Willem Dafoe
Appearances
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
You said it. I mean, you know, theaters are closing. People are getting out of the habit of going to theaters regularly. 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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
They finance some good movies. 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. Right. 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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
Don't perform well with that kind of environment where you don't get your feet held to the fire. Right. 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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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 an awareness. So it gets a little dumbed down. It's a complicated question.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
It's like, yeah, I have feelings about these things, but I, you know, I'm not... I'm not a guy, when someone says, are you in the business? 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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
So all these questions, it's like I'm too busy working in movies to think about these things.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
I think absolutely. I can pretty much tell what movies people have seen by how they behave. approach me or how they speak to me. 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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
Sometimes people try to even impress you by coming up and saying, 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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
But then occasionally someone will say, I saw a new Rose Hotel yesterday. Wow, fantastic. So it's pretty varied.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
Okay. Those are a lot of questions, and they're all fine questions. 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 or creating certain kinds of worlds.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
Well, you don't know the character until you get there. A lot of people talk about the 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 New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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 entered this world so easily. The movie sort of transports you.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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 a Van Helsing type of character.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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. 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 it a long time.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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. There have been something like 170 movies 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 vampire.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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 Orlok. which is very different in this film.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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 Nosferatu, Ellen, and her husband.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
We hope. No, I don't know. I think it's beautiful because that's a time where people are off and 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... Particularly his way of shooting, he works with his DP, Jerem Blaschke, on these very, very long designed takes. There's no conventional coverage.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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 the incredibly long takes and when they're done skillfully, of course, you don't feel the camera movement, but you're with the people.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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 New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
Yeah, when there's opportunity. I don't do movies just to do, but I do... 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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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. Movies get held sometimes to position them for release.