Set Report Part 2: Talking With the Cast of Dracula Untold

DOMINIC COOPER – “MEHMET II”

The big stunt of the day: There’s a big one I’m training to do.  In fact, I just tried all my armor on – what I’m wearing for the big stunt towards the end.  I call it a stunt, but it’s a fight. [laughs] It’s a big, big, big fight between Vlad and myself. You do these things and this always happens and I never learn when you’re doing an action based film is that, you spend weeks learning these fights and then you try on this armor and you realize you can’t move in it, so then the whole thing probably has to be changed. But it’s an incredible costume. It’s a very over-the-top, but beautiful piece of golden armor.  It’s all frilly gold and it’s got the Battle of Constantinople on the front of it and on the arms. It’s incredible, but it’s so heavy I can’t move.

The relationship between Mehmet II and Vlad: They have a history as kids and my take on it is that he’s always been terribly envious of this boy who is pulled into his father’s palace.  I think I like the relationship to be based in envy, jealously, and resentment, and I think that he saw Vlad as being a better fighter, stronger of mind and physically, and I think his dad always was aware of this. So, this is something that is sort of ongoing and is punctuated in the story itself, and that comes to a head.  We’ve kind of put these extra ideas in that, on my father’s deathbed, it was Vlad who he chose to speak to because I think he trusted him more as a warrior and as a future leader.  It’s a clever bit of writing they came up with very close to the beginning of shooting, and I loved it actually when I read it.  It was about him desperately trying to understand or find out what it was that the father shared with Vlad and not himself, and he can tell he’s being lied to when Vlad comes out with these elaborate, over-the-top, kind words that he knows are not true.  As revenge, I do to him really in a way what my father did, which is to ask and insist upon taking his son into battle. And I only do that for one reason, which is to anger him and upset him.  And that’s the basis of where the beginning of the story unfolds and the big battle begins.

His character is not aware of the supernatural forces all around: No, there’s not, but we become more and more – actually, we’re like the audience, I suppose in that we see these rather strange things happening and we have to take note of them, but we’re of the real world and we have belief this could possibly be true, but by the end of the film, we’re starting to go, “Do you believe this guy has supernatural powers?” But no, it’s not a world in which we exist where it’s the norm if that’s what you mean. He learns too late and he thinks he can overpower him.  Well though, no, he does use it to his advantage when he finally believes in it. He uses tricks that he knows will affect and weaken, but it takes him a long time to be convinced.

It’s more than just a Dracula film: I keep forgetting.  I keep having to be reminded that it’s actually a Dracula film.  For me, it was very much a film about history and Vlad the Impaler and where that story came from.  It’s a very different take on it and a really clever twist on the story.  It’s going to look completely epic and beautiful.  They’re shooting it on film and there were some very distinctive characterizations within it, and I think it’s unlike any other Dracula.  I find it amazing that they’re actually calling it that, I mean, that’s my opinion, because for me, it felt like something very, very different. I like the idea that they’ve chosen where he comes from and who he was and why he came from that world and why he was part of the Turks’ world, and then what he became.  I think it’s a really clever take on it.  Within that story, I’m the one who, I suppose, gives all the exposition of why that’s taking place.

Anything you’re excited for audiences to see? I haven’t been around for the entire thing. I think from reading it and from seeing what I have seen, I think the dynamic of the relationships.  Action is one thing and if you love that then great; this is gonna have plenty of it, really big, brutal, dangerous, great set pieces and fights.  They’re gonna all look amazing.  But I think more than that, if that tires you or if that’s not just enough, then at the heart of it, I think there’s actually a brotherly relationship that comes about and that breaks down at the center, and a beautiful love story and a story about a family and a man who tries to defend his family.  And then you have the mystical world and actually, the prosthetics and the way they made those characters look is extraordinary.  There’s a combination of lots of things, but essentially, and the reason I’m always drawn to anything is there has to be an intriguing story at the middle of it, and it can’t just be about explosions or car races or whatever it is.  There has to be a story for me because that’s what I like and I think that that’s what people will be drawn to.

