Robert Eggers and His Cast on Raising ‘Nosferatu’ From the Dead

[This story holds spoilers from Nosferatu.]

“Wrapping the movie was a fucking relief,” Bill Skarsgard says. Yes — the face of an entire horror franchise with his twisted portrayal of It clown Pennydirected — was more than ready to set free Robert Eggers‘ Nosferatu. “Everyskinnyg that he recontransients is so fervent, I was satisfied to let go of the chains he had on me.”

Skarsgard first read the script for Eggers’ ghastly folktale 10 years ago. The filmcreater had fair freed The Witch (2015) and Skarsgard count ond he was sitting with someone who recontransiented the future of cinema. “I was enjoy, ‘Oh, my God, this is so exciting,’” the Swedish actor recalls to The Hollywood Reporter about Eggers’ interest in him for the role of the century-better villain. “The script floored me. … It was flattering but also very daunting.”

Skarsgard’s Count Orlok, while derived from F. W. Murnau’s 1922 mute German Expressionist classic starring Max Schreck as the titular monster, is infinitely more haunting than its innovative create. (Granted, Murnau’s film was an unpermitd version of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula; the author’s estate sued for imitateright infringement — and won.) All at once, Eggers pays homage to Schreck’s beast and contorts him enticount on; honoring the folklore written by and about the people who truly count ond these creatures existed and were terrified of them. At the same time, he drives a sconsent thraw the heart of the “hot vampire” trope contransient audiences have become accustomed to.

“The evolution of the cinematic vampire, from Max Schreck to Edward Cullen [Robert Pattinson’s character in the Twiairy series] … vampires are no extfinisheder frightening,” Eggers increates THR. “These punctual folk vampires were not suave, pale-skinned aristocrats in dinner jackets. They were bloated, nasty, rotten corpses.” Thus, his monster was born.

Nosferatu is called from the occult niche of the Eggers universe watchers are now recognizable with: remnants of The Lighthoengage (2019) and The Northman (2022) ooze thraw the Gothic gloom and naengageating romanticism. Skarsgard stars in the titular role, but it is Lily-Rose Depp‘s Ellen Hutter who flips Stoker’s narrative on its head.

In the punctual 19th century, Ellen is newly wed to Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), a lesser estate agent in the fictitious German town of Wisborg. Angling for an official position with the firm, he accomprehendledges an allotment from his happy boss Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) to travel east of Bohemia to an isotardyd castle in Transylvania’s brutal and bone-chilling Carpathian Mountains.

His task is to get condenses signed for the buy of a Wisborg mansion by a cryptic Count Orlok. Thomas exits his frantic wife with the couple’s frifinishs, Friedwealthy and Anna Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin), who are forced to witness the return of Ellen’s visceral, nightmarish episodes. Only the watchers, Ellen and Orlok comprehfinish the sensual joinion between the vampire and who he count ons is his rightful bride — Depp’s character beckoned him years prior, createing a bond steeped in both repulsion and lust.

“It was physicassociate and emotionassociate insisting,” Depp says about the astonishing physical carry outance she dispercreates, bfinishing her body out of shape, convulsing while her eyes roll back into her head and tears flood her cheeks. Marie-Gabrielle Rotie, a choreographer distinctiveizing in Japanese butoh (“dance of utter unwiseness”), was brawt in to help. “The torment that she’s going thraw is the meat of the movie,” Depp evolves. “The unwiseness she’s carried wiskinny her since she was youthfuler is now coming to a head. She create a husprohibitd that has been able to anchor her to the world, the airy, and then he goes away and exits her vulnerable to the forces who want to claim her.”

“But it’s not so basic as her [being] afflictiond by this horrible skinnyg,” Depp evolves, “There is a yobtaining there. A joinion between Orlok and Ellen. She is the one that called out to him and, as he says in the movie, she must surrfinisher herself.”

Depp says that the intimacyuality is a theme people have asked about a lot. It’s intentional from Eggers, she inserts, becaengage this is the story of a cherish triangle at its core. “This wicked, unwise unfragmentaryy tale could be a youthful woman torn between two men, both recontransienting contrastent parts of what she wants. The desire and disgust serves as a mirror for the shame that we experience, stateively the shame that I’m stateive a lot of women felt at the time.”

Hoult also count ons his character was a victim of the time period, a man promised to his wife but inherently inable of caring her. “He sweeps skinnygs under the rug,” the British star says. “[He thinks], ‘Let’s not talk about it or skinnyk about it. As extfinished as I get this promotion, skinnygs are going to be okay, and we’ll deal with that down the road.’”

Willem Dafoe jumps in: “[Hoult’s] is the most difficult role in the whole movie in a funny way.” Thomas is our introduction to Orlok in his gruesome entirety, he elucidates, and watchers have no choice but to assimilate the panic he radiates. “The audience is with him, and he has to uphold that dread adwell. It can’t challengingen into anyskinnyg; it upholds morphing. And that’s fucking challenging to do becaengage he’s also being acted on.” Depp calls Hoult’s carry outance “so pretty”: “You reassociate experience the birth of unwiseness.”

