Mary Shelley’s masterpiece is rife with questions that burn brightly in my soul: existential, tender, savage, doomed questions that only burn in a young mind and only adults and institutions believe they can answer. For me, only monsters hold the secrets I long for. – Guillermo del Toro
*This fall spend your Sunday with Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi!
The duo, play Baron Victor Frankenstein (Isaac) and The Creature (Elordi) in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. Before the Netflix flick drops on November 7th, we sat down at a press conference with the creator and cast.
Q: What was it like when you read the script for the first time?
JE: When I read it, every word of the Creature was something that I was asking myself. Every scene [asked] why. My whole life is a sequence of waking up and going, [laugh] “Why?” To actually get to ask that through such an eloquent character, I knew I had to do it. There was one line in the script, and I’ve never had this happen before…It’s when Creator looks at Victor and he pulls the mask down. I remember in the script, it said, “now run.” When I read that, I heard drums in my head. It was just like [makes noise]. I knew in that moment, I was like I have to [play this role]. And what’s funny is, the way it plays in the trailer was exactly how I read it in the room. It was like a tether. So, when I had the meeting
with Guillermo, I was, you know, silently desperate to do it. And then I was lucky enough to be able to hopefully execute it.
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OI: What’s so beautiful too is, he’s asking why, why. And at the end, the question becomes, well we don’t know why, but how? Why are you alive? I don’t know, but how are you going to live? Like, that’s what it has to come to, which I find so moving. It’s funny ’cause, I had so much pleasure playing this character. I even asked Guillermo at one point, is it weird I’m finding it so fun and joyful to do this even though it’s so dark and cruel?” He said something like, “maybe it’s because you’re playing somebody that has no doubts.” You know, he crashes at the very end. So playing, me who’s filled with whys and doubts all the time, to have the release of somebody that’s doubtless about what they want to do to the point of blindness, the fact that I found that so enjoyable, I don’t know what that says about me, but.
GDT: No, but I think every tyrant, every tyrant in the history of mankind, has no doubt. Really, publicly. And thinks himself a victim. That’s a constant. They say, “oh, poor me, poor me.” And they’re monsters. And I think Victor’s “poor me, poor me” like Stan is in Nightmare Alley
in many ways.
Synopsis
From Oscar®-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro comes the definitive retelling of Mary Shelley’s genre-defining novel of life and death — an epic drama about what it means to be human, to crave love, and seek understanding. Golden Globe-winner Oscar Isaac plays the brilliant but tortured scientist Victor Frankenstein, who embarks on an ego-driven quest to bring new life into this world, resulting in the Creature (BAFTA-nominee Jacob Elordi), whose very existence provokes questions about what it means to be a human and what it really means to be a monster.
This sprawling epic takes audiences from the remote reaches of the Arctic to the bloody battlefields of 19th-century Europe, as Frankenstein and his Creature go on their own search for meaning in a world that can seem quite mad. Also starring Mia Goth as the luminous Elizabeth and two-time Academy Award®-winner Christoph Waltz, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is a reminder of how, at heart, we are all creatures, lost and found.
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