Immersed in folklore, the macabre and the occult, Robert Eggers has developed a rich vocabulary – transforming stories passed down through generations into immersive, chilling cinematic experiences. In 2015, the American auteur made his directorial debut with The Witch, an unsettling tale of a banished Puritan family on the outskirts of 17th-century New England. Soon followed The Lighthouse, starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as 19th-century lighthouse keepers marooned and maddened by solitude. Both works are claustrophobic tales of the trappings of obsession and unpredictability of the supernatural. His 2022 epic The Northman was loosely based on the Viking lore of Prince Amleth, whose quest for vengeance also underpinned Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy Hamlet, cementing Egger’s penchant for reshaping classical texts.

Eggers’ latest cinematic project is a re-telling of Nosferatu, the 1922 German Expressionist film directed by F. W. Murnau, in which a blood-thirsty vampire is cursed with immortality. Although it is undeniable that Bram Stoker’s inimitable 1897 gothic novel Dracula was the forefather of Nosferatu, the name alone has been feared for centuries, finding its origins in an archaic Roman term translating to ‘vampire.’ In Eggers’ unnerving adaptation, Bill Skarsgård stars in the titular role alongside Willem Dafoe, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp and Emma Corrin, whose role as Anna Harding, a character based on Lucy Westenra from Stoker’s original work, lies central to Eggers’ story. The auteur had Corrin earmarked for the role, sending them a written letter explaining the character in acute detail; inviting the Golden-Globe-winning actor to embrace the ultimate horror. Nearly a decade in the making, Nosferatu is – at large – a study of the human condition, but in the shadowy halls of Count Orlok’s Transylvanian castle, Eggers is reconceptualising a figure whose terrifying presence has loomed over popular culture for over a century.

Emma Corrin: Thanks for asking me to do this Rob, very cool.
Robert Eggers: It’s awesome. How’s it going?

EC: I’m good, it’s going well. I have a mould problem in my house which is stressful but apart from that it’s fine.
RE: I’m sorry, it’s a common thing here [in England]. Why did you want to be in Nosferatu? I’m always saying how grateful I am, and I really mean it. You’re such a phenomenal actor and there is some cool shit [in the part] but it’s not the juiciest role of all time… but if we didn’t have someone of your calibre it wouldn’t have worked. Anna [Harding, Emma’s character] is such a crucial role in so many ways. The Hardings have more traditional arcs than the other characters, who are a bit more static in some ways, and [The Hardings] are more relatable; you need someone who can capture the tragedy.

EC: Thank you, that’s very kind. It was because I love your work and – I think it was when I’d just done The Crown – I remember you wrote me a letter which was lovely, no one had ever written me a letter to invite me to be in something before. That was very special and meaningful.
RE: Really?!

EC: Are you saying ‘really’ as in you can’t believe no one has?
RE: Yeah. That surprises me.

EC: At that point I hadn’t done much, and it was really nice. I got this sense from the work you do that there’s a real ensemble feel in your films, the way you write them and the worlds that they’re built in are so comprehensive and so detailed that, no matter the scale of the role, everyone has a complete arc, and that appealed to me. I’ve wanted to work with writer-directors and I think you are the best of the best. [Robert laughs] Also horror appealed to me, I hadn’t done anything like that and I thought it would be a little bit unexpected, or a bit different, trying to break that ‘Diana’ mould. I felt it would be challenging and I think it was, you helped me break some habits and it was very cool to work with you. You challenge actors in a really good way, you take us outside of ourselves and that’s unusual and needed.
RE: Thank you. It’s funny because I have done a little press for the movie already and there is some conversation around the film and the performances being stylised. The camera work for example, because it’s so classical and restrained but at the same time there’s a lot of camera movement. I guess that feels stylised, but with the approach of trying to have this ‘authenticity’. I’m going to have to stop saying that word because I’m getting sick of it, but people talked and behaved differently in 1838 than they do now. The way that you hold your reticule and your parasol, the way you move in the corset and the way Aaron [Taylor-Johnson] holds his cane and his top hat. Then in addition to that you have these heightened emotional states in a horror movie when you’re seeing horrible things happen to your friends and children in front of your eyes, so obviously those emotions are massive. I don’t know if there is a question mark in that sentence but what’s your take on that?

