Was there anything you wanted that NBC just said, “No way, that’s too much?”
Astonishingly, they never did. I think they said no to maybe a bit of ass and too much skin and what not. I think that there would’ve been a little more hints of nudity and what not, but that’s sort of the weird place we are in network television where you can’t show what you could in 1994, but you can show all the blood you want.
To my eternal gratitude, Bob Greenblatt and NBC never said no to any of the crazy stuff that I wanted to do. The violence was all perfectly embraced. The idea that the villains are fundamentalists, they’re technically Christian, but to me it’s just the danger of fundamentalist extremism. The Christian part of it is extraneous to the conversation, but they are technically fundamentalist Christians and NBC never said, “Oh, we might lose audience there.” They just said, “Great, go with it.” It was pretty astonishing.
How involved have you been episode to episode?
I was in the writers room for all of them. At the end of the day, the season is probably 70% of what I set out to tell, but bringing it all to life is really the product of Dan Knauf and the writers room which, like I said, I was part of. There were eight of us, some of the most brilliant writers I’ve ever worked with which was just a treat. I had a hand in hiring almost all of them and not one of them ever managed to let me down.
Will Dracula be bedding a different lady in every episode, or will there be ongoing relationships?
Well, he is madly in love with Mina Murray, who is the woman he assumes is the reincarnation of his dead wife. This creates an interesting problem for him and a lot of pent up energy that he needs to get out. Nobody enjoys the release of that energy more than Lady Jane, who is unbeknownst to him initially the vampire hunter who’s actually looking for the monster that’s stomping around England. She has no idea she’s sleeping with the enemy essentially. That will be the main thrust, so to say, of his sexual energy.
What are your favorite incarnations of Dracula?
Wow, I watch a lot of movies and a lot of monster movies. I don’t think I’ve ever loved a Dracula as much as Christopher Lee’s. That’s not counting my own, but Christopher Lee is really the beginning and end for me. Bela Lugosi’s the iconic version. I’ve seen every one of those films several times. In fact I’m going home tonight probably to watch one of them in honor of the Halloween season. Christopher Lee, Hammer Films, Horror of Dracula was one of the reasons why this series exists because of its willingness to take whatever was in the novel and reinvent it and do something fresh with it.
There’s a great moment where Jonathan Harker arrives in the castle yet again. You’ve seen it how many times at that point in film history. He sits down to write to his beautiful fiance Mina. You’ve seen this. You know it and instead it turns out that he’s writing a letter to Van Helsing, his partner and he’s arrived here to assassinate Dracula. It’s just such a daring twist on it and I don’t think I ever really got over that first experience with Hammer films. Christopher Lee was part of that and still today I have a poster from it on my wall.
Which do you think you’re going to watch tonight?
I think the original Dracula. This season I’m intending to watch Dracula, both versions. There’s also the 1931 Spanish language version that was made simultaneously with the original. So I’m going to introduce my wife to those.
When you created this “Dracula” and they cast, did Jonathan Rhys Meyers embody what you imagined Dracula to be?
He actually did and the irony is, when we first started discussing this with NBC, long before Johnny was involved, and I don’t remember how this started, but it just became normal for us to talk about Johnny in these scenes. Maybe that was because of Bob Greenblatt’s relationship with him from “The Tudors,” somebody might have mentioned it. I really don’t remember but it became this joke that I would say things like, “This is the scene where Dracula walks into the steam room because you need to get Johnny’s shirt off again, right?” It just became normal for us to talk about him in the part in that way.
The casting of him was just really essential because I don’t think there were that many actors of his level that could do what he does naturally, which is play disgusting characters that you still care about. There’s just this tortured humanity behind his eyes. He brings it to every part and you need that. He might have a quest for vengeance you empathize with but who cares about a guy who murders innocent people and has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the past? How do you forgive that? Well, you get a Jonathan Rhys Meyers who actually makes you care about him, no matter what he does, to play the part.
So he did exactly what I needed any actor to do in that part and then just added so much more gusto and intensity than I had hoped for. I’m very, very satisfied with his work on the project.
Did this keep you out of the comic book world for a while?
It did, which has been very disappointed, mostly because I enjoy comic books so much. I’m just now getting back into that to figure out what I’m going to do next. Hopefully that will come together soon. Comic books are amazing, especially for someone who works in such a collaborative field as I do. In comic books, there’s collaboration but really at the end of the day, it’s the creator’s vision if you’re not working at one of the big companies on one of the big names or something. Until somebody wants to give me $50 million to direct a film which I control, comic books are about as close as I’ll get to 100% my vision.
Could you return to any of the series you worked on before?
I’m hoping I get to do another Strange Case of Mr. Hyde which is another character I reinvented. There’s a screenplay I did for it that they’re trying to push forward right now so I’d love to be able to get back there and find out what’s happening to my Inspector Adye.