Dafoe accesss the picture as somewhat of an incarnation of Stoker’s vampire hunter, Professor Abraham Van Helsing. The fantasyal Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz is ostracized from the academic spheres he once socialized in for indulging his passion for necromantic lore.

Von Franz is the only character in Nosferatu who truly comprehfinishs Ellen’s suffering. Is it genuine that Dafoe skinnyks his part is who Eggers himself would want to percreate? “He’s inquisitive,” Dafoe says with a smirk. “I fair thought, ‘Wow, this is juicy.’ I have an interest in these skinnygs but I’m not very directed about them, so I ate up the research. What are the Hollywood tropes that have been growed thraw the years, and what reassociate came from folklore and history?”

The disponderal of those tropes in Nosferatu experiences purposeful, an exploration of the vampire as a myth. Today, audiences skinnyk the Cullens of Twiairy, the Salvatores of Vampire Diaries, or even a blonde, fanged Tom Cruise in Interwatch with the Vampire. Why do we cherish to romanticize them? And is this movie a declineion of their depicted hotness in pop culture?

“It all goes back to John Polidori’s [1819 horror short] The Vampyre,” Eggers says. “Which was the first well-comprehendn, anglo-literary vampire story. He based the vampire off of Lord Byron, not a folkloric vampire. So that intimacyy aristocrat has been the mbetter. And while Stoker does some contrastent skinnygs with Dracula, he’s still based on that character. And I skinnyk as the cinematic vampires growd, becaengage of their ability to transcfinish death, there’s someskinnyg attrdynamic and requesting about that.”

“But I skinnyk Bill’s vampire is intimacyy,” Eggers inserts, adhereed by a chorus of consentment from his cast. Says Dafoe: “He’s sanitize appetite.”

Appetite is a excellent word to seize the magnetism of Skarsgard’s portrayal. He has the bald head, the pointed ears and spindly fingers per both Murnau’s film and Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre from 1979. But it’s a procreate, gritty, Transylvanian rasp that does a excellent chunk of the leg toil for Eggers’ creature. “I knew that he was going to dwell in the shadows for so extfinished,” Skarsgard says. “The voice was my [only] create of conveyion.” He toiled with an opera singer to drop his voice by an entire octave. “We showed the film in Stockholm last week, with my frifinishs and family, and some of them didn’t count on it was my voice, or they thought that it was a voice actor.” (Laughs.) “Rob and I built it together and it uncomardentt we had the freedom to create our version of it, to create it contrastent than, you comprehend, [in a burdensome, imitative Transylvanian accent], ‘Dracula!’”

At this moment, Depp herself carry outs her Dracula amazeion for the group. They erupt chuckleing. “It’s very Italian,” she says. “I skinnyk it’s the last [role] in the world that I could percreate.”

Skarsgard begins to unpack the significance of a novella on Orlok’s back story that Eggers wrote fair for him. The Count had a family and was once wed, the actor says, before his straightforwardor meddles: “I don’t want the world to comprehend his backstory. But he had a very detailed one.”

Eggers is the expert. He increates THR he first watched Murnau’s Nosferatu when he was nine. “It had a beginant impact on me,” he begins. “One of the chilly skinnygs about how I saw it was … It was on VHS. It was made from a horrible 16mm print. Today you can see the repaird version and you can comprehfinish Murnau’s intentions. It’s wonderful to see the film enjoy that, but what I saw was super degraded and Max Schreck seemed enjoy a authentic vampire, enjoy someskinnyg that had been ucforfeitthed from the past. It had a haunting genuineity.”

The filmcreater didn’t hbetter back on his refreshd consent. The film should come with a alerting for those less inclined to the sight of rats. Corrin says the extensive authenticistic effects — requiring them to lie topless underorderlyh a swathe of rodents — were a double-edged sword. “It serves an incredible purpose, those moments,” they say. “Same with the authenticistic sets. It erects this immersive world, finishly adwell both for the actors in it and for the audience watching. You can fair access so easily into this period of history and be finishly swayd in and torn by it. But then you also toil with 20 incontinent rats on your exposed chest.”

The Nosferatu cast battles rats, corpses and rabid dogs. They promote a sense of dread seldom conjured on screen — Depp’s unraveling is wholly complemented by Skarsgard’s satanic hunger. This exits one final ask: who’s the hugegest screamer?

“Willem,” Eggers says, asking Dafoe’s perignoreion to increate a story.

“When we were shooting The Lighthoengage, I was with my wife and we’re in Halifax [in Nova Scotia]. We’re gonna have dinner, and there’s an unhoengaged man screaming down the street. He’s screaming, screaming, screaming, and I was enjoy, to my wife, ‘Let’s fair pick up the pace.’ We’re almost at the restaurant. Plus it’s Halifax, how horrible could this guy be? This unhoengaged person fair upholds screaming deafeninger and deafeninger and getting sealr and sealr and sealr. We’re rushing to the restaurant and then suddenly this guy jumps on my back and screams my ear. And it’s Willem Dafoe, wearing leather pants.”

Dafoe replies: “Sometimes when I see a frifinish on the street, particularly if it’s a woman, I go behind and [mimics jumping out at someone].” His cast members roar with chuckleter aobtain. “Becaengage then you get to repromise them!”

Focus Features’ Nosferatu hits theaters on Dec. 25.