EC: The oracle that is Willem Dafoe said something which was so spot on, “The wonderful thing about how you work, and alongside everyone you work with, is that the world you create is so specific.” I think ‘stylised’ is a reductive word to use and I don’t think it makes any sense, it’s so detailed and specific. As you said, this is just how people held themselves, stylised to me suggests some kind of restraint and artifice, it isn’t artifice it’s just that people in that time presented themselves in a certain way and acted with restraint. There was a lot of specificity for them on a day-to-day basis on how they’d hold their hands and how they’d gesture. Even down to the props and how they interact with them, the corsets and how it affects posture. Willem said the amazing thing about the worlds you create is that you don’t point at period, it’s really lived in and it’s amazingly fleshed out. That’s something I was blown away by, working with you and everyone else.
RE: What was particularly challenging that seems mundane and unexpected?

EC: I suppose getting to grips with wearing a corset for eight hours and trying to make dialogue natural. You’re very good at writing dialogue that is so accurate to the period and it was about getting used to delivering a sentiment that we’re very used to delivering colloquially with that same emotion through very clipped or precise language. I think one of the unexpected challenges was not moving my face. [both laugh] I have a very expressive face, I’ve been told that in day-to-day life it’s a nightmare because you can read everything I feel all the time and you told me very rightly not to move my eyebrows. I was an amazing habit breaker, I know that everything I do is always going to be different but it made me think about what I do with my face and what purpose it serves in a way that I hadn’t before.
RE: That’s awesome. What’s kind of cool with your blinking is that it becomes Anna’s tell – she’s keeping it together in every single way, but she’s blinking which is kind of cool.

EC: The amazing thing is I really didn’t think I was blinking, then I watched it and I was like, “Jesus Christ, Emma! Stop blinking!” [laughs] So I’m glad there is a way we can spin it.
RE: Yeah, I mean it authentically. [both laugh]

EC: I know you’ve wanted to tell this story, or a version of it, since you were a kid, right?
RE: Yeah, exactly. I’ve been working on this movie for ten years, which is insane to think about but it’s been something that’s been with me since I was a kid.

“I’ve been working on this movie for ten years, which is insane to think about but it’s been something that’s been with me since I was a kid.”

EC: With that in mind, in terms of your experience with it and now it’s done, what were the most challenging moments for you? Which did you expect and which did you not expect?
RE: There’s always stuff that’s like, “Oh, it’s too windy in the forest. We’ve done two shots now we have to pack up and go home.” [laughs] That’s just what it is, but you wouldn’t know [until you do it]. Something that I knew was going to be challenging, particularly for Bill [Skarsgård] who has to play someone who is supernaturally perfect and doesn’t do anything wrong and is absolutely nothing like Bill in any way shape or form aside from being tall. [laughs] That requires a tonne of energy and focus. The really intense emotional stuff Lily [-Rose Depp] had to do pretty much every day, keeping that going is pretty exhausting for everybody. Jarin [Blaschke, cinematographer] and I are still always trying to challenge ourselves and push ourselves further, so even if it’s something we’ve kind of done before we try to do it a little bit better, we’re still learning, it’s still scary, we’re still taking risks on set. One of the things that became maddening to production in some ways was having to tear Craig’s [Lathrop] beautiful sets into pieces in order to get the camera where we needed to get the shot. Focus [Features, production company] was so supportive and Bernie [Bellew] the line producer and Josh [Robertson] the AD were so supportive that it was a really healthy environment even though it was challenging – everyone was trying to figure out how to make it work. I remember saying to Bernie, “I know we’re three days behind already but unfortunately, I have to reshoot the crypt scene,” and he’d be like, ‘Robert, that’s the last thing I wanted to hear this morning but we’ll figure it out.’” The weird thing is, I kind of like the movie and that’s an odd feeling, to be proud of it. I feel exposed. [laughs]

EC: Because you’re proud of it?
RE: Yeah.

EC: There’s a lot wrapped up in it because it’s been one of those things you’ve wanted to do for such a long time, I totally get that. I think it’s wonderful though that you had that support, it’s a testament to the way that you and Jarin work. People really trust your vision because it’s so precise. It’s quite a rare thing to have people at the helm of a project who really are uncompromising in their vision and know what they want to do, and I think you completely have that – it’s amazing.
RE: Too kind as always, Emma. What got you on the journey to be an actor?

