Nosferatu’s Willem Dafoe & Robert Eggers Have an Epic Conversation

Oh, that would've been a good idea.

No, it wouldn't have been!

[Robert laughs]

It's not just about realism.

I was being buried and I was cold, and I was dying

and I was facing death.

So no acting required.

[dramatic orchestral music]

Here we are by ourselves.

Just hanging out.

No one's feeding us ideas.

No. This is just coming.

We enjoy sitting in these chairs at this angle

with our cups of coffee here.

Cheers. But is it coffee?

Do you remember the first place we met?

Literally, like, I remember I asked to see you

after seeing The Witch,

because I admired it so and I thought,

this guy's, this person's a filmmaker,

and I was excited to meet you.

And I arranged and we arranged a meeting.

Do you remember where we went?

I remember that we went to an Italian restaurant,

like in the East Village or Tribeca.

Oh.

I was like, at the time, like,

barely able to pay my bills.

So I was, aside from the fact that I was incredibly nervous

to meet one of my heroes,

I was also excited to like, have a full meal.

[Willem laughs] And I feel like I ordered

a ton of food.

That seems hard to believe.

That seems hard to believe because The Witch

did very well.

Yeah but it was,

I hadn't gotten the residuals [laughs].

I think weirdly the first thing that I saw you in was,

I was probably in first grade

when I watched The Last Temptation of Christ.

Which every first grader should see by the way.

[Robert laughs]

Wow, crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah you're the guy that saw

Nosferatu at nine years old.

Well, there you go.

So, you know.

What were your parents doing?

Well, my mom was

like had a kids' theater company

and my dad was a Shakespeare professor.

So yeah.

We didn't do Last Temptation of Christ.

I knew that but. In the children's theater.

And what did you think of it?

Did you think it was cool or?

I thought it was super cool.

Did you know Martin Scorsese movies?

You watched Mean Streets at five?

No, no, no.

But yeah, it's interesting.

Like, that was my Jesus.

Not like Max von Sydow or something like, you know, so.

You know, once I met,

I get to name drop here,

once I met Max von Sydow.

[Robert] When was that?

A guy I admired because really

my first really foreign films that I saw,

at a much later age than you,

were Bergman films. Yeah.

So Max von Sydow was like.

[Robert] Yeah.

I met him once and he was very elegant and he said,

it was after Last Temptation,

and he said,

We are both members of a very exclusive club.

[Robert laughs]

Which I, you know, one of those silly actor moments

that you really love, you know?

Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah.

That's amazing.

I feel like some actors talk about actors

who influence them, or you can like see them,

like clearly, you know?

Like you can see De Niro's grimace in,

There will Be Blood, you know what I mean?

Okay.

But like is there actors who were like influential

to you, either as a kid,

but more interestingly to me,

kind of as you were maturing as an actor?

Like in your twenties. Well when I was a kid

I was like a normal kid

and I never thought I'd be an actor.

I mean I was in plays and things.

I grew up in Wisconsin

and you know, I didn't know anybody

that made their living in any way,

as an artist or a performer,

something like that.

So I have lots of older brothers and sisters,

and I'd hitchhiked down to

University of Wisconsin in Madison.

And they had lots of cinema clubs at that time.

So you'd see all these foreign films

and stuff that you would never see at your local theater.

Yeah. And that was the first,

that was the beginning.

And I remember one of the first

films I saw was The Magician.

Also called The Face,

which was an early Bergman film.

[Robert] Yeah, I love it.

Yeah, that would be right up your alley.

And I mean, it's very simple.

Yeah. A story.

But I love that film.

There's beautiful things in it.

[Robert] Yeah.

And a great performance by Max von Sydow.

So really, like he is, he was?

Well, I think I like genre films.

I grew up on horror films as a little kid.

I loved Boris Karloff, for example.

Yeah.

I loved Frankenstein.

But you know, I was more interested,

I was interested in other things.

Sure. And then later.

And then once I thought, oh, maybe I'd be an actor,

I always admired actors that didn't feel like actors.

I mean the classic one I cite is Warren Oates.

Or Harry Dean Stanton.

They were people that you didn't seem like

they were trained.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actors or other

people that were interested in actors

were usually interested in more celebrated actors

or more theatrical actors, you know?

Olivier or Sure.

Marlon Brando or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I admire those people, but I didn't.

I had a poster on my wall,

but it wasn't of an actor.

