Back in October of 2013, CraveOnline was unleashed onto the set of Gary Shore’s Dracula Untold in Ireland. Witney Seibold had a chance to sit with the film’s three lead actors and squeeze them for details on this upcoming horror story, the part they play, and details on the plot. This new movie is a Dracula origin story that blends the real history of Vlad the Impaler with the legend of Dracula, detailing how he went from being a warlord to a family man to one of the world’s most notorious supernatural monsters.
Luke Evans plays Vlad. Dominic Cooper plays his best-friend-turned-rival Prince Mehmed. Sarah Gadon plays Vlad’s loving wife Mirena. Here is what they revealed:
Luke Evans
On the difference between pre-vampire Dracula and post-vampire Dracula:
Luke Evans: You meet Vlad at the beginning of the film and he’s in a good place. He’s had ten years of peace. He’s in a loving relationship with his beautiful wife. He has a good kid and his people are happy and everything is prosperous. So he’s quite in a good place. And then the threat comes of the invasion of the Ottoman Empire and Mehmed (played by Dominic Cooper), he realizes that he doesn’t have… he loses his security. He becomes quite vulnerable. And you see the cracks start to show, you see that he’s a very vulnerable leader. Then he gains this, this “gift,” in a way, these powers that he has, after he chooses to become a vampire, and you see a different sort of character. I guess he becomes more of a confident… he has hope all of a sudden in a different way. He also has these abilities which he didn’t have before, which no one else knows about, but he’s aware that he can do these things. He can speak to you without opening his mouth and you can hear what he’s saying. He can fly and jump. He’s immortal and his wounds heal and all that stuff. So I think that sort of stuff is good to play on. And as we go further into the film, I get to play those internal, confident, boding moments.
But there’s a lot of Vlad you see at the beginning that you see at the end. The important thing that we wanted to impress in the character of Vlad and Dracula (when he becomes the vampire), is you see the human in the vampire. We don’t want to dissociate the two people. We want to keep them the same. The same person. The same emotional drive he has at the beginning of the film, the reasons why he does what he does are still prevalent. In a way he’s the same person, but in a way he isn’t. He has other things going on.
Does power corrupt?
Does power corrupt? In the wrong hands, yes. Obviously. We know that very much so in this day and age. But in this film, you see power given to one human being and used wrongly, and you see power given to another human being, and used in a very selfless way. And I think in Vlad’s situation, he does what he does from a very selfless point of view. He does it because he wants to save his family, his son and his wife. His people. You see other people turn into vampires in this movie, and you see immediately… I was trying to associate it with being addicted to some very strong drug. And you see some people who deal with drug addiction in one way, and some who just fail and are never able to come out of that dark place. Vlad always keeps his reasons for doing it very clear. As long as he has this urge to drink the blood of a human. He resists as much as he can because of the love for his wife and his kid and his people.
Is the new Dracula very vampire-y?
Are we allowed to talk about this? I guess we can. The transformation; he doesn’t realize the powers immediately. It’s sort of a revelation. As the plot goes on and his journey progresses, he becomes aware that he can do certain things, and certain things happen to him, and he’s like “Wow, that’s useful.” He actually does say “That’s useful” in one scene. So he has them all. As soon as he makes his decision and he does what he does, in Caligula’s Cave, he gains all of those powers. But he’s very unaware of them at the beginning. He thinks he’s dead at one point, but then he realizes he’s alive, but no one can see him. And then he can be seen, and he’s seeing ghosts. It’s interesting, his discovery of all these things as he goes along. But the vampiric part of him is only seen in subtle moments when he actually does go to… bite… you see this incredible transformation which is unique to this film. To Dracula. It’s never been done before. He doesn’t have the fangs the whole time. I’m not talking with [fang-sih noise] fangs in my mouth the whole time. Even though I have my own fangs, which is good.
But sometimes I think the unseen is more exciting and more intriguing to an audience than what you see. If you spoon-feed every visual element of some character like Dracula – which we’re so used to seeing in so many different representations over the years – this one we’ve chosen to be very clever about when we show these moments of his… the vampire in him. But it’s quite beautiful what happens to him when he goes in for the kill.