“I had this swimming pool of rat piss in my neck.” – Emma Corrin

EC: Oh gosh. I think two parts story, one part escape. I’ve always loved stories, I used to write constantly when I was little and lived in a world where I would make stuff up. I was obsessed with adventure and was always making up a disaster that would happen so I had a story to tell myself, so I’d be like, “Today there’s going to be a flood,” then I’d change bits in the house and the garden so I’d have a raft and move all my things from my room outside. I found the real world a bit uninspiring and I wanted to, for whatever reason, live elsewhere. When I was a teenager that turned into writing, I wrote a lot of random stories mostly about animals and people being friends with animals. I think that translated into thinking, “How do you make this an adult thing?” Which translated into acting.
RE: And you’re still writing?

EC: I am still writing, I think it’s something that took a bit of a hiatus whilst at university and navigating this mad puzzle of how to become an actor in the real world. It took a back seat and now I feel like I’ve settled in a way to think, “Wait, what happened to that part of my life?” It’s something I really used to enjoy that I let slip. So I’m trying to do more of it.
RE: Well, what you’re working on sounds cool to me, I must say.

EC: Thanks. How about you? You started as an actor and a set designer, right?
RE: I was always doing theatre growing up and I wanted to direct. I directed some stuff in high school, one of those things was a play of Nosferatu, then I got into a drama school. My grades were very poor and that was a way to get to New York City but I really enjoyed the school and I got a lot out of it. Then I was a working off-Broadway actor and my friends and I decided to start our own theatre company because I felt I couldn’t be worse than the people who were directing me. I designed the sets and costumes for those productions and then more experienced directors saw my work and asked me to design sets and costumes for them, then I slowly figured that’s how I could make a living, behind the scenes building a directing career. After ten years, The Witch happened. Then everything changed. It was a long journey there but an enjoyable one. Everything from set design to set carpentry to being a stage hand to, “Can you please pay me to clean out the storage closet and repair the curtains that need to be sewn because I need to pay my rent?” But it was good because you get a bigger view of how the whole thing works. I find it so satisfying that when you’re doing scene work, it’s the same thing I was doing in high school, or we were doing with our imagination. It really is the same, and I think that is among the most fortunate things about the fact that we get to do this as a career.

EC: You’re so right, it is ultimately the same. It must be really nice as well for you to have a 360 understanding of everything that is going on. I imagine for Linda [Muir, costume designer] and the people who you collaborate with, because you tend to work with the same people…
RE: Yes, I’m always working with the same heads of department, we know and trust each other. We have the shorthand, which everyone uses as a buzzword when describing this, but it is true.

EC: That must be great. I was watching a TV show on carpentry yesterday and I was like, “God, this is cool.” I could never do it in a million years but it’s beautiful. [Robert laughs]
RE: It is amazing but I was a set carpenter, I wasn’t making Shaker furniture. [laughs]

EC: That’s exactly what I was watching! [both laugh] I was watching a TV show about kitchen design and a particular company that makes these Shaker kitchens and it was fascinating, they do it free-hand.
RE: The Shakers came up with a lot of great stuff, it’s amazing how productive you are if you don’t have sex – it’s wild.

EC: It was all carpentry! [laughs]
RE: Even if this isn’t true I don’t care because it’s such a good story, but as far as I’m aware, a witch’s conical broom was how brooms always were, and now every broom is flat, but I recall when I was in the Canterbury Shaker Village they said Shakers invented the flat broom because the conical broom doesn’t sweep as well. For thousands of years people were using the same shitty broom, and then some weirdos in New England decided not to have sex any more and make the broom that becomes the broom of all time.

“I directed some stuff in high school, one of those things was a play of Nosferatu…” – Robert Eggers

EC: I’d like that to be true.
RE: I grew up around that stuff. So, what about the rats?

EC: The rats, my beloved rats. That will go down in my life a top ten intense moment.
RE: You were covered in a lot of rats…

EC: Twenty live rats I would say, while topless on the floor.
RE: What is the rat’s special skill that we learned about?

