Dracula: A Love Tale - Caleb Landry Jones, Zoë Bleu & Luc Besson on Humanizing a Monster

0:00 In this episode of Pop Culture Weekly, I talk with Caleb Landry Jones, Luke Bassan and Zoe Blue all about their brand new film, Dracula A Love Story. Let's go. Welcome to pop Culture Weekly with Kyle McMahon from My Heart Radio your pop culture news, views, reviews and celebrity interviews on all the movies, TV, music and pop culture u CRAB Weekly. Here's Kyle McMahon. Nert no no no net, Hello, and welcome to pop Culture Weekly with Kyle McMahon, the show where we celebrate pop culture, question our life choices, and once again prove that no matter how many times Dracula is rebooted, I.

0:43 Will always show up. It's true, Cape optional, emotional investment mandatory. I'm Kyle McMahon and today this episode is all about Dracula A Love Story, the bold Gothic, romantic reimagining of the world's most famous vampire, this time from director Luke Bassan and starring Caleb Landrie Jones and Zoe Blue. Yes, Caleb Lansriy Jones as Dracula. Yeah, you can imagine how freaking awesome it is. And yes that Dracula the one who refuses to die much like my hope that one day I'll stop crying at gothic horror romance. But I think spoiler alert, I won't. All right, So later in the show, I'll be talking one on one with Luke Bassan, and then I'll be speaking with Caleb and Zoe about bringing this haunting, tragic, very emotionally blunt version.

1:41 Of Dracula to life. But first we need to. Talk about Dracula himself, because this man has been through everything. Dracula is basically like the Madonna of horror icons, right, like every generation gets their version, every era insists that this one is definitive, and somehow there's always room for one more reinvention. Every era projects its anxieties onto Dracula and says, okay, but what if this time he represents us? So let's rewind for a moment. When Dracula originally hit theaters in nineteen thirty one from of Course Universal Pictures, where Bella Lagosi iconically played Count Dracula.

2:27 He was like a pure foreign menace. You know. It was old world, seductive but threatening, like basically Victorian paranoia with cheekbones. This Dracula wasn't emotional, right, He wasn't misunderstood. He didn't want love or acceptance or understanding. He wanted your blood and potentially your real estate. Then in the nineteen fifties, Hammer Films came along and. Said, what if Dracula was hot? And suddenly we had Dracula sweaty, sensual and very aware of the camera and great angles. The fangs were sharper, the blood was bloodier, and the subtext stopped pretending that it wasn't the actual text. This was Dracula as sexual path taken as your parents are very uncomfortable with this.

3:18 Dracula. The Hammer version, of course, starred Christopher Lee as Dracula. Peter Cushing was doctor Van Helsing, which I think arguably was more so the star in the nineteen fifty eight Hammer Dracula, and the Hammer version went on to produce eight sequels, six of which had Christopher Lee as Dracula and four of which had Peter Cushing reprising his role as Van Helsing. Then Dracula kind of went back to his coffin until the nineties. For the most part, he was in the Monster Squad things like that, But otherwise, you know, fast forward to the late twentieth century and things get tragic by the time we hit the classic bram Stoker's Dracula, Dracula isn't just a monster anymore. He's a man cursed by love. Was what nineteen ninety two that it came out, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola like an iconic director. Of course, it had an ensemble cast with Gary Oldman as Dracula when on a Rider, Keanu Reeves, Anthony Hopkins, Sadie Frost, and that closing credit bop love Song for a Vampire, which was written and performed by Annie Lennox love Her. In bram Stoker's original Dracula novel, Count Dracula is described in many different ways through otherness, like over and over again, and bram Stoker's Dracula,

4:49 the nineteen ninety two film really kind of doubles down on that. It's also been said that the nineteen ninety two film kind of suggests and drew upon the fears in the nineties of AIDS, you know, which in that time was this kind of unchecked manic fear that the spread of AIDS is like, you know, invading people's bloodstreams just by being next to somebody who had AIDS and so there are schools of thought that say that Bram Stoker's Dracula, the ninety two film kind of played on that as well. Dracula isn't just a monster anymore, He's a man. Cursed by love.

