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Nosferatu Director Robert Eggers for Empire Magazine June 2025

Bring Out The Dead

"HERE WE CAN see the dogs eating the dead horse," points out Robert Eggers on his Nosferatu commentary. "It's a nice detail."

This is Eggers in a nutshell. The grim everyday visuals. The passion for accuracy.

(full article under the cut)

The deadpan delivery. Among other things, Nosteratu's home-entertainment release includes the extended cut (it's four minutes longer), and Eggers' accompanying unpacking.

It's great to have it all, when such extras are few and far between these days. "Well, I didn't go to film school, and commentaries and special features were a lot of how I learned how to make movies," he explains to Empire. "I think it's important to do."

It's his final bit of work on a film (his fourth, after The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman) that has been in the works for decades; no use in cutting corners now, for the version that will exist forever. Eggers' take on F.W. Murnau's folklore interpretation of Dracula was a hit, making $180 million at the box office

— a great haul for a film about an abusive rotting corpse — and was acclaimed by everyone from young goths to old masters like Martin Scorsese, who recently said it was amazing ("There's no way that can't make you feel good," says Eggers).

So, as the director bids farewell to Orlok, we sit down with him to close the coffin for good.

Last time we met in London, you'd been doing Nosferatu press all day, and when you walked in you said, "Moustache, moustache, moustache, moustache, moustache." As in, you'd been asked about Orlok's moustache all day. Were you surprised that that element was such a big deal for people?

Yeah. I mean, I get that. It's a hard pill for some people to swallow. But I also don't care, because there's just no fucking way that this guy wouldn't have a moustache. But I get it. I love the way Max Schreck looks too [in Murnau's original], and it's a change. So, fair play, as people say over here.

There's a scene in the extended cut with Willem Dafoe's Von Franz and Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Friedrich having this intense tit for tat. You say on the commentary that Von Franz keeps trying to get the last word in, but you dialled it down a bit because it was on the verge of getting a bit Mel Brooks.

Was that something you kept on your shoulder, ensuring that the film didn't veer into pastiche?

Mel Brooks' Dracula: Dead And Loving It was very helpful, because it points out all the absurdities in the things that don't work in this story. So I was very consciously trying to find solves for the most egregious things that come up in various tellings of Dracula. But yeah, it was just so much fun to write dialogue for Dafoe's character that sometimes it got out of hand

Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) is so mentally and physically repressed, by everyone around her, all trying to keep her in her place. Orlok (Bill Skarsgärd) represents the opposite of that. He's been abusing her since she was a kid, but sees something in her that no-one else does. She's drawn to him, and is repelled by the fact that she's drawn to him.

What was it like for you writing all of that, taking into consideration how carefully one must tread with such subject matter? Did it weigh heavy on your soul?

Yeah. But I think that what enables me to do it, in a way that I hope makes it work, is just sticking to the confines of the period. I think if it were a contemporary film and I was dealing with the same kinds of issues, it would be much more complicated to not fuck it up. And it's easier for me and perhaps, hopefully, more effective to certain audience members, to explore this subject matter [in the context of] supernatural vampires.

There are certainly many different layers at play. Orlok visits Ellen one night, and he's standing there in his big cloak, holding his sash. On the commentary, you half-joke that he's trying to look dashing for his lady. And it is funny.

That choice actually comes down to Bill. He was always asking me, "When is he feeling uncomfortable? When is he feeling jealous?" So when we were blocking that scene on set, he was like, "What do you think about this? His hand here? Trying to look, you know..." And I was like,

"Yeah, I like that. It's good."

Because even this centuries-old, abusive dead monster has this little ego and insecurities. He wants this woman to fancy him.

Yeah. (Laughs)

Did you have an intimacy coordinator on set? Because this film is not business as usual in that department: you have this monstrous demon having sex with this woman. That's a whole different level of intimacy and choreography.

Our intimacy coordinator, Bronagh [McAuley], is great. I worked with her on The Northman too. A good intimacy coordinator wants to help you tell the story, and to make sure that everyone is comfortable doing that. A good intimacy coordinator has the imagination to be like, "Okay, we're sensually caressing cavities in a corpse's back, okay, that's something we're gonna do. Cool."

Yes, it's not the usual thing an intimacy coordinator has to deal with.

No. But... (Laughs) you gotta keep things interesting, right?

In terms of the themes, the repression and sexuality and abuse, since the film has been out there, have you had feedback from people who that has really resonated with?