It was of Raquel Welsh [laughs].

And I came up to her once and I said,

I had a poster of you on the wall,

you know, in the bikini.

And, you know, when I was a kid.

And her face went, dropped, and it was like

nice talking to you [laughs].

Oh man.

Yeah, because I was Mr. Gaff man, I didn't mean to,

I meant to flatter her.

It's cool that you talk about that

because with back to not being into the idea

of like Olivier or Brando as like

an acting ideal or whatever,

but your performances,

you have like Florida Project obviously,

like you're in a situation where you're working

with a lot of non-actors,

but you give that same kind of

like naturalism to that world.

But obviously like from stage work

and something like Green Goblin

or even you know, to even some of the stuff you do

at my movies is coming from like another style, you know?

And is like more

perhaps like indulging in the performance.

But I don't see it as that.

It's funny I would say-

I don't think, I wouldn't, that's a cruel assessment.

No, no, listen, I'm good with you.

Because I know you know performing and,

listen, that's okay, I can take it from you.

[Robert laughs]

But I just did an interview with a guy

and he said, Yeah, I liked your performance a lot

in Nosferatu but, you know, I talked to a friend

and he said, 'Wow, way over the top.'

I was quite surprised.

[Robert sighs] And I'm always surprised

when someone says something's over the top.

You know I'm really sold on this idea

that one man's meat is another man's poison.

And I'm sometimes a very naturalistic performance

to me looks lazy and not engaged.

I mean yeah.

Where I like it a little kicked up, you know?

You always gotta dial in between the two poles

of, you know, being really loose and being really-

But also I think the only thing in Nosferatu

that is deliberately-

Over the top?

No, I mean stylized,

is the fairytale framing of things.

Ah.

Two things about this before we move on

is that like, first of all,

like if you're being chased by a vampire,

like how are you supposed to act?

Like chill?

Like a mumblecore movie?

Like you're gonna be crazy.

Yeah. And then also like

your character's an eccentric.

[Willem] Yes.

Like look at Jijek.

Like if someone

did that without It's true.

You'd be like come on.

Like that's over the top. Yeah.

I know what my intention was.

And my intention is to play the actions

and I'm not thinking about size

and I'm not thinking about selling anything

and I'm not thinking so,

the proportion comes from the energy, you know?

Yeah. That's all.

And you don't do any more than

you need to do to accomplish

what the character thinks you need to accomplish.

Exactly, yeah.

Talking about career progression is always weird,

but is there a role that you felt like came at,

particularly the right time for you

in your journey, either as an actor or as a man?

I don't know.

Because every time you do something you think,

hmm, how do you do this?

I really have that.

And I feel good.

You know actors talk a lot about,

oh, it's good to have fear and

it's good to have uncertainty.

And that's true.

After a while you shake hands with that uncertainty

and that not knowing and kind of embrace it, you know?

Yeah.

But I don't know.

It's fun to think about

roles that I thought I wasn't really right for,

but I thought, well I'll give it a swing, you know?

Since you mentioned Last Temptation,

I always think it's kind of funny that I had heard

that people were auditioning for Last Temptation

for a long time.

And everybody and his brother was

going for this thing. Sure, yeah.

But not me.

And then finally in the end,

I didn't even have a phone in my room

and a landlady type said,

There's a call for you from a guy,

you know, Martin Scorsese.

You know, basically.

And I'm like, yes?

And it wasn't Martin Scorsese, it was my agent saying,

Listen, Martin Scorsese wants to see you.

And I said, for what role?

You know?

And he says, Jesus, you idiot.

And I thought, that's like a bad idea [laughs].

But then I read the script and then I got it.

Yeah. Because I didn't

know the script yet.

But that's a case of the fact

that I didn't think I was right for it was correct.

Because when I got there,

it's a reactive role.

[Robert] Yeah.

It's a role of a guy that's not accepting

what he's supposed to do.

And it was the right time for me to start

a kind of examination of study the Bible

and things like that.

In the way the different ways the story was told.

So, that's not really answering your question,

but I thought that might be a fun story to tell [laughs].

It's a great story.

And how do you feel about early Christian gnosticism?

[Willem laughs]

See?

He can't help himself. [Robert laughs]

If we're making a movie, I'll do a deep dive,

but right now, I'm not your guy [laughs].

It's funny because I have had more than one

journalist kind of point out the fact

that in all three films you've been cast

as like the keeper of secrets.

Ah, I like that.

