green Goblin. He also has one of the most distinctive faces and voices in movies, which has been deployed to great effect in blockbusters and smaller indie darlings. Defoe's most recent project is the highly anticipated vampire film Nosferatu. It's his third movie with the director Robert Eggers, who's known for his ambitious and meticulously researched genre movies, like The Witch and the Northman.

In Nosephiratu, Willem Defoe plays the vampire hunter, so he's a good guy, but with a shadowy disposition. I have seen things in this world that would have made ice and Newton crawl back into his mother's womb. We have not become so much in light as we have been blinded by the gaseous light of science. I have wrestled with the devil as Jacob wrestled the angel and pendul. And I tell you, if we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists. Minor Hannon, we are here encountering the undead plague carrier of Andrea. I spoke to Willem Defoe about his acting philosophy

and his work with the visionary director of Robert Eggers. I should start by telling you I just recently showed my three-year-old fantastic Mr. Fox and your performance left quite an impression on her. As the rat? Yeah, the rat. Found these parts, we don't take kindly to side of poachers. You veaged badly, rat.

You're getting a little long in the tooth yourself, or... Being security, why are you wearing that badge? What is it? My job. She was like, why is he carrying a knife? It's one of those three-year-old questions that I'm like, there's really no good answer to that. He's just a little menacing.

But I'm curious, in your experience, do you find that people have a hard time disassociating you from the roles that you play? I think absolutely. I can pretty much tell what movies people have seen by how they approach me. or how they speak to me, yeah. What's the thing that you get approached about the most?

Well, the most widely seen movie probably is Spider-Man that series. So that's a lot. But I'm ridiculously, admittedly, proud to say that it's pretty varied, you know? Yeah. Sometimes people try to even impress you by coming up and giving a shout-out to a really obscure movie. Right. Because I make lots of movies, and some are small movies, some are big movies. So someone comes up, they talk about Spider-Man or some older guy comes up,

talks about platoon, or some guy that is probably 30 years old now, comes up and talks about Boondock Saints. But then occasionally someone will say, I saw a new Rose Hotel yesterday. Wow, fantastic. So it's pretty varied. You have one of the most, I think, enviable track records in terms of working with directors.

You've worked with David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Catherine Bigelow, Wes Anderson. I can go on and on and on. Robert Eggers, this is now your third collaboration with him. I wonder if you could speak about what's unique and special about your relationship with really filmmakers in general, like how you approach working with directors, but also how does Robert Eggers sort of fit in the pantheon of people you've worked with? Okay. Those are a lot of questions, and they'll find questions. First of all, generally, when I see someone that has a specific,

vision and they tend to be autars and also they're attracted to telling certain kind of stories or creating certain kinds of worlds. I want to have an experience that serves that vision, that expresses that vision, but is personal to me and is transparent enough that the audience can be with me. I become them and they become me. And that's the experience I like. And when you want that, you're only going to give yourself to someone who you think is worth it and knows how to take care of it. A lot of people talk about character. Well, you don't know the character until you get there. A lot of people talk about a script and great writing is great to have and it can really lead the way and really shape things in such a definitive way. But if the camera's in the wrong place, if you don't know how

to capture this, it's useless. Let's go back to Robert Eggers. The thing that's beautiful about him is he gives you a beautiful setup. When I saw The Witch, which I knew nothing about, I walked in, and I saw this movie really blindly without expectation, and I thought, wow, there's a filmmaker here. And I asked myself why, and I said, well, it's because I enter this world so easily. The movie sort of transports you. Yes, that's true, but how you can enter it without being conscious that it's a period film.

Robert Eggers has a talent for making these period films that are based on fables or histories or their genre films, feel relevant, feel authentic, feel rooted. And I think it's because when you go on one of his sets, everything is so well researched and has a reason, has a kind of historical background. Everything has a function. Also, he designs these shots. You go to the rehearsal before you start the movie, and the shots are already designed.