5:30 This is the era where Dracula stops saying I will drink your blood and start saying I've crossed oceans of time for you, which is either incredibly romantic or the biggest red flag imaginable. But the ninety two version gave us really operatic heartbreak and the idea that Dracula isn't necessarily evil, he's just emotionally wrecked and immortal, which honestly feels worse. And then there was the TV version where they said Dracula, but make him flexible. There was a BBC TV adaptation in two thousand and six which was very revisionist, I would say, where it has Mark Warren who plays Count Dracula who's brought to England in an attempt to cure his syphilis, which is pretty wild. Then on NBC twenty thirteen twenty fourteen, there was this TV series Dracula where Jonathan Rice Myers was posing as an American businessman who wants to bring modern science to the Victorian society, where really he's just Dracula and wants to get revenge on those who would betrayed him. And then the twenty twenty Dracula mini series for the BBC, which you can find on Netflix. It was a Netflix co production, which adds twist like he can drink the blood of somebody and then like pick up their skills. And then there were Dracula sort of adjacent things like Last Voyage of the Demeter, which I absolutely loved and is literally

7:00 that entire movie is one chapter from Bram Stoker's Dracula. The chapter is called the Captain's Log and. It follows the crew of the Demeter, the ship who unknowingly are transporting Dracula to London. Really really, really great movie and a fresh way to tell it. You know. It takes that one chapter and I really loved it. And through all that, through all those different adaptations, we entered the identity era of Dracula, whereas the anti hero, the victim, Dracula as commentary on isolation and addiction, power, grief, masculinity, colonialism. Pick your trauma, Dracula has had it, which brings us to Dracula a love Story, and I really really love this version. What's fascinating I believe about Dracula a love Story is it doesn't try to outdo the mythology, doesn't try to pile on lore or wink at the audience.

7:59 It don't screen franchise potential. Here's all these spin offs. Instead, it really asks, like a kind of quiet question, what if Dracula isn't terrifying because he's this immortal monster. What if he's terrifying because he's a man that can't stop feeling it? Really, Luke Besond, the director, treats Dracula like a man trapped inside his own legend. He's not battling vampire hunters, He's battling time. He's watching the world move on without him and with him, without his love. And in that way, this Dracula feels like a natural evolution of the character, sadder, more human, which is crazy because the most undead character in cinema history is still being used to tell us something painfully alive, and somehow I'm still emotionally available to.

8:51 Be hurt by it. I do a whole brief history of Dracula in movies video up on my YouTube at pop Culture Weekly, so make sure you check that out and let me know what you think about it. Dracula a Love Story, like where it fits in the Dracula canon or interpretations of Dracula is fascinating to me because it's less about mythology mechanics and more about the emotional consequences, which I think is bold and risky and very much my thing. And that tone starts at the top with Luke Bassan. So let's take a quick break and when we come back, I'm sitting down with the man who decided Dracula needed more romance, more pain, and frankly, more emotional devastation.

9:38 We'll be back in. Sixty all right, Welcome back to Pop Culture Weekly. Joining me next is the writer and director of Dracula a Love Story, the filmmaker behind Leon the Professional, The Fifth Element, and and Lucy and Madonna's music video Love Profusion. Let's jump into my conversation with the one and only Luke lisd. Thank you so much for joining me. Luke, I really appreciate it, And Lo Kyle, I love the film Dracula is I'm I'm a huge fan of your work.

10:22 I'm a huge fan of Dracula. So you doing Dracula was like I had to watch it, and then I watched it and I absolutely. Love it so so much, of course, so much, sir. So let me ask you. You know, from my understanding, you wanted to tell this, you know, this kind of. Untold story, this love story. Rather than you know, the things we've kind of seen so often in reinterpret interpretations of this. Why was that important for you? The most important for me was to do another film with Caliblandre Jones, the main actor, because we made a previous film together called Dogmen. I love the actor, he's a genius, and we want to do another movie together, and we dropped a couple of names. Dracula was in the list. I read the book again. But I read the book when I was like fifteen, and you know, at fifteen, your sensitivity is kind of like, so the only thing I've seen at sixteen was the vampires, the blood and all this. But when I read it again, what strikes me was the love story, because it's basically the story of a man who waited four hundred years because he wants to see his wife again. And that's the story I want to tell. I was not so interested by the rest. I want to tell this story.

