WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER, EVE?

That she has this perspective, that she doesn’t sweat the small, the medium, or the big stuff. That she’s full of wonder, and she’s always looking up. Which feels to me, pretty much the prerogative of people who lived that length of time. She knows what’s worth what.

THIS IS YOUR THIRD TIME WORKING WITH JIM (JARMUSCH). DO YOU TWO HAVE A SHORTHAND WITH EACH OTHER WITH HOW HE DIRECTS YOU? ALSO, ABOUT THAT TITLE…

The title’s kind of been floating around for years, someone made an album, or someone wrote a book…

THERE WAS A BOOK THAT THE ROLLING STONES OPTIONED-

Exactly! And they were going to make a film. Who was it that was going to make that film? Someone amazing. Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve never asked Jim actually. But I remember when he first mentioned the project to me, the title was there, it was like a flake that was already on it. It just feels like its always been there, that title.

And as for (working with Jim) we talk all the time, whether we talk about anything that’s pertinent to the making of the film I don’t know. We’re friends now, and part of the reason that I love to work with him is it means I get to hang out with my pal for longer than if I wasn’t shooting with him. This one was another long gestation. It was seven or eight years since now and when he first rang me up and said, “Hey man, let’s make a vampire movie.” So that means a lot of many breakfasts when I was flying through New York saying “So where are we?” and many moments on the phone, and many conversations in dark corners about where we were going to go next, over the years.

When we came to shoot, the lovely thing about those long developments, is that when you come to shoot, it’s just grace. You’re so relieved to finally be putting it down, and you’ve also had that length of time to talk about it, and you don’t really need to talk about it that much.

THE PHYSICALITY THAT YOU BRING TO THIS ROLE IS SO INCREDIBLE- JUST WATCHING YOU WALKING DOWN THE SREET IS PRETTY BADASS. WAS THERE ANY INSPIRATION THAT YOU DREW FROM TO MOVE LIKE A VAMPIRE?

We talked a lot about what it would be if you were that unsocialized, because they kind of lifted out of human society. And they are, very quickly we started to talk about them as lone wolves, so we talked about them as animals, only we’re putting together the look also, we ended up filling those wigs with Yaks’ hair and wolves’ hair. And there’s a heart beat in the film that comes up and down in the soundtrack that’s actually a wolf’s heart. So I thought a lot about wolves when we’re were thinking how Eve would walk about. You know, if you’re not in the pack, if you are alone at night, and you can take your time, you can pick your rhythm, and we knew that, I think which is always the case with Jim, not only is there, music is a very important life blood, but also the camera, the move, the feeling of movement, is always very important to him. In this one particularly, because of this passage through these two different wildernesses.

And we had the wonderful Yorick Le Saux who’s this great cinematographer who I’ve worked with a couple of times before, and he’s such a great dance partner, so walking alongside him was really kind of creamy.

This one was another long gestation. It was seven or eight years since now and when (Jim Jarmusch) first rang me up and said, “Hey man, let’s make a vampire movie.”

 

WHAT WAS THE ESSENCE, FOR YOU, OF EVE’S RELATIONSHIP WITH ADAM (TOM HIDDLESTON)?

One of the first bits of sand in the oyster for Jim, which he immediately told me about on that telephone call eight years ago, was this book by Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve, which is so delightful, playful, fictional or maybe not, diaries of the original Adam and Eve, which spells out very clearly that this is an enormous love affair between two opposites. And that was the foundation that stuck for us, that they would be, in it for the long haul, but completely different. That I find really enticing, to show two people really loving each other, but not being like each other at all. So we talked a lot about that, and that was fun, because that feel’s really human, playing with that.

And then we also, as you’ve noticed, we wanted it to be about a marriage in which they talk, as long relationships do. There’s a sort of tradition of showing people coming together, and then, ‘the end,’ and you never see them actually living it out, living the ups and the downs, and talking it through, and chewing the cud, and we really spent a lot of time wanting to get that tone of two people who were family. You know, it’s a long, long marriage, they are family, they are the same kind. And that’s why they still dig each other even though they’re so different, and  he’s so tricky to live with and she’s such a space cadet. They have this communication thing going, and they really like talking about stuff. We really wanted to show that, it felt like it was something we hadn’t necessarily seen before.

AS DISTINCTIVE AS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH TOM IS (AS ADAM), YOU HAVE AN EQUALLY POWERFUL, YET DISTINCTIVELY DIFFERENT RELATIONSHIP WITH JOHN HURT, AS MARLOWE. HOW DID THE TWO OF YOU GO ABOUT ESTABLISHING THAT CADENCE AND RHYTHM BETWEEN YOURSELVES? AND ALSO, WHAT WAS IN THAT BLOOD FROM THE FRENCH DOCTOR BECAUSE YOU LOOKED DAMN GOOD.

I’ve got some under here…

The relationship with Marlowe is a very precious part of the film for me. Honestly, partly because it felt very close to my own experience, having a very close relationship with, in particular I would say my life with John, whose disappearance from the building I had to witness also felt very kind of close. But him being, really a partner, a different kind of partner for her, he’s her neighbor, he’s her companion in a way that Adam isn’t as quotidian as Marlowe is for Eve. It just felt completely alive and fresh, I just know that relationship inside-out, and John does too, and he was the perfect dance partner to play that out with, and he also feels like family…

We actually, funnily enough, last year, John and I made two films together, or rather not last year, the year before, this film and also Joon-ho Bong’s film Snowpiercer, and so we spent the year together which was wonderful. And at the end of it we realized that we’d actually known each other for years and years and years without working together. So he feels like family, and so we just put that into the film. John was absolutely convinced that we were lovers once, which is in there let’s say. [Laughter]

I’LL BE HONEST- I ACTUALLY FOUND MYSELF IDENTIFYING WITH ADAM’S CHARACTER MORE. FOR A VAMPIRE WHO’S BEEN AROUND FOR FOREVER, HE’S A BIT MORE CYNICALLY MINDED, MORE CRITICAL OF THE MODERN WORLD THAT HE LIVES IN, AS OPPOSED TO EVE, WHO CELEBRATES EACH TIME PERIOD SHE’S LIVED THROUGH WITH GREAT OPTIMISM. WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO PLAY SUCH A CHEERFUL VAMPIRE?

Well he’s very young in a way, he has yet to learn. He’s only five hundred years old, she’s three thousand years old. [Laughter]. She’s seen it all and she knows that survival is possible, and that survival is possible if one keeps one’s eyes open and takes it all in. It’s not like she’s recommending turning one’s space away, she talks about witnessing the Inquisitions, the Middle Ages, she’s witnessed all the holocausts, and yet she’s still seeing humanity and spirit and nature survive those things. So she knows that, as long as one keeps looking up, and as long as one keeps breathing, and keeps one’s perspective, survival is possible. And when she says to him, when he gets down, she says to him, “Your immersion in your own despair is actually vanity, and that if you could just use your life on making the right sense of priorities, concentrate on nature, get your guidance from nature, which survives consistently,” I mean particularly in a place like Detroit, to go to Detroit and to feel the way nature is taking over there, is a really positive thing. And kindness, friendship. And dancing! She’s got her priorities right.