Tuesday morning was a Good News Day for Willem Dafoe — something exceedingly rare in Hollywood these days.
The 62-year-old actor received word from his assistant that he had snagged an Oscar nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category for his portrayal of motel manager Bobby in The Florida Project. (It was Dafoe’s third-ever Oscar nomination, and his first since 2000.)
The slice-of-life movie, out in the UAE on Thursday, brings out an overwhelming tenderness in Dafoe, who has been known to dabble in Hollywood villainy.
On the surface, the Sean Baker-directed film — shot on 35mm, with a $2 million (Dh7.34 million) budget — is about a six-year-old girl (Brooklynn Prince), who spends a summer living at a rundown motel. More pressingly, it’s about a systemically disenfranchised family, living in poverty, barely scraping by.
Gulf News tabloid! chatted to Dafoe this month to discuss why he took on the role — and why the ensuing award buzz is bigger than just him.
Q: Why were you attracted to this project in the first place, and why did you want to be a part of it?
A: Initially, I became aware of the project because I’d been following Sean Baker after seeing Tangerine. When I heard he was looking for someone [for The Florida Project], I asked to see the script. When he heard I asked for the script, he asked to have a meeting with me. I was very excited by the way that he said we were going to shoot the movie.
Q: You gave a beautifully understated performance. What was your approach to playing Bobby?
A: To be a good motel manager. We were shooting at a working motel, so the world was quite complete. We had people who were living their life very much like the story we were telling. Getting to know them, getting friendly with them, knowing their stories, and just doing the tasks of a motel manager really became the key to playing those scenes. I interviewed some motel managers and they became great models for Bobby’s role, both superficially, in the respect of external things: how they dressed, what their manner was like. But also, emotionally, I was struck by what pride they took in their work, and this basic impulse to make things better in what is a really challenging job.
Q: You’ve played your fair share of villains before. Were people surprised to see this performance from you?
A: I think yes. But I think that’s conditioned very much by what films they see. If they’ve just seen big movies, then there’s probably a greater number of villains and that’s how they perceive my normal. But I’ll take it! I’ll take it. If people are seeing me in a different way, that’s exciting. I should probably keep my mouth shut about that and just say thank you.
Q: In this movie, there isn’t really a villain in the first place. Is it a more systemic and external one?
A: I would say so. Because this movie is very good at not pointing fingers. It doesn’t really lay blame. It just kind of identifies the situation and lets us in to see what the struggles of these people are. What their challenges are. It’s only sort of implied how this can be corrected.
Q: Brooklynn Prince’s performance as Moonee was outstanding. What was it like to work with her?
A: She has an uncommon intelligence, she has great instincts as a performer. She was fun to be around and she was very excited and turned on in what she was doing. Sean was very good at giving her things to do that she liked to, like all the children — he really let them be kids rather than actors.
Q: As someone who’s worked both on big budget and small budget projects, is there an experience that’s more rewarding for you?
A: It’s hard to make a distinction on those lines, but I would say sometimes the approach is more organic. I think sometimes, with larger films, there’s more pressure to know exactly what you have to deliver, and there’s less searching. It’s more front-loaded, you’re more conscious of something you’re delivering, you know? Where a film like this, you know what your intentions are, you have a good script and you try to inhabit that world, and you try to play the scenes.
Q: Throughout the film, you get a hint of Bobby’s backstory. You see him with his son, but it’s never delved into too deeply. Did you build a backstory for him off-screen?
A: Not really. It’s strange, you know, you do what you feel you need to do in order to give you the authority to inhabit or pretend. In this case, it’s not like I sat down and wrote a biography for him. Because I find you can sort of make [out] an idea of where he’s from, but I never feel the need to specifically nail it down. Once we started shooting, Sean wrote those two brief scenes with the son, which I think helped a great deal.
Q: What are your thoughts on the awards buzz around The Florida Project, and the Oscar buzz particularly around your performance?
A: Well, it’s good news. This is a small film. For me, the award attention that it gets really helps the distribution, it helps to put it in more theatres. Commercially speaking, for a release, it’s a little handicapped by the respect that it’s a smaller movie. The story can’t easily be categorised and it doesn’t have a lot of cast that people would know, necessarily, because there’s so many new actors and non-actors in principal roles. So awards buzz means attention. I’m stating the obvious, but we can never say it enough.
Q: There’s been a wave of change and an uprising in Hollywood. Is it an interesting time to be an actor?
A: [laughs] It’s always an interesting time to be an actor. I think in general, it’s an interesting time. We’re a little slow, the whole nation is a little slow, but people are interested in change right now, because I think there’s a profound reaction to the change in the political climate, and also in our popular culture. There’s a lot of dialogue about redefining, and you know, recalibrating what our relationships are, what our human relationships are, in a broad spectrum of issues. So I think there’s a new call to arms, a little bit.
Q: You have several projects coming up. One of them is At Eternity’s Gate, where you play Vincent Van Gogh. Is that a challenging role to tackle, seeing as it is biographical?
A: It is, [but] it’s very much a movie about painting. It’s a movie about nature, it’s a movie about spiritually. So it’s not a classic biopic. It does base itself on some of the events at the end of his life, but it’s very much focused on painting and what it is to be an artist. Whenever you’re learning things in the process of making the film, and then you’re able to apply that new knowledge, and that new love, and that new way of seeing to what you’re doing, it’s always thrilling. Because you do feel transformed.
Q: Of course, there’s Aquaman coming out this year. Are you excited for people to finally meet your character in the DC universe? [Dafoe’s scenes were cut from Justice League.]
A: [laughs] Yes, I am! It’s a very big film, and there’s lots of action sequences, there’s lots of stories, there’s lots of characters. We’ll see how it all gets cut together. I haven’t seen a foot of it, so I really don’t know. James Wan is a thrilling director to work with. A lot remains to be seen, but since so much of the movie is in an underwater world, for example, I was on wires a lot of the time, because you need that floating effect. It was a very interesting movie to do. Very physical, and I always enjoy that.
Q: On a final note, is there any particular role you look back on fondly that means a great deal to you?
A: There’s many. Many, many, many. I would say somewhere between Bobby Peru in Wild at Heart, and Last Temptation and maybe Pasolini. Somewhere in there. I still think about those guys.
DID YOU KNOW?
Director Sean Baker filmed The Florida Project on 35mm, except for the final scene, which was filmed on an iPhone. His previous film, Tangerine, was filmed entirely using iPhones.
