The Big Picture

Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo star in Yorgos Lanthimos’ adaptation of the Alasdair Gray novel, Poor Things. In an interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Dafoe and Ruffalo share their experience collaborating with Lanthimos and Emma Stone. The duo also reveal how pushing their limits in a film like this allows them to broaden their own horizons within their careers.

Like their on-screen counterparts, established actors Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo are still exploring their own arcs within the industry. Each film allows them the opportunity to learn, grow and evolve their craft, like Poor Things which presented them with a new opportunity to discover untapped talent within themselves.

In Poor Things, Dafoe plays an unusual and curious scientist, Dr. Godwin Baxter. He conducts extreme experiments in the depths of his London mansion accompanied by one of his more successful creations – Bella Baxter (Emma Stone). In Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest, Stone embodies a reanimated corpse with the mind of a child whose adolescent delight allows her to explore the bizarre world around her free from the expectations of society. Her journey is kick-started when the smooth-talking Duncan Wedderburn (Ruffalo) whisks Bella away on a coming-of-age adventure.

In an interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Dafoe discusses crafting a fantastical feature like Poor Things with an auteur like Lanthimos and Ruffalo explains how important that unforgettable dance scene was to Duncan’s arc. They also share how their careers are able to evolve when they free themselves from the constraints of public expectations, including joining this project. You can watch the full interview in the video above or you can read the transcript below.

Poor Things The incredible tale about the fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter, a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter. Release Date December 8, 2023 Rating R Writers Tony McNamara

PERRI NEMIROFF: Willem, I was thinking about Patricia Arquette because of our Gonzo Girl interview and the multitude of incredible directors you’ve worked with. Do you notice any shared traits among the directing greats, but then also, can you pinpoint something about Yorgos that makes him stand out?

WILLEM DAFOE: The broad stroke about all the greats is they’ve got something they see that nobody else sees. They have a personal vision. That’s what you look for. You look for people that really see something, and you try to see it with them and you try to embody it. That’s the game and that’s why you seek out strong directors that aren’t just crafting something together. They need to see this thing and they need to realize it.

Yorgos, he’s truly a polymath in the sense of, he’s a very cultured guy. He knows many things about many different things. He knows architecture, he knows music, he knows dance, so when he creates this world, the way he works with all the elements of production, and let’s face it, it’s a pretty dense and pretty exotic world, it’s so beautiful, and he gives you such a specific world that when you get there you know how to enter it. Beautiful script, beautiful costumes, beautiful music — the music’s not there when you’re there, but you get the idea — that’s what you look for. You get a lot of help and a lot of fun things to do as an actor when you’ve got a director like that.

Image via Searchlight Pictures

Mark, your character goes through quite the evolution throughout the film. Is there a particular scene that put him into focus for you most, a scene that you carried with you and found influencing all the other scenes you did?

MARK RUFFALO: Oh man, I mean, they all sort of add up in a certain way. The dancing. The dancing has so much in it, and it was something that we worked on and we collaborated on, Emma and I. It was choreographed, but then we also threw some of that out and were just playing and finding some of that. That dance is their whole relationship in a way. It was so much fun and it was so free, and we were still performing, acting our characters in it. Then the fight that ensues, that was a really fun and informative sequence.

DAFOE: I’m so jealous.

RUFFALO: [Laughs] If you’re jealous, I’m happy because I’ve been jealous of you the whole time.

Mark Ruffalo Feared His ‘Poor Things’ Role Was Wrong for Him to Do
Image via Searchlight Pictures

I’m gonna end with a big personal career question inspired by Bella’s journey in the movie. I love how fully alive she is because she doesn’t see anything wrong with a number of things that society deems wrong. What is something you thought was wrong when approaching your work as an actor because of what you heard elsewhere, but then came to learn it wasn’t wrong, and that realization let you be more free with your work?

DAFOE: Wow, excellent question, but I’m not sure I can scramble an answer because every time you do something, I think the lesson that you learn is you gotta reinvent your process every time because the demands and what you’re encountering, what your function is, and what the challenges are, are always different. So you’re constantly facing these things that you thought were given, they were taken as given truths, and you’re finding out it’s not true. That’s always when you have these leaps where you really are able to get into another way of being. So, you look for those places where you’re locked, you try to unlock them so you can let everything flow. I didn’t really give you an answer, but it’s a good question.

RUFFALO: This part was one of those things. I was scared of it, I felt limited, I felt like it was wrong for me to do it in a weird way just because of expectations people might have on me as a performer, as an actor, and I did it and it was so right. At the time I thought, “Maybe this is so wrong.” And so it’s piggybacking on what Willem says is, the creative act and just pushing out against your own limitations that you set on yourself, that society sets on you. Those limitations that you set on yourself are usually those of society, and the more you could challenge that, the bigger you get, the more expansive you are, I think the more interesting you are, the more lived you are.

For more on Poor Things, check out Perri’s interview with Emma Stone below:

Poor Things is now playing in select theaters in the U.S.

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