‘Nosferatu’ Director Robert Eggers Tells Guillermo Del Toro Details Of Lily-Rose Depp’s Performance, Vampire Makeup & Pitfalls Of Working With Rats

deadline.com:

Focus Features revealed Robert Eggers‘ much-anticipated gothic vampire horror Nosferatu on Thursday night in a special screening for select guild members and press.

During a post-screening Q&A with Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro at the Directors’ Guild of America Theater in Los Angeles, Nosferatu writer-director Robert Eggers revealed key factors that went into making the film, including trained rats, six hours of monster makeup and lead actress Lily-Rose Depp‘s dedication to learning the physical moves required of her character.

Depp, who plays Ellen Hutter, wife of Nicholas Hoult‘s character Thomas, has scenes that involve contorting her body in ways that appear almost inhuman.

During the Q&A, Del Toro said he had used a Butoh dance teacher on the set of his upcoming film Frankenstein, and asked if Eggers had done the same for Depp’s choreography. “Yeah [we had] Marie Gabriel Rotie, a Butoh choreographer who I worked with also with on The Northman,” Eggers said. “Lily did tons and tons and tons of body work with her.” The results were so impressive Eggers said, “A lot of people have wondered if some of that stuff is CGI enhanced, but she did all of that stuff physically.” The exact details of the plot are still under wraps, but Depp and Hoult are joined in the cast by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin as couple Friedrich and Bill Harding, Willem Dafoe as the occult-obsessed Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz and Bill Skarsgård as the undead Transylvanian Count Orlok. “I did it Hammer Horror style where they’re British, even though they’re in Germany,” Eggers said.