[Robert] And I was like, oh, yeah.

Because in my life I don't have any secrets.

I just spill, spill, spill [laughs].

And what does it mean to you? [laughs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.

I don't know, I don't know.

Because I guess really it's more a reflection of

how I feel about you.

Ah [laughs].

Go on.

This is a blushing time.

But, you have like this deep intelligence

and a curiosity about-

I'm blushing already [laughs].

Deep intelligence.

We could just go with intelligence [laughs].

You're interested in so many things.

Like a lot of actors are

less interested in things.

And also the kind of humor that you're able

to imbue your characters with.

You have the joke of life, you know?

[Willem] I like that.

You have the joke of life.

That's the nicest thing you can say.

Ugh, well.

Let me see if I can do better [laughs].

Who could be a court jester and

an oracle at the same time?

Not a lot of actors could do that convincingly.

You give me fun things to do, that's for sure.

That's for sure.

Often they ask me,

oh, why do you like Robert Eggers?

And The Witch,

it hit me so hard.

I walked into The Witch,

I didn't know anything about it.

And it was so easy to enter that world.

It wasn't pointed to.

It was lived in.

And I think every time I've worked with you,

when you enter the set,

the most impressive thing is

everything has a function.

And when you enter that and you submit to that,

it makes the pretending,

or the being there so easy,

that's the most perfect jumping off point to do anything.

Because the world drops away and you have a new world.

And as an actor, that's the place that you wanna be.

That place of being active

and feeling an itch, you know, leaning into stuff.

I like it so much.

And I found that true every time I've worked with you.

Thank you. And also the thing

that people don't know,

unless they're really studied.

I mean your average audience,

people in cinema probably know is

these incredibly long takes that there's no cutting away.

The first thing,

what I think a lot of people don't know is,

when I first, we were surprised when

Robert Pattinson and I,

when we got there and we went to rehearsal,

we assumed we'd rehearse the scenes.

But in fact we rehearsed the shots [laughs].

Yeah.

You and Jaron basically said,

this is the way it's gonna be boys [laughs].

And then we gotta fold into it.

And in some ways that would drive some actors crazy.

But I love it so much because

that is such a strong structure.

You've got everything at your available

to live in that structure.

You don't have to find stuff.

And I love that.

Because I grew up in the theater

where the technicians were like the actors

and the actors were like the technicians.

And I think that's a wonderful way to be

because it makes everything fluid.

And also, it's natural, it's so collaborative,

you depend on each other.

I like it as a storytelling mechanism

because the audience,

I mean like, there are, there is scenes with cuts

and there's reverse shots

in my films. Of course, of course.

Like whatever, but I think when you have these long

and broken takes, like unconsciously,

like you are just more in it.

And especially with

the period world building and everything

it's just another layer to keep the audience engaged

without anything pulling them out.

But, as you were saying,

like experience of making the film,

because everyone is so focused and like,

and it is all about the technicians as well as the actors

and the dolly pusher is as engaged as you,

as Aaron, as Lily, as the carpenters

who have to move the walls during the take

to accommodate the camera movement.

Everyone creates a tremendous amount of focus.

And they really, as you said, collaboration.

Like, everyone feels like they're a part

of really making the movie

and the scene and the moment.

And that is a good feeling.

The thing that I always think about

with the long takes too is I remember reading,

I think it was Walter Murch talked about

he always looked for a cut when people blink.

Right. Blinked, you know?

A cut is always like a blink, you know?

It is, yeah.

Which is why I'm always asking everyone not to blink.

[Robert laughs] No, which is.

And I remember in The Lighthouse.

Yeah.

A lot of people were like,

we have that one long speech that I have

that's a, you know, curse.

And people were like, you didn't blink, man!

Wow, you didn't blink!

And it's like, yeah, I wasn't, you know,

Robert told me not to blink

so I can get it together

and not blink for, I had stuff to do.

I had a kind of complicated picture to paint

with those words, with those beautiful words.

So no reason I had to blink, you know?

But that's a good example.

That was one technical thing that I take on.

And it makes a stronger commitment to what you're doing.

I look at you and I always think about the burying

in The Lighthouse.

Sure.

I mean, that was like,

one of the most incredible experiences

for me to do that.

And it was painful,

but I liked it.

When Rian Johnson did a Q&A

at the DGA for The Lighthouse,

and he said, Oh, when you buried Willem,

I presume you shot that on stage.