Is it a superhero origin story?
You know… if you read up about Dracula, he’s able to transform into creatures, he can speak into you head without opening his mouth. He can physically make you do things. Move. He can fly. He’s immortal; he won’t die as long as he stays out of the sunshine. His wounds heal. He has a few flaws, but he tries to stay away from silver and sunlight. In a way. But, like I said, we want to keep the human part of him alive. So people can relate to him. He is sort of an antihero in a way. We’re used to thinking of Dracula as this man who can lure women into bed and then kill them for their life force. Yeah, he does become that. But this is the origin. This is the origin story of Dracula. Maybe that’s where he ends up – in the Bram Stoker version of the story – but at this point he’s still hoping that that’s now what he’s going to become. What he sees in that cave up on Broken Tooth Mountain. That’s not a nice thought. He doesn’t want to live like that the rest of his life.
Is he a one-man army?
I think in many senses he is. I’d say he really is a man who has to keep this secret to himself. He really knows that most people are not going to like what he’s done. Including his wife at the top of the pile. She’s mortified that he’s decided to choose this dark, almost inhuman, anti-Christian life. So, he has to make these decisions a lot on his own, and try to convince his armies and his people and his men that everything looks terrible, and it looks like we’re all going to die, but you have to trust me. And he doesn’t want to give it away, ’cause they’re all going to freak out when they find out what he is. So in a way, he is a one-man band. A one-man army for a lot of it. And he tries to… save his people without putting them in a position where they’re terrified of him.
He’s in a good place at the beginning, but this film takes place after he’s already known as “Vlad the Impaler.”
Yes, yes. We’re very… Gary [Shore] and I wanted to be very loyal to the real character here and, he was known as Vlad the Impaler, and we do touch on it quite a lot. Especially when he meet his stepbrother, Mehmet II played by Dominic Cooper, the Sultan. And it’s something that at this point in the film, we sort of wanted to… well, that’s a whole different film. That has a very dark R-rated movie. But we don’t ignore the fact that he did do those things and that he was a very bloodthirsty ruler. He did do some incredibly shocking things, and we do talk about them. There are scenes where that’s brought up. And you can see that he’s uncomfortable when those things are brought up. Because he’s moved on, and he’s become a very… a leader that ‘s not all about the fact that he impales people in fields. And kills thousands of people. But we don’t ignore that fact. It was important to me to have that element in the film. Because he was Vlad the Impaler. He was the Lord Impaler. That was his title when he was being brought up by the Turks. He gained all those killing techniques from the Turks. That’s how he was brought up. That’s how he learned them all. There are a couple of moments where we honor the impaling techniques. In very clever ways.
The thing about Vlad, there’s a lot of history books. There’s a lot of biased history books. And you’ll find that he was revered by his people. He was not just a warlord and a terrifying leader of a country, but he was revered. He was a fair ruler. He gave land not onto the aristocracy of the land, but also to the poor people. And he often brought in the working class to work with him and fight with him. He was very clever in that way. He was not only about money and land. He was about people feeling that they had been given something and that they had given him something. It’s interesting. He was very respected by his enemies. It’s on his tombstone on that little island in Romania. It says “He was a great ruler and respected by his enemies.” Which is an impressive thing to learn.
How did someone pitch this to you? Did you think it was “yet another” vampire?
I think we all would react the same, yeah. I have to say, I thought exactly that. I thought “Am I really at that age where I have to be Dracula? I’ve already started to play a father figure! Kids! Playing Dracula! What’s next?” But I picked up the script, and I realized it was a re-imagining of the character that people are so well-versed in, but it was a birth of that character, which is an interesting thing. So we mixed fact with fiction. I thought it was an intriguing story, and I always felt that we tried to play roles that come from some sort of strong human emotions driving them. And this character is all about his son and all about his love for his family. Which I thought was great. Because we’re usually not supposed to like this character, but we see a different side to him and the reason he decides why to do it. It’s a huge arc. A challenge for me. And it was a great thing to be asked to do it, and I’m really enjoying it.