11:51 So I tried to be a little bit faithful and with to the book and take some elements of vampirism and all this bet more to play with it rather than be on it, you know. I stay focused on the loneliness of this man. Everybody wants to be immortal, but it's a curse if you're not with the people you love. Yeah, you know. So that's the contrast that I love do. When when as you were kind of developing it, was there a specific, you know, modern fear that you kind of were thinking of as you were doing this, Like, you know, maybe loneliness or grief or something. You know, is there a modern fear that tied into this.

12:42 I think an artist is always the reflection of the time of his time. When I was very young, when I did like Leon for example, on Nikita, the world was pretty healthy and pretty bourgeois. Everything was good, you know, and as an adulescent, I just want to I want to kick, I want you know, I want to push, you know, I want to break the things. Now when you're today on the society and you watch the you watch the misery, you watch the it's very hard, and it's all based on power and money and it's really rough like this. Then you want to propose the opposite.

13:26 You want to say, Okay, guys, let let's let's let's take some love a little bit. Let's let's talk about something that we forget. A little bit. You know, let's go to another time. Yeah, it's true, at the time we don't have the phone, but it was not so so bad, you know. Actually, you know, just the relationship between people and the love and the respect and the you know, there's lots of thing that we lose now a little bit. Yeah, what do you think the biggest creative risk for you was in making this? You know, if you start to think about risk or fear, do another job. Because you don't know what the people wants to see. You don't know anything. You don't know if it's gonna work. An old director when I start say to me, it takes two years to make a good movie, and it takes two minutes to fuck it up.

14:30 And it was right. You know, the Dracula on the editing room a week before the mixing is not so good because you need to add this and this. It's almost like an engine. You know, if you turned every little things, then the engine will works better. I made a to make a good movie is a miracle. It really is really a miracle. So I'm lucky I did a couple of miracles for you. How do you balance beauty and terror without count you know, kind of canceling each other out?

15:11 Oh that's interesting. You have to do it organically, you know, likes what served the purpose of the scene. So sometimes, for example, Caleb is a gorgeous as a as a Greek statue. You know, he's gorgeous and sometimes is ugly, but it depends on like what do you have to say? So you have to be very careful and play very softly with this, you know, like, for example, when he's four hundred years old, he's scary. But sometime when you talk about love, you almost like you almost love him, you know, he became lovable, you.

15:57 Know, I absolutely do. That was actually one of the things I was going to mention to you is that in all of the you know, media that I've consumed with Dracula over the years, I never really liked him as a character. And with this, you know, with your interpretation of this, I feel I felt for him. I felt like, wow, are there people that I would love that would make me be this way? And then I'm this villain to so many. But at the end of the day, it's kind of a tragic love story that in some ways could probably you know, touch upon us all if there's those people that we love so much in our own lives, you know what I mean.

16:42 I totally agree with you, But I love this kind of character. Leon, for example, was the same kind of guy. This big toll is a killer? How can we love a killer? But in the same he doesn't know how to write and read and is it just a killer? But he's the only one who can say a little girl. And then suddenly we don't want him to die, you know, even if he's a villain. Yeah, he has to die. He killed everyone, so but we we you know, that's that's beauty on the beast. You no, I love that, and I know, and I'll be promoting the heck out of people seeing it in theaters.

17:26 But I've got to ask, as a fan of cinema and and you know, preservation, I really hope, for personal reasons and and other that there is a great four K you know, home video release later on after it's successful in movie theaters, but you know, with commentary from you, and it's such I love this film so much that I would love as much as we can to have it your thought process behind it, you know, and I think it's so important for future filmmakers and future actors and that sort of thing that just my two cents, I. Will, I will do my best to serve you. Thank you.

18:07 Do you think that the monsters that we, you know, watch, do you think that they tell us more about our truths than our heroes do? Probably probably because we don't expect from a monster to be good, but we expect from a hero to be good all the time. So at the end of the day, the hero is a little boring because yeah, it's always winning is always the best. It's always like yeah, sure, okay, you don't you have any problem in your life? You know?

18:51 So like I took this example the other day. It's like you take, for example, Schwarzenegger in the what's the Nameator? Okay, how can you beat Terminator? No you can't. The guy's a machine. It is like boom boom boom. But imagine and then I like the movie for sure, but I stay a little out of the of the thing because I can't participate to that. But if suddenly Terminators sit down and Schwarzenegger start to cry and say I miss my mom so much, then I want to see the movie.

