Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”

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Speaker 7 Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.

Speaker 8 I'm Adam Howard.

Speaker 9 I'm a producer on the show, and I'm filling in for David Remnick this week.

Speaker 9 Willem Dafoe is one of the most versatile actors working in Hollywood.

Speaker 7 He's played everything from Jesus Christ to the Green Goblin.

Speaker 9 He also has one of the most distinctive faces and voices in movies, which has been deployed to great effect on blockbusters and smaller indie darlings.

Speaker 9 Defoe's most recent project is the highly anticipated vampire film Nosferatu.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 8 In Nosferatu, Willem Dafoe plays the vampire hunter, so he's a good guy, but with a shadowy disposition.

Speaker 12 I have seen things in this world that would have made Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother's womb.

Speaker 12 We have not become so much enlightened as we have been blinded by the gaseous light of science. I have wrestled with the devil as Jacob wrestled the angel and Pendula.

Speaker 12 And I tell you, if we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists.

Speaker 12 My Nahan, Hannon,

Speaker 12 we are here encountering the undead plague carrier

Speaker 12 of Umbria.

Speaker 12 Nosferato.

Speaker 9 I spoke to Willem Defoe about his acting philosophy and his work with the visionary director, Robert Eckers.

Speaker 11 I should start by telling you I just recently showed my three-year-old Fantastic Mr. Fox,

Speaker 11 and your performance left quite an impression on her.

Speaker 12 As the rat?

Speaker 9 Yeah, the rat.

Speaker 12 Around these parts, we don't take kindly the cider poachers.

Speaker 12 You behaved badly, rat. You're getting a little long in the tooth yourself, Parker.

Speaker 12 Being security, why are you wearing that badge?

Speaker 2 What is it?

Speaker 12 It's my job.

Speaker 12 Wow!

Speaker 9 She was like,

Speaker 11 why is he carrying a knife?

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 9 But I'm curious, in your experience, do you find that people have a hard time disassociating you from the roles that you play?

Speaker 12 I think absolutely. I can pretty much tell what movies people have seen by how they approach me or how they speak to me.

Speaker 11 What's the thing that you get approached about the most?

Speaker 12 Well, the most widely seen movie probably is Spider-Man

Speaker 12 series. So that's a lot.
But it's, I'm ridiculously, admittedly proud to say that it's pretty varied, you know?

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Sometimes people try to even impress you by coming up and

Speaker 12 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

Speaker 12 someone comes up, they talk about Spider-Man, or some older guy comes up, talks

Speaker 11 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: You have one of the most, I think, enviable track records in terms of working with directors.

Speaker 11 You've worked with David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Catherine Bigelow, Wes Anderson. I can go on and on and on.
Robert Eggers is this is now your third collaboration with him. Right.

Speaker 11 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?

Speaker 10 Okay.

Speaker 12 Those are a lot of questions, and they're all fine questions.

Speaker 12 First of all, generally, when I see someone that has a specific vision, and they tend to be auteurs, and also they're attracted to telling certain kinds of stories and or creating certain kinds of worlds.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 that's the experience I like.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Well, you don't know the character until you get there. A lot of people talk about a script.

Speaker 12 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,

Speaker 12 if you don't know how to capture this, it's useless. Let's go back to Robert Agers.
The thing that's beautiful about him is he gives you a beautiful setup. When I saw The Witch,

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And I said, well, it's because I enter this world so easily.

Speaker 11 The movie sort of transports you.

Speaker 12 Yes, that's true. But how you can enter it without being conscious that it's a period film.

Speaker 12 Robert Agers 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.

Speaker 12 And I think it's because when you go on one of his sets,

Speaker 12 everything is so well researched and has a reason,

Speaker 12 has a kind of historical background. Everything has a function.
Also, he designs these shots. You go to the rehearsal before you start the the movie, and the shots are already designed.

Speaker 12 And he tells you what they are, and you have to fold yourself into them.

Speaker 12 And some actors may find that very oppressive. I don't at all.
It's a beautiful structure.

Speaker 12 It gives you a container to live in. You don't have to think about certain things.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 when you do a Robert Agers 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.

Speaker 11 In Nosferrati, you play Professor von Franz, 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.

Speaker 11 What was your kind of approach to making this character your own and trying to make it fresh for you?

Speaker 12 I, you know, I don't think about my own. I mean, I get the question.

Speaker 12 I

Speaker 12 do the research and I learn things

Speaker 12 and then I become engaged, what I imagine he may be thinking, because

Speaker 12 he's an occultist, he's an alchemist, he's interested in unseen things. You're correct, it's a Van Helsing type of character.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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 Solomonari and vampire lore.

Speaker 11 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?

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 But basically,

Speaker 12 you know,

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 He's been thinking about it a long time. He's tried to make this movie for 10 years.

Speaker 10 He said,

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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 vampire.

Speaker 12 He wanted him to be scary again, and he said, How do we do that?

Speaker 12 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,

Speaker 12 how they felt. So he tries to base all this

Speaker 12 on stuff that actually existed. A good example is the look of Orlock,

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 15 During the most irregular dreams, I'm taken ill.