How much do you get to invent? Anything? Or is it all in the script?
No. As enormous an arc as this, you have to bullet-point where your emotions are, and the tone of it. It’s difficult, because there are points where he’s full vampire, but he’s still acting very human-like, and you have to do your research and get it all set in your head. We’re shooting a scene now which is about halfway through the movie, and we’re halfway through shooting it, so I need to know how far I’m taking it in this scene, so I can take it back an knock it down a few pegs later. You know, acting things when you play a big character like this.
This is your first leading role. Is that a particular challenge? Is it intimidating?
[Laughs.] Yeah, well, no more intimidating than anything else I’ve ever done. It’s a role. You have to give everything to every job you do. You have a responsibility to do the best job you can, and make sure you honor the script and the writers and the directors ideas and your ideas, and somewhere in the middle you come to a place where you feel good about it. I’ve been playing with this script for about 8 to 9 months which is quite a long time before starting a movie. And working with Gary on the script and talking to him on a weekly business from wherever we were in the world, so there’s been a lot of dialogue and conversations about his journey, and a lot of changes in that time, and it’s been great for that reason. I feel very invested in it. Even though I’ve been doing other projects and finishing The Hobbit, and I did another movie… even though I was doing all of that, in my mind, I was still setting pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in my head, so that when I arrived here, it wasn’t too daunting.
And I’ve been working very hard to gain a reputation of sorts in this film business, which I’ve only been doing for about five years now, and you know I felt like I’m ready for it. I’ve been acting since I was 20, so it’s not like I just jumped into playing a lead role. But it is a lot of responsibility! It’s a legendary character who was first portrayed in 1932 by Universal. And were bringing it back to the screen… and my name’s on the back of everybody’s chair! Whoa! It’s an exciting thing! I’m just lapping it up and enjoying every minute of it.
About the physical preparation.
You might have seen today. My arms are up today, which isn’t very much, but I train all day long to keep them… you know, muscles don’t stay big. They tend to shrink. Which is really annoying me. My trainer is with me all day. We train before I come to work, and then I just keep training all day. And there’s quite a lot of semi-naked stuff in the film, so… It’s not just about looking good out of your clothes. Again, honoring the character I’m playing, he was a warrior. He went to battle. He wasn’t one of those that sent his men to battle, he was on the front lines. He was a very active sort of leader. So I wanted him to – and so did the creative team – for him to look correct out of his clothes. And I have a lot of scars in the beginning of the film before I become a vampire. It was all about a certain look. That means that I started training for this job in May [editor’s note: this interview was conducted in October]. My trainer’s been following me since then, and we’ve trained through two movies. He’s been to New Zealand with me, and he’s here every day on the film. And we train after work, every day. And my diet is specific. It goes on and on and one. But you’re playing a leading role, and that’s sort of what is required. So I’ve brought it to the table. That’s the way it is.
Sounds painful.
It is! It’s hard work! Just being on set for 14 hours a day. I was picked up at a quarter to five this morning, and we were on set at 8, and I haven’t stopped since. And my costume… I’m not sure if you noticed, but I can’t sit down when my full armor is one, because I have these tassocks that prevent me from sitting, and this sword. I stand for three or four hours. I even forget that I haven’t sat down. The sort of things you forget about. Then, when everyone else goes home, I go to the gym for an hour. I sometimes eat at 9:30 at night, go to bed at 10:30, and then wake up at 4. It’s hard going.
But it’s one of those jobs that…. come on, I’m living the dream. This is an amazing job. I’m lucky to be doing this. You just gotta enjoy it. Someone’s paying me to keep fit for God’s sake.
This is technically Dracula Year Zero. Are you signed on for additional films?
This is a… If you’re gonna start a story, you start from the beginning, right? And so, you could go anywhere with Dracula now. [SPOILERS REDACTED]. There are some discussions about that. And I’m very excited. I’m very much involved in the whole thing. It’s nice to be part of something that could grow into something else, and be there at the beginning of it. It’s very , very nice. And not pick up on anyone else’s interpretation of the character.
Next: Dominic Cooper on the Villainy of Dracula Untold
