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Between the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Nightmare Alley, Willem Dafoe is having a great month. While the latest Spider-Man film is a return to one of Dafoe’s iconic characters, Nightmare Alley marks the first time Dafoe has joined forces with Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro. The upcoming film noir follows Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a con-man who joins a carnival full of complex characters, including the morally gray carnival barker Clem (Dafoe). As Dafoe pointed out during a press conference attended by CBR, there is more to Clem than just his questionable acts.
“You can’t judge the character. You can just give him opportunities,” Dafoe explained. “[Clem’s] pragmatic, and you appreciate that he does take care of his own, but he’s also a guy that probably grew up, came of age, during the Depression. Probably maybe even been in prison. He’s a guy that pragmatically sees the world as winners and losers, prey and predators. So he’s got this kind of dark fatalistic view of the world, but at the same time, he cares about the people around him.”
“You also have the sense that he doesn’t enjoy this,” Dafoe ascertained, in regards to one of Clem’s most questionable acts. “He’s just getting on. That doesn’t justify it, but to his mind, the onus is on the nature of the people, and human nature, and the nature of desire, and the nature of addiction, and the nature of fate. So that’s all sort of in the mix. He is a dark character, but he’s not. He’s not out to destroy people, and he’s not unthinking. He’s compassionate toward certain people. He is human; he’s human, but is a very flawed character, if you judge him morally, but of course, that’s not my job as an actor. My job as an actor is try to imagine him as a full person capable of many contradictory behaviors.”
To bring this complex character to life, Dafoe looked back at his own memories of sideshow performances, as he experienced a few while he was growing up. For Dafoe, those performers were “kind of darkly romantic figures; they were a little scary, but they were also sort of charming.” They also seemed wordly to Dafoe because they were travelers and storytellers, and from there, he was able to create his own carnival barker, with help as well from del Toro, the script, production design and his castmates. However, according to Dafoe, del Toro was relatively hands off with his process.
“Guillermo, he trusted me to find my way, not a lot of hand holding, but when we get there, we really start to mix it up,” Dafoe said. “And also Bradley very much. Very strong script. But when we get there, there will always be some sort of open-ended tweaks, here and there, so it’s fun, but I think what was really principal was my memories. From when I was a kid, I had a very formed idea of carnivals, and then the reality that was created by the production design beautifully of this very complete, almost truly functional, midway, with essentially everything working. It was a beautiful world to enter, even though it’s a little dark.”
Along with his memories of these sideshows, Dafoe brought some theatrical knowledge to Clem. Dafoe has a history as a stage actor on top of his film work, so it’s not surprising to see that work its way into Nightmare Alley.
“The idea of barking, of giving a speech, a sales pitch to people in a very presentational way, certainly we know that from the presentation of some theater performance that you don’t usually have that same kind of presentational kind of performing in films, because the majority of films tend to be somewhat anchored by naturalism. Not all films, but many films,” Dafoe explained. “Let’s say the theater experience, more than anything, of getting up and selling a pitch and trying to be attractive and pulling them in is similar to the experience sometimes of convincing an audience in a theater performance.”
Nightmare Alley, unlike some of del Toro’s more fantastical films, is very much rooted in the real world, yet it still captures his haunting whimsy and usual strong morals. Even with these more stylistic or theatrical elements, Nightmare Alley is a “human story,” according to Dafoe. Audiences see how far Stan is willing to go out of self-interest, which — as Dafoe pointed out — leads to an indictment of ambition, capitalism and exploiting others for your own happiness. Particularly with Stan, Dafoe noticed how his suspicions and greed get the better of him, despite having a chance at genuine happiness.
“[Stan’s] suspicious. He’s got nothing in his experience that makes him think that [happiness] is going to last,” Dafoe said. “If you’re chasing after desire, you can almost say pleasure is found in restraint. Because we know it in the simplest terms, in terms of food, or sex, or ambition, or whatever. The more you have, the more you want. It’s something that’s built into us. We don’t know when to stop, and I think that’s also true with political ambition, with business ambition. We see it all the time. So in that respect, it’s a story that we can relate to, and it is about desire, and also in the case of my character, it’s also about understanding the nature of desire and addiction, and the relationship one has to the other, this kind of unsatisfactoriness that, as a human trait, we’re never happy with what we have. We want more; we want more; we want more.”
When it comes to choosing projects, Dafoe looks at the whole package. It’s more than just the role for him, as he also looks at the situations and directors. “The truth is somewhere you don’t know a role until you do it, and usually, if you do know the role, that probably means there isn’t kind of room for adventure, or discovery, or a surprise that I usually like. You look for a situation, a situation to learn something, a situation to be transformed, a situation to be useful, and a situation to maybe fulfill a fantasy or something that you’re curious about. I think that’s what you look for,” Dafoe shared.
“I don’t think in terms of roles,” he continued. “I think in terms of the whole story, and the whole idea of of the movie, and I think a little bit, ‘Would I want to see that movie.?’ I think a little bit, ‘Do I want to be around those people’ and ultimately not so much about interpreting a role, but you look at what happens in that story, and you say, ‘Do I want to do those things?’ A lot of it is intuitive, but it’s moronically simple. You think, ‘Do I want to do these things? Is this resonant for me? Does this challenge me? Does this interest me? Can I contribute something? Is it right for me? Is it so far away from me, it’s interesting.? Is it so close to me, it’s interesting?’ You weigh all those things.”
In the end, Dafoe took all of this into consideration and accepted the role of Clem to be a part of del Toro and co-writer Kim Morgan’s world, which is based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham. Together, they created a very human character that is not strictly good or evil, and Dafoe talked about the complexities in the depiction of morally good characters and villains in film.
“Morally good [characters] can be a real pain in the ass. Let’s face it. Villains at least have some sort of delicious taboo,” he mused. “We’re trained all through life not to be a bad person. Well, sometimes we’re trained so much to not be a bad person that you end up being a bad person, so in imagining, if you can play a villain, it addresses a different kind of orientation that can free you from certain kinds of fears, so I think to play villainous characters, ironically, turns you into an angel.”
“I don’t want to say flat out villains are more fun, because you’re talking about function in a story, and sometimes villains can be flat, and they can be a device. That’s not what you want,” he added. “You want to play human beings. You want to play something with contradiction, with the dimension. And whether it’s good or bad, that’s really so subjective… Those labels help us to tell stories, but for example, people sometimes say, ‘Oh, you play so many villains.’ If I went through my filmography, I bet you — I would fight you — I play many more moral, good people than villains. It’s just how you label things and how you identify certain characters.”
Enter Nightmare Alley this Friday in theaters.
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