19:33 Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. Look, thank you so much. I cannot wait for everybody to see this. I'm going to be on the rooftop screaming for people to go see it in movie theaters because it's really just so good and it needs to be seen first in my opinion, if you can add a theater, So thank you, Luke. I have a question for you, of course, do you have a hitter in your studio because you look. Like you' I'm I'm on the East coast and we've had this like polar box thing and it's like negative one and it never is so so yeah, I'm but they got to pay the bills here and get the heater turned on.

20:14 So I send you some sun from here. Thank you, Sarah. I appreciate you might have a good day sun. Okay, First of all, if you weren't already sold on Dracula a love story, I don't know what else you want from cinema. Secondly, I love hearing a filmmaker talk about Dracula like he's a tragic figure rather than like a franchise obligation, and that emotional depth that Luke has created carries straight through into the performances of the cast. So let's take one last quick break for sixty seconds, and when we come back, I'm talking with the stars of Dracula A Love Story, Caleb Landry Jones and Zoe Blue see in sixty Thanks for supporting our sponsors who allow us to bring the show to you each and every episode.

21:09 Welcome back to Pop Culture Weekly. If you've seen Dracula a Love Story, you know that everything hinges on the performances. Caleb Landrie Jones, who I spoke with for his other the Lucasan Film dog Man. He brings this intensity to Dracula that's so raw, so wounded, and extremely unsettling in the very best way. And Zoe Blue brings warmth, vulnerability, and this grounding humanity, which is essential when you're acting opposite a century's old vampire who has a lot of feelings, And together they make this story feel intimate rather than franchisee and devastating instead of distant. So let's get into my conversation with Caleb Landrie Jones and Zoe Blue.

22:02 Thank you both so much for speaking with me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, of course, thank you. Of course nice to meet you. So, first of all, the film is absolutely incredible. I'm a huge Dracula fan, so especially from that perspective. Oh my god, it's probably my favorite interpretation of it that I've ever seen. It really is. I love it. So of course, Caleb, if I could start with you, I've talked to you before, we talked with dog Men and dog Man, and you know you are kind of known for getting lost disappearing into your roles. How did you do that for Dracula?

22:44 I remember that loss. There's always a director telling you know that way exit is that way upstairs. But I don't know. I'm not sure. Was there anything that you had to confront as an actor that you weren't expecting with Dracula. I think every job there's stuff you've got to confront. You just don't know what it is until you're doing it, and even when you're doing it, sometimes you're not aware of it, and sometimes you're aware of it after the fact. But with each character, with every film. This happens to some degree. I think when you're on a film like this, which is asking for so many different things, it can be challenging, but that challenge also ends up building that performance into something stronger. All of those tasks and all of those things that you're learning or getting a sense of usually find their way into the film in some way or another. So I think it's more about being a sponge to everything Luke puts out on the table and soaking that up and keeping what sticks to you and letting go what doesn't. And Luke is really amazing in that way of working together. In that way, people have very specific things that he wants, but within those specifics that usually open something up into a big or broader place. Because he was so specific in the beginning

24:16 about whether it's I want the voice to be low, but I don't want it to be too slow, or you know what I mean, something a reptile, or you know, with the breath he wanted with the breath he said from the beginning, you know, and it's very difficult to breathe, and you know, but these things become very big, and they suddenly become into how you show one breakdown versus another breakdown emotionally or you know, and these things start to do that for you. I love that, and Zoe for you. Actually this is for both of you. But start with Zoe. You're playing you know, some legendary almost or for certainly iconic work. You know, character and stories and beats and that sort of thing, although it's, you know, its own interpretation.

25:06 Do you feel any kind of like like, were you. Nervous, like, oh my gosh, this is like a Dracula movie, or were you able to be like, Okay, it's another project I'm going to throw myself into. Or did you feel that weight at all? I definitely felt that way in the beginning. I was getting a little in my head about it, to be honest, it's hard not to and there's been so many iconic dragas. I know you probably felt similar a big shoes to fill. But then I think as soon as I stepped into that room with Luke he opened the script, I was sat next to Caleb and we broke down the script together, I understood that this is an entirely different Yeah.

