Frankenstein Q&A – Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth & More | Full Panel

I'm Anthony Resnick. You're a moderator for the Frankenstein panel. I was so happy when they were shooting this that I got to visit the sets in Toronto while it was all being put together. I got to see Oscar in his assembly scene putting together the creature. And Guillermo del Toro, you're all probably aware that he spent his life wanting to make this Frankenstein film. And he told me in his musical voice, sometimes you lose so much of your life working on a movie. You miss things with your children, with your family, with your friends. He said, and sometimes it feels like you're building a cathedral when you're making a movie. And other times it feels like you're building a 7-Eleven. I think Frankenstein is a sacred place, a majestic place. It's a movie that I care about deeply, and I feel privileged to welcome our panel today to talk about it. We'll begin with costume designer Kate Hobb. She is the cute little part, Elizabeth, in the memory of Victor's mother, Claire. He is a towering presence as the creature, Jacob O'Loury. Unfortunately, Guillermo couldn't be with us today. He had hoped to be, but had a conflict and couldn't attend. But I think we have to start by talking about Guillermo. I mentioned in the introduction, watching you and Guillermo work together building the creature. It was a day you were not on set, Jacob, because you were still being assembled. But you two were trading jokes in Spanish. The filthiest jokes you've ever heard. On a movie of this scale, there's a lot of pressure. Yet I felt like there was such joy in the making of it. Can you share some stories of working with Guillermo on this? I think we can all agree that the set that he makes is so inclusive and collaborative and joyful. That was very unexpected, that he would be this free. I think it allowed all of us to be very free. And also, so emulant and passionate. I remember the very first day of shooting. I was out on a big frozen lake of ice, being dragged by the dogs. And he's just screaming, Grim Determination! This was the first piece of direction he was giving me. And it was always like that. He just approached every day full of passion. I couldn't wait to get to set to see what kind of fun everybody else had with Guillermo. I'd like to say I've never had my very first fittings, which were usually much more sedate with a tailor and measuring tape. But in my first fitting with you, Oscar, Guillermo came in, Dan Lauston came in, the stills photographer came in. Your entire family came in at one point. It became this party, and it really taught you to let go and just enjoy the process. It was madness, but it was a great way to start. It was fantastic, and that's Guillermo all the time. You know, Mary Shelley's novels stood the test of time because it's about so many things, but primarily the question of whether, just because we can't do something, should we? Can science go on too far? But one of the things that I think Guillermo put into this movie from his own heart is a father and child relationship. He's known for making monster movies and scary movies, and he said some of the scariest things to him is the idea of that relationship breaking down. It happens in real life. Parents and children become estranged. They say things they can't take back. Oscar, I wonder if you could share with us your approach to Victor as one of these fathers who learned the wrong way from his and is perpetuating that cycle. Yeah, well, that's when we met Guillermo. That's what we talked about. Before he even brought up Frankenstein, he was talking about our fathers. And so going into it, yeah, I think the question is always, you hear these stories of a child that's been abused, these horror stories that come out, and you think how could anyone ever look at something so innocent and do such wickedness? And so to move into that place of trying to explain it in this very archetypal, mythical kind of way, but that is at the heart of it. What blindness occurs to this person? And not only blindness, but there's something that almost becomes this philosophy of cruelty that moves into this almost like Marquis de Sade kind of nihilism of actually the more innocent the thing is, the more perfect the act of cruelty is. But it's this running away that happens, running away from responsibility, running away from himself, not wanting to look at those things. And also I think the more relatable thing is just when patience runs out. I mean, I've had friends that watch the movie and say, I feel so guilty watching it, so I'm just thinking about the times that I've lost my patience with my kid. I'm one of those people. Yeah, because you don't think of yourself as being capable. Obviously, this is an extreme, but even that kind of distance that you can create because your patience dries up, your empathy dries up in a moment, and you just feel, yeah, it's like an uncontrollable urge to push away or to denigrate. Jacob, can you talk to us about the early stages of the creature and what your state of mind is the moment he's just crying out, Victor, Victor, and trying to say his name. Are you playing it in the mind of, I mean, I guess how do you play a blank slate is the question. Is it childlike? Is it a little bit of animalistic quality to the physical performance? What is inside your head as you're playing this unusual creature? I suppose the thing is you don't want to play anything. You just kind of, that was something Guillermo talked about, was you needed, he said he needs to be nothing before he's even a baby. There is this moment of nothingness, which is, you know, before you get to the set, considering what does breath, what does air feel like, what does it feel like the first time, your lungs, what does your lung expanding feel like, all that kind of stuff. But when you're shooting, the major thing that I wanted to try and achieve was in the early stages, once you've sort of found that feeling, that physicality is to really think nothing, which is a thing to find when you try to quiet your mind. Guillermo mentioned that one of the makeup effects is they have, one of your eyes has a wider iris than the other. What he told me was, you like that quote because he sees more than us. And I think that comes from being a blank slate too, like an unused piece of film that just absorbs whatever it sees. Yeah, you have no prejudgment of anything. The