The Transformations of Actor Willem Dafoe

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Lemonada Media

Society & Culture, Film Interviews, Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2023

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Willem Dafoe has built a career out of shapeshifting. His latest role in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things demonstrates exactly that.

Today, he joins us to discuss his compelling performance in the imaginative tale (7:00), the elaborate details he discovered on set (9:20), and the three-hour physical transformation he underwent each day of filming (12:38). Then, Dafoe describes his upbringing in Wisconsin (15:15), his early love of B-movies (20:04), and his formative years in the theater as part of The Wooster Group in New York City (26:45).

On the back-half, we dive into his task-based approach to acting (35:55) and how it guided his memorable performances in the late William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. (41:10), Oliver Stone’s Platoon (43:52), and Sean Baker’s The Florida Project (49:44). To close, Dafoe reflects on the joy of collaboration (53:30), his search for truth as an actor (57:25), and his desire to continue creating in years to come (1:00:50).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm San by a legendary actor Willem Defoe. I sat with them back in 2017 around
0:48.6	the release of Sean Baker's The Florida Project for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting
0:54.7	After. In the six years since then, Defoe has kept remarkably busy. He was
1:00.7	nominated again in 2019 for his portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh in At Eternity's Gate.
1:07.0	He also made two films with Robert Eggers, The Lighthouse and The Northman, and two films with
1:12.4	West Anderson, the Northman, and two films with West Anderson, the French Dispatch at
1:14.9	Asteroid City, not to mention Guiramel del Toro's Nightmare Alley and Paul Schrader's The Card Counter.
1:21.4	And those are just my personal favorites of his in recent years.
1:25.1	His latest, however, is a film called Poor Things, directed by Your Ghost Lothymos.
1:31.2	In it, Defoe plays Dr. Godwin Baxter, a daring scientist who brings a young woman back
1:37.2	to life through a rather unorthodox experiment.
1:40.8	Once she's reborn, Bella, played by Emma Stone, embarks on a kind of voyage of sexual liberation.
1:47.0	Here's a clip from the trailer.
1:49.0	This is Bella. McCandels.
1:55.0	Hello, Bella, this is Mr. McCandels.
1:58.0	Hello, Bella.
2:00.0	She's an experiment.
2:05.0	Good evening.
2:06.0	Her rain and her body are not quite synchronized.
2:09.0	But she is progressing at an accelerated piece.
2:14.0	Tell me where did she come from?
2:21.0	Tell me where did she come from? I shall.
	...

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