"Willem Dafoe"

0:01Bonjour à tous nos amis, nous sommes ici aujourd 'hui. Listener, before you change the channel. Sorry, I was just trying to do, I thought that we had like an international market, so I was like, you know, trying to say hi. But now I could do it like this as well. Welcome to SmartLess. Maybe I'll come here. One coffee. Take one coffee, a cigarette. One baguette. Or maybe I'll go see my mistress, and then I'll hit every cliche in the book, and welcome to, it's an all-new SmartLess. SmartLess.

0:37smart less

0:43smart less Will, are you fired up about your guest? I actually am. Oh my god. Wait, let me guess. It's, um... Oh, you know what? It's an ingenue, and that's why you're trying to be nice and cool. Oh, okay. Put a little gel in his hair. Yeah, your hair looks amazing. Yeah, it's banging. Is this somebody, is your guest somebody that you have a crush on? Do you have a crush on your guest? I have a major talent crush on this person, yeah. Don't laugh. It's a man and he's got a smoky laugh. Don't laugh, don't laugh. Don't laugh, your laugh is too distinct, man. Don't laugh. Now he's farting. Shit. That's good.

1:35high class, high class. No. Now you guys, you'll definitely get it now. You guys hope that. Oh, my God. First of all, that's gargling the bong water, right? Go ahead, Sean. I was going to tell you about my birthday dinner last night. Yeah, let's hear about your birthday, Sean. Yeah, hey, happy birthday, Sean. Thank you, thank you. Did you finish all the cupcakes Will and I sent you? Yes, that was incredible. I didn't finish them, but yeah. Whatever sweet treat it was. I got, the second I opened it, thank you, by the way, The second I opened it, I poured a glass of giant milk, and I went right into it.

2:10But the next night, so Scotty gets this reference to, I mean, sorry, referral to this restaurant that's on Billionaire's Row in New York City, right? You know, on 57th Street. Central Park South. Yeah, whatever that is. Was it Central Park South or on 57th Street? You keep calling it Billionaire's Row. Is that what they call it now? I never used that term. That's what I heard. I have no idea. I'm not a billionaire. but um so you have to get a reservation it's over yeah you have to get a reservation right so scotty asked this person who asked this person to go the russian tea room that's right above it actually yeah so the uh so we go into this building it's crazy it's got all the security we're like i'm we're scared to walk in and we walk in we're like hey i have a reservation and it's on the hundredth floor yeah a hundredth floor oh will i didn't i send you the video Yeah, you did.

3:00That's why I keep going. Yeah, I know. Oh, gosh, hang on a second. Let me check, see. It must be in my trash or something. It was really late. Jay, it was really late. I didn't want to disturb you. Oh. Oh, wait, I'll show you. You should have looked at them. They looked like a couple of dudes are in from Schenectady. You know what I mean? They were so excited. Look at the heights of this. Wait, does this restaurant rotate slowly? No. Look at this, Jay. Look at this. Look at this. That's Scottay. And that's you. By the way, they just look like animated LinkedIn profiles. Look at that. Both of you guys.

3:32So it is rotating. No, my camera's rotating. Isn't that wild, that view? It's wild. Yeah. I never want to do it again, though, because it was heights. I couldn't do it. So guess what? So I said to Sean, I talked to Sean before he left, and he goes, he's telling me he's going, and I said, are you scared? He's like, yeah, I'm scared. And meanwhile, you were scared. I was so scared. I was really scared. I don't need to do that. Are you guys okay with that? I'm not okay with that. I don't like to be up that high. I don't either. I don't either, really. I don't really eat it. The food was good, though.

3:59Yeah. But it's kind of good for weight loss, right? You go up there, you lose your appetite, you don't really want to eat a bunch? Yeah, a little bit. Is that why you... The restaurant's for skinny folk. Yeah. By the way, there's only five tables. Not even kidding. There we go. Because it's a restaurant for the residences. I nearly spit take on my microphone at the loop around to weight loss. Guys, this body's no fluke, okay? Oh, no. I've told you before. It sure isn't. That's what makes it worse is that it's by design. Hey, you know what's great by design? Oh, here comes a nice segue into a guest.

4:36But it turns out that it's really organic, is a career that is just full of incredible performances of varying sizes and characters and degrees and things. Somebody who started, Sean, you will enjoy because we know you love the theater. We know you're on Broadway still currently. The Belasco Theater. The Tony Award winning, hold for applause, Tony Award. Oscar, I love you. Is that what it's called? For Good Night to Basco, the story of hot sauce. But Good Night, Oscar. So this person, you're going to be able to get some great theater stories out of because he started in the theater. Not that he just started in the theater.