Yeah, I've had positive feedback with it resonating for people about... well, how personal it is, I can't speak to that. There is a lot going on with Ellen and Orlok, and going back to your earlier question, something that was on my mind very much was that... There's a lot of feminist literary criticism talking about the trope in 19th-century fiction of sexualised female characters needing to die at the end of the novel, to be punished for theirtransgressions - unconsciously punished by the male authors. And so here I am, potentially, being a post-Victorian male author and doingthe same thing. But there's also a lot of feminist literary criticism that points out that this archetype of this female who understands the other side of repressed 19th-century society and has a window into it, she is the saviour of society. And so as much as maybe these male authors couldn't handle that, or whatever the fuck, society couldn't handle it, it was clearly reconstellating over and over again, because of its need to speak to this repressed period. And so that was something that, in the writing process, gave me perhaps some more confidence to pursue what I was pursuing.

Bill told me that he'd never played anything this evil before, and never wanted to again. It upset him. Did you feel that from him, when you wrapped?

I mean, I couldn't find him when we wrapped. I said, "Cut," and Bill fucking disappeared! (Laughs) So, yeah, he was definitely ready to get out of there.

There's a great shot in the extended cut of the shadow of Orlok's hand stretching over Ellen and Nicholas Hoult's Hutter when they're lying on the floor. On the commentary you explain that you cut it because of feedback from test screenings where people said there was too much of Orlok's shadow, but that you think maybe you shouldn't have cut it. Are test screenings important for you in terms of how audiences might receive the film?

Test screenings are important, as are friends-and-family screenings, just for getting the movie out there, getting it on its feet, getting people to watch it and understand what's working, what's not working. The thing that I don't like about test screenings is when studios get really obsessed about the numbers, because it's not enough data for it to be empirical evidence of anything. This didn't happen with Focus [Features], but when studios get stuck on the numbers, which can happen, that's when this is a fucking nightmare. But as far as getting people to watch a film, it's great. And when 85 per cent of the people say there's too much shadow, I don't know, maybe there's too much shadow. On the other hand, when all the VFX are done and the music's done and the pace is right, I think probably that shot could have been in there, but at the time, it did feel like I was going overboard with the shadow.

It's great, though, and it's there now.

Yeah, and also in terms of why it might have been fine if I'd kept it — the final music cue where the shadow creeps up the stairs and opens the door and all that shit, when the film was previewed it wasn't finished; it didn't have the kind of tension that it has now. Maybe just that alone would have made it feel different. That's the other thing that's so frustrating about previews: the movie's not done.

You and the cast did some press photos on a staircase at St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel. Did you see that people noticed it was exactly where the Spice Girls' 'Wannabe' video was shot?

I sure did, yes. I wasn't aware, but [at the time) Emma Corrin and, I think, Aaron Taylor-Johnson were mentioning it while we were getting the pictures taken.

Well, that video is iconic to some people.

Yes. (Laughs)|

There was generally an amazing response to the film. It's by far your biggest hit at the box office - has that changed things in terms of what has come your way since, and what happens next?

Yes. But we'll see how it all pans out. I'm excited that I'm already working on the next one, getting it up on its feet.

Is that Werwulf?

Yeah, unless something totally fucking crazy happens.

Nosferatu was a lifelong obsession — have you always been fascinated by werewolve and werewolf movies too?

Yeah. I mean, nothing is going to be Nosferatu, as far as personal attachment (goes], but yeah, werewolves have been an important monster as well. And it's kind of a unique genre. The finest werewolf movie is a comedy, which is kind of interesting. One thing I would actually like to say about Werwulf is. I don't know who leaked what, but it's been said and been interpreted as an official statement that [the dialogue of the] movie is in Old English. But obviously, because of the period [the 13th century] it's set in, it's Middle English, and I would just like to be clear on that.

All of your films are set in very specific time periods, steeped in history, and you've always been so immersed in the research and the writing and the production, the detail. What residue remains with you? What stays in your head?

I mean, they're all things that I care about, so... I will read an article about a new Viking archaeological find. And I will go to a witchcraft museum. I'm still interested in all this stuff.

There is only so much room I can have with things that I'm writing; two to three things can only fit in there at a time without everything getting jumbled. But I mean, I've written another medieval movie that hasn't been made.

"The Knight"?

Yeah. But also, I know a ton about Viking Age farming and a ton about Tudor and Stuart farming. So even without the research into the medieval farming, which I'm still doing anyway, I have a good foothold in it.

In February you went to London's Prince Charles Cinema to present The Witch, which had premiered at Sundance ten years earlier. Are you nostalgic like that? What did it mean to you, to introduce your debut film a decade on?

It was pretty extraordinary and humbling. And to have that crowd be so enthusiastic to see it, it was cool. And yeah, the movie changed my life.

I assume you didn't stay in there and watch it again.

No. No, thank you. (Laughs)

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