Adam Howard: 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 Dafoe 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. Dafoe'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 Nosferatu, Willem Dafoe plays the vampire hunter. He's a good guy, but with a shadowy disposition.

Willem Dafoe: I have seen things in this world that would have made Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother's womb. 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 in Peniel. I tell you, if we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists. Minor Harrin. We are here encountering the undead plague carrier of Amria Nosferatu.

Adam Howard: I spoke to Willem Dafoe about his acting philosophy and his work with the visionary director 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.

Willem Dafoe: As the rat.

Adam Howard: Yes, the rat.

Willem Dafoe: Around these parts, we don't take kindly the cider poachers.

Speaker 1: You've aged badly, rat.

Willem Dafoe: You're getting a little long in the tooth yourself, partner.

Speaker 1: Insecurity. Why are you wearing that badge? What is it?

Willem Dafoe: It's my job.

Adam Howard: She was like, "Why is he carrying a knife?"

[MUSIC- Merrill Garbus of tUnE-YArDs]

[laughter]

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

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

Adam Howard: What's the thing that you get approached about the most?

Willem Dafoe: The most widely seen movie probably is Spider-Man, that series. That's a lot, but I'm ridiculously admittedly proud to say that it's pretty varied. Sometimes people try to even impress you by coming up and giving a shout-out to a really obscure movie because I make lots of movies, and some are small movies, some are big movies. 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. Then occasionally someone will say, "I saw New Rose Hotel yesterday." Wow, fantastic. It's pretty varied.

Adam Howard: 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, Kathryn Bigelow, Wes Anderson. I can go on and on and on. Robert Eggers, this is now your third collaboration with him.

Willem Dafoe: Right.

Adam Howard: I wonder if you could speak about what's unique and special about your relationship with, really, filmmakers in general. How you approach working with directors, but also, how does Robert Eggers fit in the pantheon of people you've worked with?

Willem Dafoe: Those are a lot of questions, and they're all fine questions. First of all, just generally when I see someone that has a specific vision and they tend to be auteurs, 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. That's the experience I like.

When you want that, you're only going to give yourself to someone who [chuckles] you think is worth it and knows how to take care of it. A lot of people talk about character. 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. 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. I asked myself why and I said, "It's because I enter this world so easily."

Adam Howard: The movie transports you.

Willem Dafoe: 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 the genre films feel relevant, feel authentic, feel rooted. I think it's because when you go on one of his sets, everything is so well researched and has a reason, has a 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.

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. When you do a Robert Eggers movie, there's a wealth of detail and it's rooted in history and reasons already there. You enter it and the world works on you and I love that.

Adam Howard: In Nosferatu, you play Professor Von Franz, who's 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 approach to making this character your own and trying to make it fresh for you?

Willem Dafoe: I don't think about my own. 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. 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.

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.

Adam Howard: Some of the beats of the story may be familiar, which might be some of the fun of the film. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on why revisit this material now?

Willem Dafoe: That's really a Rob Eggers question, but I've been doing enough press with him. I can pretend I'm him for a moment. Basically, 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. 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 Dracula, vampire lore, Nosferatu films made. We've really gotten away from the scary vampire.

We've come full circle and gotten to the character in Twilight who's a sympathetic, sweet vampire. He wanted them to be scary again and he said, "How do we do that?" 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. 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. 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 3: During the most irregular dreams, I fear I'm taken ill.

Willem Dafoe: It is a black omen to journey in poor health. You will remain and well rest yourself.

Speaker 3: I must object, my lord.

Willem Dafoe: You will obey this, my counsel.

Speaker 3: My lord.

Speaker 4: Count?

Willem Dafoe: 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 central to vampire lore about sex and death. It has real bones, it has structure. This is a horror movie, but it's also a gothic romance. It's about this triangle this romantic triangle between Nosferatu, Ellen, and her husband.

Speaker 5: Standing before me all in plaque was death, but I'm so happy, I'm 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, but I've never been so happy.

Adam Howard: A lot of people have been raising eyebrows about the fact that this movie is coming out on Christmas Day. It's not like a obvious Christmas movie. I wonder, what do you imagine being the audience for this movie right now?

Willem Dafoe: Everybody,-

[laughter]

-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, Jarin Blaschke, on these very, very long, designed takes. There's no conventional coverage. There's no cutting away. 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 they're incredibly long takes.

When they're done skillfully, of course, you don't feel the camera movement, but you're with the people. 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. When your plate is full as an actor, you can't fall out. You can only give yourself to action. It's like an athlete, running from here to there. 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.

Adam Howard: You are so prolific. I think last year you were in seven films alone. 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?

Willem Dafoe: 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 the set, so I do like to work. I like the adventure of going away someplace, leaving my world behind, [chuckles] my life behind for a little while, and making a new one, and then coming back to my life. When we say seven, it seems like a lot. 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. I tease him, I say, "Wow, do you ever sleep? He says, "No, I've been home for six months."

Movies get held sometimes to position them for release. It can seem like more than it is. I get some downtime. I'm not on one set Tuesday and then starting a new one on Thursday. There are little breaks.

Adam Howard: This past year, you mentioned the variety of the work you do. You were in one of the biggest blockbuster-type movies, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and then you've been in 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 with streaming taking over. How do you feel about it?

Willem Dafoe: You said it. Theaters are closing, people are getting out of the habit of going to theaters. 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. 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 a thing of the past a little bit.

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. Then 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 don't get your feet held to the fire.

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

Adam Howard: On that upbeat note.

Willem Dafoe: Upbeat note. Sorry.

Adam Howard: 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?

Willem Dafoe: Just the huge thing, now you're speaking to influencers also and there's a lot of things to tap into the TikTok of it all. 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. It's like, yes, I have feelings about these things, but I'm not a guy-- when someone says, "Are you in the business?" I look behind me and around me and think, "Who are you talking to? 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.

All these questions, it's like I'm too busy working in movies to think about these things.

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

Willem Dafoe: I hope I was coherent enough for you.

Adam Howard: Thank you so much.

Willem Dafoe: All right. Okay. Ciao. Ciao.

Adam Howard: Actor Willem Dafoe. His latest film Nosferatu improbably 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 newyorker.com.

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