Speaker 14 It is a black omen to join me in poor health.

Speaker 14 You will remain and well rest yourself.

Speaker 15 I must object, my lord.

Speaker 14 You will obey this, my counsel.

Speaker 14 But, my lord.

Speaker 14 Count?

Speaker 12 So that

Speaker 12 pointed to the design of the costume. That pointed to facially how he'd look, pointed to many things.

Speaker 12 He's leaning into folklore because he trusts that. He believes that.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And this is a horror movie, but it's also a gothic romance, you know, and it's about this triangle, this romantic triangle between

Speaker 12 Nosferatu, Ellen, and her husband.

Speaker 16 Standing before me,

Speaker 12 all in black, was

Speaker 12 death.

Speaker 12 But I'm so happy.

Speaker 14 So very happy.

Speaker 2 We exchanged vows.

Speaker 14 We embraced. and

Speaker 14 we turned around.

Speaker 14 Everyone was dead.

Speaker 14 Father and

Speaker 14 everyone.

Speaker 7 The cinch of their bodies was

Speaker 14 horrible.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 but I never means happy.

Speaker 7 That was Lily Rose Depp in Nosferatu, which opens on Christmas Day.

Speaker 11 I'll continue my conversation with Willem Defoe in a moment.

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Speaker 11 A lot of people have been raising eyebrows about the fact that this movie is coming out on Christmas Day.

Speaker 11 It's not like a obvious Christmas movie, but I wonder, what do you imagine being the audience for this movie right now?

Speaker 12 Everybody.

Speaker 10 We hope.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 It's the kind of movie that really will be beautiful to see in the theaters because

Speaker 12 his particular way of shooting, he works with his DP, Jerry Blaschke, on these very, very long designed takes.

Speaker 12 There's no conventional coverage. There's no cutting away.
And what's significant about that is there's a fluidity.

Speaker 12 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 the incredibly long takes.

Speaker 12 And when they're done skillfully, of course, you don't feel the camera movement, but

Speaker 12 you're with the people.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And when your plate is 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.

Speaker 12 The task seems 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.

Speaker 11 You are so prolific. I mean, I think last year you were in seven films alone.
It seems like you're, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you're ramping up lately instead of slowing down.

Speaker 11 Is there a reason for that? Or you're just finding more projects that excite you?

Speaker 12 Yeah, when there's opportunity. I don't do movies just to do, but

Speaker 12 I do think actors need practice. And I do like that.
I love being on the set, so I do like to work.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And when we say seven, you know, it seems like a lot. Like I was talking to my colleague, Nick Holt, who

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 And he says, no, I was, you know, I've been home for whatever, you know, I've been home for six months. Movies get held sometimes to position them for release, and it can seem like more than it is.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 11 This past year, you mentioned the variety of the work you do, and you were in one of the biggest blockbuster type movies, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, and then you've been in sort of smaller, more intimate movies.

Speaker 11 I've seen, you know, Saturday Night Comes to Mind. What do you think about the state of the theatrical movie going experience right now?

Speaker 11 There's a lot of concern, obviously, post-COVID and with streaming kind of taking over. How do you feel about it?

Speaker 12 You said it. I mean, you know,

Speaker 12 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

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 They finance

Speaker 12 some good movies.

Speaker 12 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.
Word of mouth is like a thing of the past a little bit.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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,

Speaker 12 don't perform well with that kind of environment where 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

Speaker 12 want to be changed. They want to be challenged.
Entertainment isn't about

Speaker 12 running away.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And if you don't allow tougher, more challenging movies which feed the art form a chance, then the form is going to slowly die.

Speaker 10 I'm not upbeaten out.

Speaker 10 Upbeaten out.

Speaker 10 But

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 Just trying to raise awareness about a film. Can you speak to that and what that's been like for you?

Speaker 12 Just a huge thing. You know, now you're speaking to influencers also,

Speaker 12 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

Speaker 12 may not definitely define the movie, but they get

Speaker 12 people knowing about an awareness. So it gets a little dumbed down.
It's a complicated question. It's like, yeah, I have feelings about these things, but I, you know, I'm not,

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 I've been making movies for,

Speaker 12 I don't know, over 40 years.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 I am, but I don't think of it as a business. So all these questions, it's like I'm too busy working in movies to think about these things.

Speaker 11 Thank you so much, Willem, for doing this. I really appreciate it.
It's been a thrill to talk to you.

Speaker 12 Okay, I hope I was coherent enough for you. Thank you so much.
Okay, all right. Okay, ciao, ciao.

Speaker 8 Actor Willem Defoe.

Speaker 9 His latest film, Nosferatu, and probably opens on Christmas Day.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 9 You can find it at NewYorker.com.

Speaker 8 That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thank you for listening.

Speaker 9 David Remnick will be back next week.

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Speaker 4 This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer, with guidance from Emily Botine and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barrish, and Alejandra Deckett.

Speaker 9 We had help this week from Aaron Dalton.

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