Willem Dafoe Talks ‘Poor Things,’ Why He’s Always “Aware” Of Awards Buzz & The Concluding Actors Strike: “I Assume Things Will Just Go Back To The Way They Were” — Camerimage
12.11.2023 - 23:27
/ deadline.com
With SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP reaching a tentative agreement on a new contract, our industry’s biggest stars, previously forbidden from participating in the promotion of movies distributed and made by struck studios and streamers, are finally joining the party.
The timing couldn’t have been better for Poland’s EnergaCamerimage Film Festival, which opened last night, and one of the buzzy names here on the ground in Torun is Willem Dafoe, who has stepped out to promote Poor Things, his wacky, darkly comic Golden Lion winner from Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos.
“I assume things will just go back to the way they were,” Dafoe told Deadline when quizzed on how he thinks the prolonged strike might shape the industry’s future, adding he didn’t hold all the details of the negotiations.
“I’m a worker bee. I work a lot. And I’ve been doing so for a long time. But sometimes, I don’t feel like an insider. I know that’s kind of ridiculous, having worked so long, but I don’t know,” he said.
Based on Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name, Poor Things features Emma Stone as Bella Baxter, a creation of the brilliant and unorthodox scientist played by Dafoe in an echo of Mary Shelley’s classic horror novel Frankenstein. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael, and Christopher Abbott also star.
Lanthimos directed the pic from a screenplay penned by Tony McNamara, but the adaptation was crafted by the director and Stone. Dafoe said Stone and Lanthimos invited him, as a pair, to join the project, which he said was a “no-brainer.”
“When you’re working with good