5:18He also ended up starting a theater in which he went back to and performed for, you know, 40 years or more. in this theater group, a very well-known theater group. He did a lot of incredible performances. He's then gone on to do so many iconic roles over the years. He's made 147 feature films. No way. Wow. He's been in some of my favorite feature films, some of my favorite performances of all time. He's been nominated for four Academy Awards and Golden Globes and SAGs and all the other stuff. But for me, apart from his incredible performances in some of my favorite films, like To Live and Die in L.A.

5:58or Platoon. He was also Bobby Peru, maybe my favorite character, who I went as for Halloween once. Guys, it's Willem Dafoe. No way. Whoa. That's a booking. No way. Good morning. Oh, God. Willem Dafoe. Wow. I almost pulled the thing off the little camera. Every time you said Will, I reached for the thing. He knows how to respond to a cue. Yeah, well, yeah. What a pleasure to meet you. Hi, everybody. Thank you for that talent crush thing, but thanks. Oh, well, it's such a thrill to meet you. And I did say it, so I want to kind of get it out of the way. I did in 19, the year that Wild at Heart came out, I went, like a month later, I went as Bobby Peru to a Halloween party.

6:48And I bought some vampire teeth at a store down on 8th Street. and I took a lighter or something. I made him like flat and dark and I put him in and I wore a bolo tie. And I won't say what I was, but he kept saying, what was he kept saying? Catchphrase? Yeah, his catchphrase, he kept saying, he was like, what is he doing? I can smell your pussy or something. I don't know, it was terrible. It was something terrible. So that's when you were just barking all night? Yeah, I made a lot of friends as you can imagine. Sure. Yeah. Hey, let's go see what this guy's about. But anyway, so I want to get that out of the way.

7:25But Willem Dafoe, what a thrill to meet you, man. Great. Thanks. This is so cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice to be here. We have no questions. We have no questions. Okay, ciao. We do. So it's true, right? I was right in the intro, Willem, that you started, let's start at the beginning. You started in the theater. I know that you're from Wisconsin and then you moved to New York and you got immediate, well, you were doing sort of theater in Wisconsin, Milwaukee, in some avant-garde theater. And then you moved to New York and started doing that there. Is that, am I right in that? That's right. That's right.

7:55I still do theater, but less because for many years I had a company. So every day I was going into work, you know, the way, you know, regular people do. Yeah. You know, really every day that I wasn't on a movie set, I was either at the theater working or we were on tour. It was really a whole life. one thing that's worth mentioning yeah I did start doing theater in Milwaukee with a small group called Theater X but then when I moved to New York because I had ants in my pants and ambition and and also it was a time where a lot of things were happening in New York and I felt like I wanted to be there particularly the music scene not that I'm a musician but it felt like stuff was going on.

8:44And so I went there, but I think it's fun to tell you that I really intended to be a conventional theater actor, audition and all that. What year was this? Well, initially I went in 75, but then this company in Milwaukee that had seen me in my brief period at school called me back to go on tour with them. And I did. I worked with them for a couple of years. They were called Theater X. It was a company-run, small company. We did original work, which was very cool. We toured mostly internationally, not so much in the States. Wow. Yeah, that's what I did for a couple of years. Just doing a bunch of different plays?

9:32We were making plays, you know, generally. or we had a writer that worked with us and uh occasionally we'd do plays but they were kind of unconventional where were you going internationally you just you take your merry band of mostly germany and uh holland at the time there was a very good place called the mickery in amsterdam and they it was really where i got my education because they brought in theater they had lots of money and uh they brought theater from all over the world and uh when i was there i'd see things you know from japan i'd see things from africa i'd see a lot of the great you know peter brooke i i'd see lots of great uh theater companies from europe who's are sort of you with like one of the god for if you guys know one of the godfathers of sort of uh avant-garde theater and just incredible and of course amsterdam would be a great place because everybody's all knocked out on grass you know what i mean so that you're doing all sorts of crazy theater um but so everyone's doing these plays in english uh obviously even though they're from germany or africa or no not necessarily not necessarily because it's it's also the kind of they're the kind of uh performances in place that don't necessarily lean too heavily on the playwright Not always.

10:50Sometimes, yes. But it's more about the production, you know, because it's a theater that is more based on, you know, other elements, not just on the playwright and on conventional elements. but what what i was going to say before and you guys are so fast i'm a little slow when i moved to new york i really intended to be like a guy auditioning and go to broadway and that kind of thing right but i just found myself going downtown you know and going to loft performances and just getting really attracted to these people that working down there and i felt like as a kid from Wisconsin, it really transformed me.