And he tells you what they are, and you have to fold yourself into them. And some actors may find that very oppressive. I don't at all. It's a beautiful structure. It gives you a container to live in. you don't have to think about certain things. And when you do a Robert Eggers movie,

there's a wealth of detail, and it's rooted in history and reasons already there. So you enter it, and the world works on you. And I love that. In Nosferatu, you play Professor von Frans, who's sort of like the Van Helsing type figure. This is a very iconic vampire hunter character. We've seen different iterations of this type of character.

What was your kind of approach to making this character your own and trying to make it fresh for you? I, you know, I don't think about my own. I mean, I get the question. I do the research and I learn things. And then I become engaged, what I imagine he may be thinking because he's an occultist, he's an alchemist, he's interested in unseen things. You're correct. It's Van Helsing. type of character.

And when he's called in to help them with this problem of the plague and Ellen, the role played by Lily Rose Depp, her condition, he tries to make them understand the value of recognizing the shadow parts of life and also tries to tell them of factual evidence of evil. So it was really to try to get in his. thinking, I guess, and basically have the authority to pretend when I say these very specific things about the nature of Soleimani and vampire lore. Some of the beats of the story may be familiar, which might be some of the fun of the film. I'm wondering, you know, what your thoughts are on why revisit this material now?

That's really sort of a Rob Eggers question, but I've been doing enough press with him. I can pretend I'm him for a moment. Okay. But basically, you know, this is a movie he saw when he was very young and he was obsessed with it. Initially, he saw a video of it when he was nine years old. He did a play of Nosferatu when he was in high school. He's been thinking about a long time.

He's tried to make this movie for 10 years. He said, it's not enough to just be obsessed with something. you have to have a reason. You know, there have been something like 170 Dracula vampire lore Nosferatu films made. And we've really gotten away from the scary vampire. We've come full circle and gotten to

the character in Twilight, okay, who's kind of a sympathetic, sweet vampires. He wanted him to be scary again. And he said, how do we do that? Well, we go back to the time. where people actually believed there were vampires and see what people would do, what their imagination was about it,

what their evidence was of it, how they felt. So he tries to base all this on stuff that actually existed. A good example is the look of Orlock, which is very different in this film. And to create that, he really went back to the idea of, what would a 16th century Romanian nobleman

that had been dead for many years look like. During the most irregular dreams I'm taken ill. It is a black woman to journey in poor health. You will remain and well rest yourself.

I must object, my lord. You will obey this my counsel. Oh, but my lord. Count? So that pointed to the design of the costume, that pointed to facially, how he'd look, pointed to many things.

He's leaning into folklore because he trusts that, he believes that. He's separating the tropes that have been created through the years in cinema vampires, and he's trying to give it some historic base. When it brings up all these questions that are kind of central to vampire lore about sex and death, it has real bones.

It has, you know, it has structure. This is a horror movie, but it's also a gothic romance, you know, and it's about this triangle, this romantic triangle, between Nostratu, Ellen, and her husband. Standing before me, all in black. was so very happy. We exchanged vows. We embraced.

And when we turned around, everyone was dead. Father and everyone, the stench of their bodies was horrible. And it never means them happy. That was Lily Rose Depp in Nosferatu, which opens on Christmas Day. I'll continue my conversation with Willem Defoe in a moment.

A lot of people have been raising eyebrows about the fact that this movie is coming out on Christmas Day. It's not like an obvious Christmas movie. But I wonder, what do you imagine being the audience for this movie right now? Everybody. We hope. No, I don't know. I think it's beautiful because that's a time where people are off. And, you know, it certainly opens things up to a large audience.

It's the kind of movie that really will be beautiful. to see in the theaters, because his particularly his way of shooting, he works with his DP Jermblashki on these very, very long designed takes. There's no conventional coverage. There's no cutting away. And what's significant about that is there's a fluidity. You can enter into these scenes much better because you're not constantly thrown out by a change of point of view. You're with these people because it incredibly long takes. And when they're done skillfully, of course, you don't feel the camera movement, but you're with the people. And for actors, it's very interesting because they're difficult to do, because not only do you have to execute

