Write On: 'Nosferatu' Writer/Director Robert Eggers

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast

“As someone who’s been obsessed with vampires since I was a little kid, I don’t totally know [why we love vampire movies so much]. Obviously, sex and death are always interesting and in vampire stories, including the very earliest accounts of folk vampirism in Eastern Europe, that connection has always been there. Some of these early folkloric vampires didn’t drink blood but fornicated with their widows until they died. And then, being undead, rising from the grave, you know Dracula and Jesus have had the most movies made about them of any popular characters in Western cultures, so there must be something to that as well,” says Robert Eggers, writer/director of Nosferatu, starring Lily Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult and Bill Skarsgård.

In this episode, Eggers talks about the play-version of Nosferatu that he wrote and directed when he was in high school, writing the Ellen character (Depp) as a woman at war with herself, and making Orlok (Skarsgård) the villain without making him too arch or campy.

“[Orlok] has a sense of humor and he has a sense of poetry. He’s a well-learned man so that’s enjoyable. It’s fun to write dialogue for someone who had their heyday in the the 16th century and English was like their 17th language, that’s fun,” says Eggers.

We also asked Eggers about telling an old story but making it relevant to today. He says that while he doesn’t worry about making a film with a specific message, “I don’t live in a vacuum. So even if I’m not trying to write a film with a message, whatever is happening around me is coming out. Also, it’s interesting that the movie didn’t get made until when it did. The original Nosferatu came out a couple of years after the Spanish flu. This is coming out a couple of years after the pandemic. And I wrote all that stuff before the pandemic. In fact, they had face coverings originally, and I took them away because it felt too much on the nose. So, I think it’s all there for the taking,” he says.

To hear more about the power of vampires and Egger’s writing process, listen to the podcast.