11:35You know, it really made me see theater in a new way and made me see performing in a new way. And that was really exciting. Where in Wisconsin? My sister lives in Wisconsin. Is she doing okay? She's doing okay. Thanks. I just want to know if you grew up there anywhere close to her. I grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin. She lived for a long time in Whitewater, but she's not there anymore. Whitewater. There's a university there. Yeah, that's where her husband worked. Okay. That's usually the reason someone's in Whitewater. We have a big issue. And this is not even a bit, Willem. We have a huge following in Wisconsin.

12:14We're like the number one podcast in Wisconsin. It's quite a trophy. It's actually a true story. It sounds like a weird thing to say, but it's kind of true. so Willem your choices in style and talent and everything is so always fresh and surprising and could even say avant-garde do you think it started there with what sounds like a very atypical theater scene that you've been able to carry on and kind of you know we're the beneficiaries of that you always seem to take a very fresh take on any of the characters that you play and you pull it off Ah, thank you. Did it start from back then? It must have.

12:59I mean, because really performing in the theater really formed my taste, my nose, the things I was interested in. Yeah. So that definitely, you know, shaped who I am as a performer and what my appetites were. But always when people, quite frankly, I feel flattered when people say, oh, you choose well or you choose interesting things. That sounds good, but I always maintain that, you know, projects find you and you find projects. It's not like it's not in my control. True, but when you're given a script that has a Willem Dafoe character in it, which is to say something that's not simple, you, and these are not auditions at this point, you're showing up on set with this incredibly gifted take on something.

13:56What is that process like for you? Is there an anxiety that you have still to this day about, oh my gosh, this is the first time they're going to see this big swing I'm taking. Now I'm going to pull it off, but they got to hang in there with me before they tell me not to do it and trust that I can get there and deliver it in full. Do you think about that stuff? I don't try to do that. You don't? No, I try not to think about myself. I hide behind other people. Yeah, yeah. Like directors are very important for me. And I feel like at least whether it's true or not, I trick myself to say, I'm just this guy that's going to go there and help this person realize what they're doing.

14:37Right. And I never have like, I never have ideas. I go to a place, you know, I prepare and I have something up my sleeve and I have certain kind of tendencies of taste and things I'm attracted to. But really, I go there and I see what's there and then I try to have an adventure. And usually, as far as self-consciousness about how am I doing or my choices or this is a risk or this is not a risk or what are they gonna think of this, I really trick myself into not thinking about those things. Well, I read this interview from you when you were younger talking about this very thing, about your relationship to the audience or like going for something and like, you know, going for a result or like we're inhabiting a role, all these kinds of ideas that you're talking about.

15:27And you talked about this idea that, well, first of all, one of my favorite quotes that I found when I was reading about you, which is whenever you talk to actors and they've done special preparation, whether it's putting on lots of weight or hanging out with junkies or being a junkie, they go on and on about it and it makes good copy for People Magazine and all that and people like to hear it, but inevitably it gets self-satisfying and precious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it was, which made me laugh because I was kind of with you on that. But what struck me was, and this kind of goes to Jason, I think what you were getting at, which is like you said that you don't inhabit a role.

16:05You are for moments while you're doing the role, taking the character through the sort of, within the context of what you've been giving, the character is going to do in the scene, you do that. But it's not you. Is that kind of right? Well, it's all me because it's not anybody else. But, you know, you kind of figure we're all people. We have the capacity to be all people. But I don't like this idea of choices or interpretation. I like the idea of doing actions like an athlete. and when you give yourself to those actions, it puts you in a place where there's a kind of logic and if the world is built correct and if you enter the world in a correct way and aren't too obsessed about saying something but being there, then I think you learn stuff.

17:00You have a special concentration and a special relationship to what's going on in that room. The trick I think always is yes you've got to prepare something but the people that really turn me on when i'm working with them is people that work with what's there yeah yeah they aren't pointing to stuff outside they aren't thinking about the audience outside they aren't sending messages they aren't you know nothing exists the world drops away and this is your life and if you can get behind that then you're actually free. I was going to say kind of actually again to what Jason was saying was about taking the big swing.

17:41I guess you feel free if you're not worried about, because I, yeah, I agree. You're not, if you're not worried, if you're not encumbered by that thought of taking a big swing, because in your mind there is no swing. You're just being in the moment, right? That's one way to think about it. You know, it's funny. Everybody's different. And, you know, you touch different buttons and you're interested in different things. I like all kinds of performances. So when I say this stuff, it's not a right way to be. I'm trying to figure out what makes me tick in this context, you know. So I'm just trying on some stuff for size, not to create a method, but really to think about what the consistent things are when I enter a movie or I do a play or something.

