“I was sure it would be wet in the boat, a lot of hours in the night.
“Dracula is the creature that they have to contend with.”
“It was always about being a demon, because that’s what they call him.
Director André Øvredal on the set of ‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’ with Javier Botet in full prosthetics as Dracula.Rainer Bajo/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
We just know that he has the ability to change into all kinds of shapes.
So, we were free to create this demon as we pleased.”
“Jorn and his team made amazing designs.
Javier Botet gives the camera a big smile as Dracula in ‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’.Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
We had three, four different looks.
“He’s Selva,” the actor points out.
“Selva is ‘jungle’ in Spanish.
Javier Botet.Eduardo Parra/Getty Images
And the other guy is Akira, like the comic.”
Not too long ago, it would likely have shortened his life by decades.
“Marfan syndrome is a connective tissue disorder,” he explains.
“It makes you so flexible in the joints, very long.
In childhood, you grow so fast if you have Marfan.
The doctor told my father, ‘Your child probably [will] never get 20 years.’
I was so lucky because medicine has changed so much.
“I needed a monster.
I wanted to have somebody who crawls out of the deep,” Yuzna says.
And they found Javier.
“Quite frankly, he’s the best thing in the movie.”
“It was my first big international experience,” the actor says of shootingMama.
“It was hard.
It was so cold.
I was shooting almost naked in the forest sometimes.”
Botet compares Muschietti to the legendary director and perfectionistStanley Kubrick.
“He makes always 30, sometimes 40 takes,” he recalls.
“Sometimes10, but he never does it in two or three takes.
ButMamawas a beautiful experience and the movie was number one in the USA box office.”
Botet’s terrifying performance in the film attracted the attention of other Hollywood filmmakers, including Wan.
It is a sentiment with which vredal enthusiastically agrees after working with Botet onThe Last Voyage of the Demeter.
“We wanted to focus on the beast in a way, but still it has to be Dracula.
He was able to portray that,” the director says.
“In the last years, everybody asked me what monsters I want to do.
I always say Dracula, Nosferatu,” he says.
Dracula never dies, never stops.
He’s immortal!”
To the horror crowd, so is Botet.
The Last Voyage of the Demeterhits theaters this Friday.
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