Nicolas Cage will play the new Dracula | The USA Print

Nicolas Cage did not hesitate to interpret dracula in the movie “Renfield” when he discovered the “relevance” of this new approach to the Prince of Darkness directed by Chris McKay, a film that addresses toxic and abusive relationships, and also in a comedy tone, the actor explained this Thursday in a interview with EFE.

“This Dracula, despite being monstrous, has his feelings,” said the interpreter about the vampire plaintiff he embodies in the most recent feature film by the director of “The LEGO Batman Movie” (2017), where he shares the bill with Nicholas Hoult in the role of a loyal servant who gives the film its name and who, among his main tasks, is to get prey for his master.

“There is something here that is done with great compassion and care in dealing with a toxic relationship,” the actor explained of the codependent relationship that dracula keeps up with Renfield in this modern version of the blood-sucking monster.

In the film, scripted by Ryan Ridley and based on an original idea by Robert Kirkman, the mastermind behind the “Walking Dead” franchise, the godly Renfield is ready to discover if there is life outside the shadow of the dead. seductive vampire after centuries of servitude.

The young assistant, who thanks to his master has the ability to acquire powers when he eats insects, begins going to group therapy for people who are in abusive relationships and later decides to help New Orleans Police officer Rebecca, played by actress and comedian Awkwafina, also a victim of a toxic environment.

“(The issue) is relevant because it is happening now, it is in people’s minds, in offices, homes, in relationships,” the actor deepens, adding that the film reflects how charming and affectionate the Relationships can then turn into a situation in which feelings of “ownership, possession, and jealousy” surface.

Christopher Lee, his dracula favorite

The American interpreter, with a long career that began in the 1980s, remembers John Landis’s “An American Werewolf in London” (1981), which had the perfect dose of comedy, as one of his favorite movies as a teenager. ; and he felt that the “Renfield” script and McKay’s vision were close to that spirit.

“I was comfortable with the part,” he said of the role he had to play, deeply rooted in popular culture and in world cinema, from that masterpiece of German expressionism that was the 1922 film “Nosferatu” by FW Murnau. and that the actor saw when he was barely five years old and left an indelible mark on him.

He confessed that when it came to approaching the character, he was clear about his intention to avoid a “crazy Transylvanian accent, which has been done a lot already”, and he took as reference the interpretations made by his colleagues such as Bela Lugosi, Gary Oldman or Christopher Lee. , the latter his dracula favorite.

Even the “predatory” Mrs. Robinson, played by Anne Bancroft in “The Graduate” (1967), from whom the seductive voice of the famous character who gets involved in a toxic relationship with a young Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) took some influence.

But the voice that also resonated when creating his character was that of his own father, August Coppola, who spoke with “a mid-Atlantic accent” and was incredibly elegant and intelligent, he says, a man who used to show art films. and avant-garde in her living room, and which ultimately influenced the direction she wanted to take in her acting career.

Oscar winner for best actor for “Leaving Las Vegas” (1995), Nicolas Cage He was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood in the 1990s and in the first decade of the 20th century.

In recent years, he has shot a multitude of low-budget films, modestly billed and some with regular results, without this having prevented him from remaining a cult figure and highly vindicated, especially on social networks.

Precisely, last year he starred in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent”, a curious film of absurd humor in which Nicolas Cage he plays himself and in which he is measured face to face with the Chilean Pedro Pascal.

After these years, the actor carries an interpretive background that, he considers, has given him the tools to put himself in the shoes of such an iconic character as draculawhich, he said, he was not intimidated to embody.