And I thought, oh, that would've been a good idea.

No, it wouldn't have been [laughs].

It's not just about realism.

I was being buried and I was cold

and I was dying and I was facing death.

So no acting required.

You know, the beauty of The Lighthouse is I always say,

you can't play a red, you know, red skin,

you can't play that kind of weather on your face.

Yeah.

We were out there and that really,

that told us what to do.

And that's why

it's so beautiful when you can shoot on location.

Someone asked me the other day, they said,

Ah, what do you think, from working with him three times?

How's he changed?

I was like, same guy, you know.

But maybe what I noticed about, I mean,

the scale is different.

But I think when I saw you on Nosferatu

the really beautiful thing was

nothing can be perfect.

And you realize that so much a part of being a director

is knowing when to hold and when to fold, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you're so good at that now.

There's a practical aspect that's not giving up,

but stuff the solution shifts

without giving in.

But you're also, you know, to startle.

Very, very kind, thank you.

Hardheaded about getting what you need.

Ellen asks your character,

does evil come from within or beyond?

I have the problem with what is evil [laughs].

I mean you can stop me right there.

I don't have it all worked out

because, you know, sometimes you do things

and you don't totally understand what they mean

and they're gonna mean different things to different people.

But in retrospect

when I think about my character's relationship with Ellen,

it's kind of beautiful because he's the one that sees her.

Nobody else sees her.

And you talked, when we were talking the other day,

you talked very beautifully about that triangle, you know?

And that's what's so modern about this.

You know you've got the dutiful husband.

Well you describe it.

Ellen, like your character, she's an outsider,

but she really has no one who understands her.

And she's a modern person who sort of like

is existing in the 19th century and she has yeah,

this love triangle between her husband who she does love,

and he loves her,

but he cannot like fully see her

and fully understand her

and cannot like understand her connection

to the dark side or the other side.

And unfortunately the one person,

before she meets you,

who does see that is a demon.

[Willem laughs]

He's a vampire.

And he's an abuser.

He's coming.

And he's coming. And he's coming.

And so that is like the tragedy that like,

that it's only in this like, incredibly toxic relationship.

But that's more, that's a love story,

but really more about obsession.

That's where she can find connection to this

part of herself.

So yeah I mean,

does evil come from within or beyond?

We all have darkness inside of ourselves to some degree.

And your character also talks about you have

to face that evil exists in order to fight it.

And you tell Ellen to like crucify the evil within her.

This is part of the reason why

horror movies are important.

Like obviously there's entertainment.

People enjoy Terrifier movies.

Not my cup of tea, but like, whatever rings your bell.

These stories are deeply important to explore

what is the darkness?

Not, it doesn't even have to be about you.

It's in humanity.

You know what I'm saying?

The shadow side of all things.

[Robert] Yeah.

Yeah.

And, doing some press together

I really enjoyed hearing you

how far back this thing with Nosferatu goes.

Nine years old.

You're sitting in New Hampshire?

New Hampshire, yeah.

You've got a VHS.

Yeah.

Where'd you get that VHS?

We had to go-

Behind the liquor store?

Yeah [laughs].

We had to mail order it, you know?

Because there was no internet

and no Amazon and all that.

Yeah so when it finally came I was very excited.

It's funny because the VHS had no sound.

There was literally

no score on it. That's wacky.

And I think that the movie might not have had

the same effect on me had it had like a cheesy organ

or synth score.

But I was watching it like utterly silent.

And it was made from like a poor 16 millimeter print.

And so it kind of seemed real.

And you know, Max,

you can't see Max Schreck's bald cap

in his grease paint.

And there's certain shots

where his eyes almost looked like cat eyes.

This is what gave the rumor

that he was a real vampire,

hence, you know, Shadow of the Vampire.

But yeah, his performance

and the atmosphere of that film

and Murnau's and Galeen

like taking Dracula

and turning it into this really simple fairytale

with lots of enigma just

it hit me harder than any other Dracula I had seen

before then or since.

And then when I was 17

with my friend Ashley Kelly Tata,

who's now a theater and opera director,

we did a high school production of Nosferatu on stage.

Missed that one.

Too bad!

[Robert laughs]

I'll send you some pictures.

I thought it was cool I read that,

it was all in black and white.

Yeah it was black and white.

Like we painted ourselves black and white.

The set was black and white.

And did you play Orlok?

I did.

[Willem laughs] Yes.