EC: Which one? There was a lot of scratching going on, there was constant pissing and shitting which I hadn’t anticipated. I’d met the rats, they did a rat meet-and-greet for me which was hilarious. The day of the scene I’m lying on the floor, I had about twenty rats on me and we tried to have them all on my chest, they had other journeys they wanted to go on but I guess the way biology works all of the piss kept gathering in my clavicle, above my sternum. I had this swimming pool of rat piss in my neck, it was so gross, it was disgusting. [laughs] There was just this warm shit all over my chest but you know what, it’s a great anecdote and ultimately I think it paid off in the scene.
RE: Yeah it’s so much better than CGI. [laughs]

EC: I think so. I remember texting you saying, “Hey Rob! Just reading the script again and about these rats, is this going to be CGI or…?” You said, “No, real rats but they have been trained by the person who trained the fox in Antichrist.”
RE: They were just kind of on you but they were trained, the shot where they come out of the ship, they had the rats in boxes and they hit buzzers and the rats came out at a certain time and did their thing – it was very impressive. They are very clever.

EC: I remember Nick [Nicholas Hoult] telling us about the wolves – or the dogs that were meant to be wolves – and that sounded terrifying.
RE: Yeah, they were scary. When they were all snarling and barking at Nick – it was loud.

EC: Nick said you did a take and he kept pulling faces because he was terrified and you were like, “You need to not do the faces.” He was like, “I’m just so scared of these wolves.” [both laugh] I’d like to ask you about your interest in mythology and folklore, have you always been interested in it? Was there one thing you remember reading or seeing?
RE: The past is where my love lies, and in macabre things, for whatever reason. It was always Darth Vader instead of Luke Skywalker or The Wicked Witch of the West instead of Dorothy, those would be my childhood preferences. My dad was a Shakespeare professor. I was very aware of Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s plays as a kid, and also the tales of old New England were something I just happened to be interested in. My grandfather was interested in Native American culture and different African tribal cultures, I was around a lot of people with these kinds of interests and I got into it. There is something primal about all this stuff and as an adult, it is easy for me to talk about why I like it now, but how it all came to be, I don’t know Emma.

EC: I don’t think you have to have an answer but that was a lovely answer anyway.
RE: Good. [laughs]

EC: I’ve never delved into it but it’s something that I’ve wanted to, I bought a book the other day called The Haunted Wood by Sam Leaf. It’s about children’s stories and how all the stories we read as children underpin all the other things we do, and I have a similar sense with folklore and mythology. I have this funny feeling that in everything we do and create we’re recreating versions of these stories.
RE: I agree.

EC: I think if we really examined it, folklore and the passage of storytelling probably influences all of us in everything we do, especially in creating film, TV and theatre.
RE: For sure. In a big picture view, obviously if you go back to more primal myths the same stories kind of repeat themselves in a new way and evolve, but also remain the same. There are certain archetypal stories, and people have written theories that there are only x many stories ever told. But I think the childhood stuff is more immediately palpable and sometimes I’ll watch a movie that I watched as a kid that I haven’t watched in a million years and realise I have all kinds of shit from that movie in my own, even though it’s a movie that has nothing to do with the kind of stuff I’m making now. I don’t really like the question, “Why now?” That’s a big part of when you pitch a movie, “Why now?”I never know why now, why now is because I’ve had an idea and someone is willing to green-light it. But I do feel there tends to be a cultural need for it even if it’s very small,it just happens. This is something that is an archetypal story, that is like a fairytale that should technically ‘always’ work, but will it work now? Why would it or wouldn’t it? What is palpable? When you watched it – obviously you were a part of it so it’s hard to be outside of yourself in that way – but how does it speak to who we are now?

“I’ll watch a movie that I watched as a kid that I haven’t watched in a million years and realise I have all kinds of shit from that movie in my own.” – Robert Eggers

EC: You’re right, that is such a hard question. There’s something in the fact that it’s the foundational horror, arguably. It comes from Dracula but also from a lot of myths and folklore before that, and I think therefore it has a foundational place in storytelling, in cinema and in art. It’s kind of incredible when you have another version of it that comes out, it’s a chance for people to reimmerse themselves in the story and see it with a different interpretation. I don’t think many people could pull off this film and this story, but you do. The world you create is incredible. What I didn’t anticipate is that sometimes it’s hard to separate Nosferatu and the lore and the horror surrounding it from the individual characters and their journeys. I’ve always known this story but I couldn’t tell you before watching our version about the individual struggles and arcs of the characters, that’s something I got when I watched it. Even more so than when we were shooting it, because when we were shooting you’re so fixated on the specific job you have, the arc and what you’re serving. Watching it I was struck by the feelings I had towards all the different people in it, I felt a lot of empathy for Bill’s character and a lot of empathy for Ellen [Hutter, Lily-Rose Depp’s character] and then in turn Thomas [Hutter, Nicholas Hoult’s character]. There’s an amazing exchange people will see between [Professor Albin Eberhart] Von Franz [Willem Dafoe’s character] and Ellen that I feel really spoke to me about what it is to have a voice, what it is to feel believed or not feel believed. Also, the love that Ellen and Nosferatu have, I don’t know if you’d call it ‘love’ but it exists as something in that space, and I think this film also gives that its own legitimacy in a way I hadn’t seen before. It makes you think about love differently, it makes you think about the sacrifices we make, and you can extrapolate a lot from it thatyou could apply to different things that are relevant now.
RE: It is crazy how you do feel bad for Bill at the end.