18:30or what performing is about for me. Have you ever showed up on a set to all of this point? Have you ever showed up with taking a swing? You did all this prep and the first take happened and the director goes, can I talk to you for a minute? More or less. Can we go for a while? Yeah, I was going to say, on that, do you, and I obviously meant no disrespect with saying big swings, but like there are only a few actors, you are one of those few that can take a swing that is something we've never seen before or imagined and completely executed flawlessly. is do you have conversations with the director in rehearsals where at least they get some sort of a conversation or maybe even a creative negotiation to make sure that that particular take on the character fits into the other many many plans that a director has for that film as far as tone goes what the other actors are going to be doing what the what the shape of it creatively is going to be and make sure you're in line with that before you get on the set yeah you bring up something interesting to me and you know you don't have those conversations you kind of intuit it yeah but i'm really struck by you know the beauty of making movies or doing places every time it's different yeah so it's very important part of your job is to look around see who's there see how they work see what their tendencies are see what the world is and fold in.

20:07Oh, that's wonderful. So many people decide how they're going to do the part before they even see what everyone else is. And the fact that you're malleable, that's amazing. That's the theory anyway. Maybe I'm not. But Willem, do you ever kind of, to that, do you ever come in and then go like, okay, so wait, so I had, like Jason was saying, like, I have this idea, I come in, and then you go like, oh, everybody's kind of here. Like, okay, well, maybe I'm going to kind of shed a little bit of that. Now I'm going to kind of move it this way, like in the moment. Absolutely. absolutely but I don't come with too many ideas I don't believe that no no really listen sometimes you read a script and sometimes you say wow I have special information on this I want to be there for this or this is so far away from me I got to do some research I got to do something I got to go through something to be in this world and both are good yeah we'll be right back all right back to the show i have a question for jason have you ever been in a situation as a director where we're talking about this where somebody where you're the person you're the director is like can i talk to you for a minute you're doing great listen uh we are thinking about maybe like have you ever had that experience and what do you do about that yeah it's um well Well, I'm sure we've all been part of these conversations where there's sort of a delicate tonal conversation.

21:36Yeah. Because there is no bad, you know, but there are just different flavors. You know, you can have like a Mel Brooks type of comedy or you can have like a Woody Allen type of comedy. They're both tonally very, very different. And some actors, maybe they're day players, somebody that hasn't been exposed to the rehearsal process or maybe not even read a full script. and they come in and they think they might be doing a Mel Brooks thing here, but actually the whole film has been going the Woody Allen direction and so we need you to kind of tone it down, basically. And those are delicate conversations.

22:06You don't want to insult an actor because then you get really bad stuff. But I've done that before where I've come in and I've had to talk about it and go like, hey, listen, I want to make sure I'm not coming in at a different volume from everybody else. So I'm kind of doing this bit, but this bit, the grips aren't laughing at the bit I'm doing. So, you know. Yeah, yeah. Only because, like, Jay, from, like, I asked that because from, like, a casting standpoint, like, if you're a big, big, big, big star, like A-plus, you know, mega international superstar, and they're not going to obviously audition or anything, and you cast them.

22:44Yeah, everyone's guessing. That's what you get. Yeah, and that was my question, is, you know, You're guessing now in Willem's case, he's got the kind of talent where he can be reactive to that. What he was saying is that he can kind of sniff it out and make adjustments so that he is in the same movie and still doing a version of the character that's satisfying for him. You try. Willem, speaking of Last Temptation of Christ, which I loved, you played Jesus. You played Jesus Christ. How was your research on that? I played a Jesus Christ, not the Jesus Christ. You played a Jesus, and by the way, not your first time, because right before that, a lot of people thought that your character, Sergeant Elias, was, right?

23:30Yeah, yeah, which was cool. Both were great opportunities. By the way, Sean, you got to know that I read this interview, this other interview where you're talking about Elias, Sergeant Elias, and they asked you about the Jesus thing, the comparison, the platoon, and you were like, well, I don't know if Jesus went in the jungle and shot people up before. So I don't know if that comparison is. I think that's a pretty good answer. They both seem like tough shoots. Which set was more uncomfortable, the jungles or the arid desert? Listen, they were very different because of what my role was, but they were both great because they were full on.

24:11Both of them were extremely low-budget movies. People don't expect that of Last Temptation of Christ, but that was made for a nickel. And both of them were about as far from Hollywood as you could get in terms of no trailers, no very little makeup, you know, you dressed yourself. You showed up and were in the jungle, or you showed up, you were in the desert. and they all had modest schedules and modest frills and you just shot away. And both were full immersion. So that always helps you because if you're in it, you can't be out of it. Do you find that more satisfying than when you go and then you go, because you have made independent films.