Who is Mirena? In broad strokes, she’s the matriarch of the film. She’s the princess, she’s Vlad’s wife. A lot of the film is centered around the family unit and I guess the major themes of the film are the sacrifices that we make for our families and keeping our families together and so a lot of the film centers around her relationship with Vlad and their relationship as a family, so that’s kind of her in broad strokes.

On Mirena’s relationship with Vlad: The way that I try and look at it is in very real terms.  If you’ve ever had anyone in your life who has been struggling with something, struggling with addiction or struggling with anything, and it’s about the resilience of love and how much you’re willing to struggle with somebody to preserve your relationship and to try to preserve them as a person.  And I think that’s really important, and I think that’s what I was so drawn to in regards to this script.  I was really looking to do a love story and I wanted to tell a love story.  This film is Dracula, but at its core really is this beautiful, romantic, classic, love story.  And so I think that everything that Vlad and Mirena go through as a couple obviously culminates and reaches its climax at the end of the film, but it’s about the choices you make in a relationship to preserve it and to preserve yourself.

Working in the “genre”: Yeah, it’s interesting that you say genre because I would say I have an affinity to working with auteur directors and I guess maybe that seems to be the best arena that they can fully express a singular vision is in a genre.  I worked with Mary Harron; I don’t know if she’s considered a genre director? Amma Asante recently, Denis Villeneuve and really more strong, I guess, auteur directors and that’s certainly what I’m drawn to when I look for a project.  That’s pretty much number one on the list and that was certainly the case for this project.  When I sat down for my meeting with Gary, I really didn’t know much about the script.  I knew about the story in broad strokes, but I didn’t know a lot beyond that, and I sat down with him and he was just so passionate about his work and about the kind of film that he wanted to make and I was really drawn to that kind of energy, and so I thought, ‘Yeah, sure!  I want to make this kid’s first movie, for sure!’  He’s like a baby Spielberg.  He’s got all this kind of youthful zest and zeal for romance and love, and it’s like really kind of early Spielberg stuff and I was like, ‘Okay, yeah, I like this.’  And it aligned with things that I’d been seeking to do, which was maybe a love story, so yeah, they kind of collided.

Describing the movie: I think what it’s being called is a monster film.  That’s a really interesting thing because my perspective of the film would be so different from everybody else’s perspective.  I spent a lot of time with Gary and Luke in rehearsals and we were just working on the one-on-one connection and love, but then sometimes when I see the other things happening I think, ‘Oh yeah, it’s a full on fight film and war film!’  [Laughs] I think it kind of has a balance of all of those things.  At its core, I think it’s a family film.  I think it’s a film that is accessible to families because it’s really, in my opinion, about strong family values, and I think that’s what Hollywood does so well.  It’s really interesting to see.  It’s so different for me.  I’m kind of refreshed.

Any standout scenes for you? When I read the script, I was really drawn to all the Caligula stuff.  I don’t know if you’ve read the script.  Probably not, but all of the Caligula stuff is really interesting because it’s very blatant about identity and choice, and that kind of stuff was very interesting to me.  My favorite stuff that we’ve shot is – I don’t know if I can say all of this.  Okay, I know that my favorite stuff that we shot we did on Divis Mountain, which if you’re not familiar with Ireland is this big mountain in Ireland, and it’s quite a dramatic scene involving myself and Ingeras and Vlad.  We did all this coverage.  We shot over three days and then at the very end, Gary did this crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, wide, wide, wide shot and we were like this big in the frame, it was totally <silhouetted, the sky was incredible, we were on this fricking mountain and it was like some weird Visconti, Gone with the Wind meets Hollywood film.  It was just so cool, and when I saw that, it was on the third day of shooting, I was like, phew!  [Laughs] I did one of those.  So that was pretty cool.