EC: I felt bad, I felt quite emotional.
RE: I don’t know how he does it – he’s a complete bastard for the entire film.

EC: And by virtue of his costume and the prosthetics he shouldn’t be able to emote but what he does with his voice and what you guys did with the score carries a lot of that emotion. I felt like they had something real, god damn it! [laughs] I wasn’t expecting to feel that. It’s a horror, which is incredible and it makes us feel things and takes us out of ourselves, it’s your particular version of it which stands alone and is incredible. I think the way you have created and woven everyone’s arcs together creates something really beautiful that will give people a new perspective on it and give them pause for thought.
RE: Very nice.

EC: We got there, I didn’t know what that was going to be but I stand by all of that.
RE: It’s great, you tied it up in a bow.

EC: Would you ever write prose? I saw an article in The New Yorker that you’d written about horror films and how it’s a way to process your own fear.
RE: Well…

EC: It’s beautiful! You write these incredible scripts and this amazing descriptive scenery that is so beautiful. [Robert laughs] Do you hate this question?
RE: No, the thing is, when The New York Times ask you to do a critical essay, you’re going to say yes. But I’m also not a cultural critic, I’m just trying to make movies over here. I felt like if I started writing something from one of my screenplays that would take up some word count. [both laugh] Ultimately it led to something interesting and I am proud of the piece.

EC: It’s really well written, I was like, “I’d read this book.” So, would you ever write prose?
RE: I don’t know, it’s easy to write something OK for a couple of paragraphs but I wrote a novella of Nosferatu, that is not well written, and I was trying to do it in a very florid Victorian style that just sounds bad. I’m proud of the dialogue in all of my films but I talk like an ageing goth-adjacent hipster from Brooklyn and I say “like, like, like.” It takes a lot of time to polish every line of dialogue that I have in order for it to be what it needs to be, and I think if I tried to write a short book it would probably take me ten years. Aside from the fact I don’t think it’s my skill and I think there are so many people who would be better at writing novels than me, I have a certain lane in making movies that is my little lane. Miloš Forman and others have said a director is a little bit a writer, a little bit a cinematographer, a little bit an actor, a little bit a costume designer and you hire people who are better at all that than you and hone it. But I’m glad you liked it, Emma.

EC: I really did like it. You write these amazing character biographies and I think you write them for everyone, right?
RE: I tend to write them for the smaller characters because there’s less there, and also because Bill’s character was dead I wanted to let him know how I thought he was when he was alive.

EC: I thought that watching the film, you’re like, “Who are you? Who were you?” Do you write the biographies before or during when you’re writing the script, or is it something you come to after for the actor?
RE: I wrote some of that for myself and then I wrote a more fleshed-out thing for the actor, but oftentimes I’ll realise I need to go through the entire script just looking at this character only and then I’ll realise behaviours are inconsistent, and not in a human way, because we are inconsistent, but in a “I fucked up” way. [laughs] Then that often leads meto realise I need to figure out biographies in order to make this work. Sometimes I don’t need to do that, sometimes I just need to write the scenes that aren’t in the movie, the scenes that are in between scenes, but different things require different tools. I think in the pieces where I’ve been the most successful with the dimensionality of the character I’ve done this kind of work on them.

EC: It’s really great, I loved it.
RE: But on The Lighthouse with [Robert] Pattinson, he desperately wanted to know exactly what his past was, so I gave him a whole bunch of options and was like, “It’s up to you.” [laughs]

EC: Pick your own adventure!

Interview originally published inside The HERO Winter Annual 2024

GROOMING DANI GUINSBERG; PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT BRUNO M cGUFFIE; FASHION ASSISTANT ARIELLE GOLD