25:01You've made these arthouse pictures. You've worked with some of them. If I read you guys the list of the directors that Willem has worked with, it's mind-blowing. Incredible career. I mean, so that, I'm so envious of all these people that you've worked with and that they've gotten to work with you. But when you go and then you work on some huge, huge budget film where their money is spent that is just wasted. Like you could make a movie for their catering budget every day, right? You know what I mean? Yeah, I see that and that bugs me, but I got to let it go because I say, you know, it's not my money and this is how they make these films.

25:37And, you know, I like being a part of that too. And it does things that other movies don't do. It gives you the opportunity to make less on a smaller film. You know, I've always had, for the most part, I feel more comfortable when I've got more involvement and not more control, but, you know, there's more collaboration. where in bigger films, not always, but in bigger films, there's a tendency to have lots of cooks and lots of concerns. And you just accept that, see what it is, and do the best you can and try to have fun. Speaking of big films in that way that you were, and this is like one of the first, I don't know if you guys knew this, Willem, you were in, I mean, you're barely in because they cut out your character, but you were in, and I didn't know this, you were in Heaven's Gate, man.

26:25Wow. Oh, really? And you shot him for like three months? Yeah, and I was fired from it as well. No. Oh, you were? Yeah. After three months? After three months. Jesus. Oh, my God. Because, you know, I was a guy working in the theater, and someone said, you should audition for this movie because they're looking for ethnic faces. Oh, boy. And I remember the audition was, and I wasn't going up for stuff. I was just, I identified totally as being a downtown theater actor. you know i had my ambitions i i you know when i heard that i thought cool i'm gonna check this out so they asked for a monologue in english and a monologue in another language i didn't at that point i didn't know any other languages so i asked a friend who was in town who was flemish uh to translate in dutch wow you know i don't know why it was just uh because he was in town so I did it phonetically I got the role but the role was like a non-scripted part there was a core of people that Cimino was going to fold in the movie because the idea was you'd see these people you'd create a community so in the end when they all die in this war you know you'd feel a connection to it not a bad idea and it was interesting because you know the first day we like became a week behind because he kept on inventing things and it was fun.

27:50I enjoyed it. You know, it was really, you were working with great actors. You were, uh, he had just come off the Academy Award. There was a lot of excitement about the movie. The art direction was beautiful, all that, but it got really extreme, uh, as far as, you know, getting dressed and in makeup and sitting in your trailer all day and not shooting for four days, this kind of thing. And, uh, anyway it became extreme they saw a studio saw it was a runway production and the pressure mounted and i think by three months there was so much tension that cimino was a little squirrely and we were in a lighting setup all day we weren't even going to shoot we're in full costume in the lighting setup and you had to raise your hand to go to the toilet like a little kid you know but You were there all day on your feet.

28:41And to kill time, you know, we talked to each other a little bit, not loud, but we talked to each other. And a woman next to me told me a dirty joke, and I laughed. And Cimino heard my laugh and turned around and said, Willem, step out. And that was it. No. Jesus. Wow. That's like I always say, so you're basically doing stand-in. You're doing your own stand-in work, yeah? Oh, yeah. Because they were lighting the shot. But I'm good with that. You know what? I always do. But it's a very hard thing to do, to do well. It's a very, it's a real talent to stand there, stare at another actor's face, not say a word, don't play on your phone, stand still, so that they can light the shot for a half an hour.

29:24It's a lot of discipline. I really admire that they're able to do that. Listen, I always stand in for myself, and I must also say, and I'm bragging here, I don't ever bring a phone to set. Really? Wow. No, not allowed. Takes you out. Right. takes you out for sure so willem um tell me i i have to uh i always ask people who come on that i have a theater background do you have a theater nightmare story that we would love i have tons of them something that went horribly wrong something that you'll never forget man this is the story of the worcester group i mean it was exciting but we always had lots of problems and and with touring and I think, I'm trying to think, there's so many, so many.

30:07I think we did one burlesque. My partner at the time was the director, and she, her father died, and we stopped work on a piece and needed to do something light and easy, so we decided to do a dance piece, which we called a record album interpretation. interpretation and we took a an old Hawaiian record from the 50s really corny you know Hawaiian music and we got some grass skirts and some lays and and someone painted a backdrop and we invented these dances we just made them up and we do the dances to this music you know and between a woman elegantly dressed would give a little instruction you know to give it a cultural context well Well, anyway, the gag was to make it stick under our grass skirts.