creature is not bird in my consciousness at that point. He has no cruelty, he has no kindness. He just has an innate bird. He's just an innate nothing. Nothingness. Mia, you're playing two characters in the film, the fiancé and then Victor's mother. Tell me about your approach to both. You are obviously the same person, so there's a reason he casts you in both roles. What was your conversation with Guillermo like about that? Why did you want the same actor to play both? So when I met Guillermo over an oven one morning, he told me that I read a rough draft of the script and he said, what do you think of it? And I told him I think it's so moving, Guillermo, and he said, well, do you want to be Elizabeth? And I said, yeah. And he said, well, do you want to be Claire? And I said, yeah. And at the time, I thought it was Justine. He said, do you want to do Justine too? Sure. And in my head, I just thought, I'm going to do that. You'll get the role of Victor. I've said this before, but this process of getting into character, I was in my head a lot before this movie, and I was just very scared. I did a lot of work to eventually realize that I had to let all of that go and kind of just get really quiet. And in those moments in that space, kind of where you open your eyes after a meditation, that's particularly where Elizabeth exists. She's calm. She's like a smoke. She's in a very habit moment. And that was the first time I'd experienced that. Usually when I feel like I have that character, she's there, but Elizabeth was a creature in her own way, just kind of fluttering in and out of these moments in the movie. And with Claire, what was nice about that was I was able to wrap up Elizabeth and then move on to Claire and meet with different actors. And we were in Scotland at that point. It was pretty trippy, playing the mother and the love interest. It speaks to Victor and I guess, I don't know what to expect. It's kind of a Freudian concept, isn't it? Yeah. It's all in for his mother. The movie has an operatic scale. It's fantasy. It has this immense pageantry about it. And Alexandre, as you were composing the music for this, did you feel like you were writing an opera? Did it give you a canvas to really let loose? Well, you see when you see the film again, the production dynamic is huge. And there's so many, like in an opera, there's so many emotions to go through. The actors and characters go through and follow the hills and valleys of it. There's so many emotions. Yes, it's like an opera. And it's also a daunting task because it's a long film. There's a lot of music to write. And it was a big, big challenge for me. Maybe one of the biggest challenges I faced. Was there a particular scene that was especially challenging and compelling to you? It's always hard to begin a film. I think it's always a very interesting moment because it's a moment where the audience, for the first time, hears a sound. And maybe a motif or instruments. It's a crucial moment for an introduction. Like in an opera, you know. And I work a lot on that usually. But maybe the body building moment, when Frankenstein put together the body parts. That was a challenge because naturally you want to show the followers on screen, which is something very gory and scary and violent. And by using a counterpoint, and actually being from the point of view of the character, and not being the voyeur, but being with the actor who feels so much passion and an exhilarating trance as he's cutting these body parts and putting them together. You change the point of view completely. And I think it matters for the audience to enjoy that moment as much as Victor does. That's the kind of challenges that you face when you do these big things. Kate, I was so happy when I visited the set that I got to visit your shop. As you were not just creating the costumes that the actors are wearing, but making the textiles yourself. Dyeing them, creating this kind of psychedelic, natural, insect-inspired design that Rita's wearing in that scene that we just saw. Can you tell me about bringing the natural world into this clothing, these costumes, and what that says in regards to the story? It's all there in the beautiful text and script that Guillermo had, all that imagery of nature and the elements of religion and mythology. We're in this operatic language. In the early discussions of Mia's character Elizabeth, he did describe her as a beetle. We discussed all those images of that. I saw how Dan was working with Guillermo in the context of the camera, working on the light shots and these intense moments disappearing into the creature's body. It's almost under a kaleidoscope. Nature's so present. We've got this wonderful canvas with Elizabeth's silhouette. The crinoline is a canvas in some ways. It was a wonderful way to explore the pattern in that. We looked at anatomy, but also looked at that in relationship to the imagery of beetles and things. Anatomy found its way into what we call the X-ray dress, and that was all made in-house with prints. We wove the silk and the malachite, which was, again, malachite textile, but it was also boxed with cells and all these other images. It was part of the light, and using the pattern also to explore colour in that world. We used old techniques too, like Victorian marbling on velvets and things. All of these things, repetition, but different changes and metamorphosis. Every time we saw somebody's textile, they changed in themselves. I had an amazing team behind. We had people looming the fabric, and then we had a huge in-house team doing the textiles and dyeing of all the elements. We did the same with Victor's wardrobe in a lot of it. Jacob, did you say that the butterflies were part of the inspiration for the look of the monster? I remember Mike Hill, the designer, saying something at one point. He's not meant to be brutally ugly, but the colours are meant to be beautiful and translucent and almost moving like a butterfly's wings. I wish we could talk for longer. It's a magnificent movie. There's so much to discuss. Thank you for joining us. I want to close with a line. Something Guillermo said to me in our interviews, and he was talking about Paul View. He said, you talk about how difficult it is making a movie of this scale. He said, you climb Everest with people you can huddle with at night and say, it's worth it. I know he loved working with all of you and just wanted to share that as we close. I love you. Thank you.