With her latest big screen role, Lily-Rose Depp had the chance to flip the script on a classic film with a feminist skew.
At Thursday’s Los Angeles premiere of writer/director Robert Eggers‘ Nosferatu, the actress explained to Deadline what makes her character Ellen Hutter “so incredibly empowering” in the remake of the 1922 German vampire silent film, which was made by writer Henrik Galeen and director F.W. Murnau.
“Ellen’s perspective is one that we’ve never gotten to see in such a central way as this one, and Rob made the deliberate choice to make Ellen’s perspective the central one,” she said on the red carpet. “And we see the story really unfold through her eyes, which I think was such a beautiful thing, and was an honor for me to play.
“And it’s very exciting, because I think while, of course, this is a story we are familiar with, this is really a fresh take that is very different from any other iteration. The character, I found so incredibly empowering. I feel like there’s so much strength to her, she has so much agency, also, in the story, without giving anything away. She kind of calls the shots in a very cool way, and I found her incredibly empowering and inspiring. I loved playing her,” added Depp.
Eggers’ also expressed his excitement over telling the story from a different perspective. “In the 10 years of trying to make the film, from that first draft to now, hasn’t changed a lot,” he noted.
Willem Dafoe, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Robert Eggers, Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgård and Nicholas Hoult attend the Los Angeles premiere of ‘Focus Features’ on Dec. 12, 2024 at TCL Chinese Theater. (Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images)
“But I think the thing that has the most appeal to me now with this version of the story is that it centers around Lily-Rose Depp’s character, it’s the female protagonist’s story,” added Eggers. “The Murnau film, which I love dearly, becomes Ellen’s story by the final act, she becomes the heroine. But this is with her from the very beginning, which I was hopeful would create more emotional and psychological depth. So, maybe it does, you tell me.”
Bill Skarsgård, who goes through quite the transformation to portray the titular vampire Count Orlok, also remembered reading an early version of Eggers’ script.
“Robert has been marinating this story ever since he was a little boy,” he said. “I read the script the first time 10 years ago, and the script didn’t change all that much. So, he was very particular with the stuff that he wanted. But in terms of creative freedom, when you have a director that is that specific, he goes, ‘I want you to work within this frame.’ It’s liberating to an extent, because you go, here’s my parameters, and then, what can I do within those parameters? But the look of the character — Robert had made a digital drawing of the character that I saw years before we started to shoot, that looked like the guy.
Nicholas Hoult and Bill Skarsgard in Nosferatu (2024) (Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Skarsgård joked, “That is me. That’s what I look like on the inside.”
Premiering Dec. 25 in U.S. theaters, Nosferatu stars Skarsgård as an ancient Transylvanian vampire who stalks a haunted young woman that becomes mysteriously obsessed with the creature. The film also stars Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin and Willem Dafoe.
Nosferatu is a remake of writer Henrik Galeen and director F.W. Murnau’s 1922 German silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, which was based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.