And then we, a local theater impresario

named Ed Langois saw the show

and invited us to do a more professional version

of it in his theater.

And that kind of,

that made me sure that this

is what I wanted to do with my career.

So you played Orlok.

Do you miss performing?

Because you performed after that as well?

Yes.

You love to get me on the topic of me as an actor.

I-

Sorry.

Better than talking about me as an actor [laughs].

You know, I don't miss it too much.

I do, when we do a Q&A,

Yeah. I can feel the vibe

from the audience sometimes.

And I'm like, ah, I'm a little bit of a ham, I suppose.

But I think-

Oh, ham is being an actor, huh?

[Willem and Robert laugh]

But I think, yeah,

if there was like an Elizabethan thing

or an Edwardian thing where I think my look suited it,

I might find a tiny thing for me to do.

Okay.

Can I be there for that?

You damn well better be.

Okay, good, good [laughs].

It took a long time for this movie to get greenlit,

to find the right-

What was the problem?

The problem was, it's-

You weren't ready.

I wasn't ready.

Yeah, thanks, Willem.

Like, you know, whatever the problems were,

I'm glad that there were problems.

Yeah, yeah.

Because as you say, I wasn't ready.

Well no.

It would've been different.

It would've been different.

I think it would've been

possibly disastrous if it was greenlit

the first time I tried to do it.

But anyway.

But no, I mean, like, we have such an incredible cast.

I mean, really.

Beautiful.

We were taking pictures the other day and I thought

this is a good lineup.

Yeah.

And like lovely people.

Like everybody was so engaged because-

But people always say that with you [laughs].

No, yeah, I know, I know, I know.

It's 'cause it's like obviously we're in the industry.

Yeah, yeah.

And so we know the true story.

Yeah, yeah.

Sometimes when I'm watching BTS I know

like that really they all hated each other.

Right, right.

But it's not the case here.

Right, right.

What's a film that you've seen

or play that inspired you lately?

I saw a play in Naples that really inspired me.

And it was Pinocchio.

Oh.

I was so moved from the beginning to the end,

not only by the performance,

but also the audience's relationship to it.

Naples is a great theater town

but these people were so connected to this production.

I felt it.

But the thing that was really interesting is I thought,

why am I so moved?

I mean, it was a beautiful script

and beautifully staged and everything.

And I thought it was interesting that

there was such grace to what they were doing

because they were not performers

and they could only do what they were doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There was nothing extra.

There's a beauty to it

because nothing else is going on but that.

It's in the same league

why sometimes it's so beautiful to work with non-actors

because they don't have an identity of an actor.

Yeah.

So they don't overthink things and they go to it.

They do what they can do and they get out of the way.

They let the nature, you know, roll.

And I guess I was, once again,

I was moved by that fact that

how important it is to disappear into the actions.

I don't know.

The most beautiful things I see are usually

when performers just commit to something.

And it's like the grace of an athlete.

What they're doing is what they're doing.

And something happens to them.

And then you can be with them

because they aren't pushing you away with an idea.

They aren't selling you anything.

When it's a story about,

the Pinocchio story about

what it is to be human.

It was just gorgeous.

Mm.

How about you?

Have you seen, can you share?

Can you share? [laughs]

Well, yours is cooler.

But I weirdly have never seen

the silent film By the Law until recently.

Well, you got me, baby.

Well, it's this Russian silent movie

that's based on a Jack London novel.

Ah.

It's like it was made for me.

It also feels like there's no way-

You're gonna be working on that?

No, no, no.

But it looks like there's no way

that I couldn't have made The Lighthouse

without seeing it.

There's actually are some images that it's like,

that is in The Lighthouse, what on earth.

But basically what's really exciting for me is that

it's this American.

Well, it's Canadians,

but it's like this American setting made by Russians.

And there's murder and cabin fever and desperation,

but it has the like, heightened Russian, like, you know?

Expressionistic kind of art.

Well, but it's also, they didn't have,

they aren't wearing makeup.

Because like Russians weren't really

into that in the silent era.

So it has like a more raw feeling.

But it has the like explosive,

like Dostoyevski personality disordered

conflict of ego.

And it's very satisfying.

By?

The law.

The law.

It's always great talking with you Willem.

But I look forward to the next time we actually get

to work together properly.

Yeah.

Good, good.

Me too, me too.

I can't wait.

Because we got stuff to do.

We got stuff to do.

Yeah [laughs].

[dramatic orchestral music]