the actions and the intentions of your character, but you have all these technical things to think about. And when you're played as full as an actor, you can't fall out. You can only give yourself to action, and it's like an athlete, you know, running from here to there. The task seemed very simple, but how you do it, what happens to you as you do that simple task is really where the drama and the life and the presence and the revelation is. You are so prolific. I mean, I think last year you were in seven films alone. It seems like you're, to correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you're ramping up lately instead of slowing. down. Is there a reason for that, or you're just finding more projects that excite you? Yeah, when there's opportunity. I don't do movies just to do, but I do think actors need practice,

and I do like that. I love being on a set, so I do like to work. I like the adventure of going away someplace, leaving my world behind, my life behind for a little while and making a new one, and then coming back to my life. And when we say seven, you know, it seems like a lot, like I was talking to my colleague, Nick Holt, who is in Nosferatu, and it seems like every week there's a new Nick Holt film, and I tease him. I say, wow, do you ever sleep? And he says, no, I was, you know, I've been home for whatever, you know, I've been home for six months. Moves get held sometimes to position them for release, and it can seem like more than it is. I get some downtime.

You know, I'm not on one set Tuesday and then starting a new one on Thursday. There are little breaks. Yeah. This past year, you mentioned the variety of the work you do and you were in one of the biggest blockbuster-type movies, Beetlejuice, Beagle Juice, and then you've been in sort of smaller, more intimate movies

I've seen Saturday night comes to mind. What do you think about the state of the theatrical movie-going experience right now? There's a lot of concern, obviously, post-COVID, and the streaming kind of taking over, how do you feel about it? You said it. I mean, you know, it's, theaters are closing.

People are getting out of the habit of going to theaters. And, you know, you don't want to be an old crank and say times were better back then. But I lament that experience of where strangers go into a dark room, watch light on the screen together, and have an experience. Streaming does some, great things. They finance some good movies. You know, it feels a little overstuffed now. I think

people don't know where to go because the discourse about movies is not public. The word of mouth is like a thing that passed a little bit. And the problem is that on streaming, of course, it's really impossible if you're watching stuff at home or you're watching stuff on a phone. you take away what you put in and if your attention is distracted, you're not going to be able to receive a movie in the right way, the beauty of it, the depth of it, the complexity of it. So then kind of more superficial, more noisy, more obvious films are more watchable in that form and more difficult, more challenging, which are usually the more rewarding. Don't perform well with that kind of environment where you, you're not.

You don't get your feet held to the fire. And I think everybody thinks they see movies to escape, but I think ultimately people do want to be changed. They want to be challenged. Entertainment isn't about running away. I think people, once they find something that really touches them or makes them think about how things could be different and thinking how their lives could be different,

that really elevates them. And if you don't allow tougher, more challenging movies with which feed the art form a chance, then the form is going to slowly die. On that upbeat note. Upbeat note. Sorry. But even doing things like this, like promoting this movie, doing interviews like these, I'm sure that's changed substantially since you got started in the business,

just trying to raise awareness about a film. Can you speak to that and what that's been like for you? Just a huge thing, you know, now you're speaking to influencers. Also, and there's a lot of things to tapping to the TikTok of it all. So they want you to play games and do things that may not definitely define the movie, but they get people knowing about unawareness. So it gets a little dumbed down. It's a complicated question.

It's like, yeah, I have feeling. about these things, but I, you know, I'm not a guy. When someone says, are you in the business? You know, I kind of like look behind me and around me and think, who are you talking to? And of course I am. I've made a lot of movies. I've been making movies for, I don't know, over 40 years. So I am, but I don't think of it as a business.

So all these questions, it's like I'm too busy working. movies to think about these things. Thank you so much, Willem, for doing this. I really appreciate it. It's been a thrill to talk to you. Okay. I hope I was coherent, did not for you. Thank you so much.

Okay, all right. Okay, chow, chow. Actor Willem Defoe, his latest film, Nospheratu and probably opens on Christmas Day. If you're going to see it, you might want to read the profile of director Robert Eggers,

one of the most interesting young filmmakers in Hollywood. You can find it at New Yorker.com. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thank you for listening. David Remnick will be back next week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of tune arts, with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer. with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, and Alejandra Deccate.

We had help this week from Aaron Dalton. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Trina Endowment Fund.