25:51 I keep saying creature it is. It's a different world, and it's one that's filled with so much more light and love and and magic. And there's a humor in this Dracula that you've never seen before, you know, in Dracula. And that's so nice, because we we need more light, lighthearted, you know, content stories we need. We need love and love is I think a manifestation of light. And how powerful it is that a man waits four hundred years for his loved to come back to him, and.

26:33 Like he's pretty patient. That is patience, yea that I. Maybe when she comes back, he's pretty patient. Yeah, he's such a gentleman, an actual gentleman. You wouldn't expect that in a Dracula movie. So you kind of have to throw away all your other, you know, preconceptions about what it's meant to be or how you know, comparing yourself to other actresses who portrayed Mina or Elizabeth, and you just have. To let go and trust your director and soak in the surroundings of the set and and and yeah, trust your fellow actor.

27:16 I think Luke's movies also very much ask you from the get go to go with them on it. You know, as an audience member, you're asked. I feel like all those movies, ask you this, because they're going to take you to some wacky places that you're not expecting and and some will shock you, and some you'll be pleasantly surprised, and the others you will never forget, I think, for the rest of your lifetime. You know, there are scenes from multiple movies of his that I'll never forget. Oh, Chris Tucker's screaming, you know, or or your mother in the office in Big Blue. I can't go on that plane. We're showing the photo of the dolphins to her. That seems Yeah, I love the scene.

28:06 But he asked you to go with him, and very much when working with him, he asked you in the same way. And like the audience member, we kind of both have to do the same thing, yea, which is, uh, go with him and search for for this thing that we're all looking for. It's interesting your hand, it's like, well. Yeah, yeah, you're along for the ride. Yeah. What do you call it in the water with those channels, that's that pull you real fast current? Yeah, like a current undertoe? No, no, not an undertoe because I like it. Well, you're not breathing. When I was talking to to Luke, I said to him. You know. It's interesting because as much as I. Love Dracula and the Loure and the various interpretations, I've never really liked him the character, you know, And with this, I was like, Okay, I can kind of relate, you know.

28:59 I don't have a like that that I would wait four hundred years or maybe like really good tacos or something. But but like, you know, there are people that love people so much that they would do this, and so you kind of it's the human element almost, that like kind of basic need, where like who are the people in my life that I love that I would follow for four hundred years or wait for four hundred years to reunite with them again? And then for me it was like, Okay, I kind of get it. You know, I don't hate this monster. I can empathize with this man, if that makes sense. Beautiful, I think, And most all the I mean I haven't seen all of them, but there was playing with this distance to the to the character and this, you know, and it's all about this distance and how much and how little and and this is what is getting played with so much in those films.

29:55 And Luke takes away very quickly. You know, and that is something that I was also excited by because we'd never heard from Dracula this much. You know, we've never seen him this much, we never heard from him this much. We never knew about that relationship to the degree that we get to learn about it. And that he has the capability to feel so much. He's not so stone cold for someone who's got you know, who's dead. His heart is pumping loud, you know. So yeah. I love it. I love both of you in it. I love the film. Thank you so much, and I can't wait for everybody to see this film.

30:38 I really can't. Thank you so much. Thank you guys, have a great day. Thank you too, you too, Call Jones and Zoe Blue. And honestly, Dracula a Love Story is one of those films that reminds you why this Dracula story, these stories of keep getting retold. It's not because we've run out of ideas, but because every generation finds something new to confess inside of these stories. This version is romantic, it's tragic, it's gothic, and it understands that the scariest part of immortality is having to live with everything that you've lost, which cool totally normal thing for a movie to emotionally ruin me. As always, if you like what you heard, follow, subscribe, rate, review, all the things that tell the algorithm gods that I'm doing my very best.

31:34 I'm Kyle McMahon. This is pop Culture Weekly, and until next time, watch something on your watch list, embrace the drama, and remember even Dracula just wanted to be loved. All right, I'll see you next episode. I love you. We thank you for listening to pop Culture Weekly. Here all the latest at popcultureweekly dot com. Dragil love Story. I want to sing more but a gutopy Dragil a love story.

32:17 Go see it now and then tell me