“I’m a Sucker for a Crazy Love Story”: Lily-Rose Depp, by Natalie Portman

As a tabloid fixation, the daughter of Hollywood royalty, and the star of Sam Levinson’s The Idol, Lily-Rose Depp has been around her share of bloodsuckers—but none more bloodsuckery than the ancient vampire she comes face-to-fang with in Nosferatu, the latest detail-rich period freakout from director Robert Eggers. The performance—featuring an English accent and a very tight corset—marked a new challenge for the 25-year-old actor. To talk about all that went into it, she got on a call with her old friend Natalie Portman, who also wanted to know about toxic relationships, greatest fears, and trying to be normal in a world that’s anything but.

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FRIDAY 10:30 AM OCT. 25, 2024 L.A.

LILY-ROSE DEPP: Hi!

NATALIE PORTMAN: Hi Lily!

DEPP: Can you hear me?

PORTMAN: I can hear you, can you hear me?

DEPP: Yeah. I’m so happy to see your face.

PORTMAN: I’m so happy to see you. Where are you?

DEPP: I’m in L.A. Where are you?

PORTMAN: London.

DEPP: Nice. Just for fun?

PORTMAN: I’m doing additional shooting on a movie I did last year.

DEPP: Nice. It’s funny, we did an interview together years ago and I thought this would be fun because now we can talk as women.

PORTMAN: Exactly. Now you’re a grown-up. I got to see Nosferatu, which is incredible.

DEPP: Thank you!

PORTMAN: I want to know how you prepared for it, what you watched, what you got inspired by.

DEPP: Well, Rob [Eggers] is very prepared, so he sent me a bunch of stuff, a lot of movies that were quite niche. He has an amazing knowledge of film and history, so he was very much nourishing my inspiration. One of the movies that really inspired me was Cries and Whispers.

PORTMAN: I love that movie.

DEPP: So good. And then of course I watched all the Nosferatus, because I wanted to make sure I was honoring those performances and seeing how different they were from each other. Prep is so interesting because you never know if you’re doing it right. I feel almost like—

PORTMAN: You’re making it up every time.

DEPP: Yeah. You watch the movies and you prep the lines and you think about the character, but I don’t really know if I’m doing it right until I get there, and you start having conversations with the director. There was a lot that I learned once I actually got to Prague. That’s when things got really fleshed out. Because, for example, for the movement, I thought I was just going to go and freak out and we’ll improvise. And then I got there and it was very much choreographed.

PORTMAN: I was wondering about that, because both you and Emma [Corrin] in those moments are extraordinary with your physicality.

DEPP: Thank you. I was grateful not to have to shape it on my own. I couldn’t have guessed how helpful it would be to have Marie-Gabrielle [Rotie], our movement coach, there to help me. We also rehearsed the movement with the corset on.

PORTMAN: Oh, smart.

DEPP: I know you’ve worked in corsets before. It’s intense.

PORTMAN: Yes, and it affects your breathing, which is so important to acting.

DEPP: And at the same time, it’s helpful, because you’re thinking, “This is what these women at the time would’ve been wearing.” They would’ve been freaking out in a corset. I have some pretty funny videos of me wearing gray leggings and a corset. [Laughs]

PORTMAN: That’s awesome.

DEPP: I was so excited to wear one and now I’m like, “That was tough.”

PORTMAN: Because it’s a way of making physical all of the oppression against women at the time.

DEPP: Totally.

PORTMAN: It’s like you’re actually feeling it on your body.

DEPP: And they even say in the movie, “Make sure you keep her corset tightened at night,” because they used to actually believe that the womb would travel throughout the body.

PORTMAN: No way.

DEPP: And that’s why if a woman was experiencing what we now would identify as mental health problems, they’d be like, “Her womb must be traveling freely throughout her body, so you have to tighten the corset in order to quell that.”

PORTMAN: That’s wild.

DEPP: So, not only was it an aesthetic, but they also thought it was medically necessary to keep a woman calm, which is crazy.

PORTMAN: Absolutely a form of control. I love vampire movies because it’s a toxic relationship where one is sucking the energy out of the other. How much did you relate that to real relationships? I don’t mean anything private, but how much did you talk about the metaphor of it versus just being in the actual story?

DEPP: That’s what is so fun about this story, because I’m a sucker for a crazy love story. If you were to remove the supernatural, demonic element, it could be this girl caught between the good guy and the bad guy. The love that she shares with her husband is real and pure, and he represents everything that she wants to be good for. He is the world and goodness and god, all the things she should be clinging to. And the vampire represents all of the bad shit that she’s so drawn to and can’t help but feel slightly titillated by. Although there’s so much fear and dread and shame, it’s not dissimilar to how shameful you can feel when you’re—I’m just speaking generally—in a relationship that you know is terrible for you, and you know that this guy’s treating you so badly, and all your friends are like, “Why are you doing this?” And you’re like, “Ah, I know!” But again, just speaking generally. [Laughs]

PORTMAN: Just generally, yeah. [Laughs]

DEPP: It’s not dissimilar from that.

PORTMAN: Yes.

DEPP: Which was fun to play with because of course there’s so many storybook elements that make it what it is. But at the heart of it, for me at least, it’s about a girl who’s just super ashamed of this pull that she has to this other realm and doesn’t even have the tools to talk about it.

PORTMAN: Your accent is so good in it, too. How is it working in an accent for you?

DEPP: I used to always joke that the English accent was the one that I could never do. It always leaned kind of cockney. And then when I got this audition in my inbox, and I saw that it was an English accent, I was like, “I’m about to super embarrass myself in front of Robert Eggers.” But I wanted it so badly, so I was like, “Okay, I’m going to have to try to get my English accent up to speed.” I worked with a wonderful dialect coach, William Conacher, who was insanely helpful. I think accents are like a wig. If it’s not good, it’s just not good.

PORTMAN: Yours is great. Were you always a fan of horror before this?

DEPP: I’m a fan of horror with a soul. I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily a jump scare person. This one in particular was big for me, because my brother and I both were super obsessed with Dracula when we were younger. My brother used to dress up like Dracula when he was a kid for school.

PORTMAN: That’s amazing.

DEPP: I was like, “Wow, if I get this part, my brother’s going to finally think I’m cool.”

PORTMAN: And does he?

DEPP: I think so, yeah.

PORTMAN: Okay. [Laughs]

DEPP: I think! It’s the classic thing of when you have a younger sibling, they think you’re so cool when you’re kids, and then when you get older, now I think he’s so cool, and I’m like, “Let’s hang!” And he’s like, “I’m busy.” But yeah, I think I got some points with this one.

PORTMAN: He sounds like he’s a cool kid. I remember you saying that he used to wear zoot suits for a while, right?

DEPP: Yeah. That was during the same time, because he was obsessed with Abbott and Costello.

PORTMAN: That’s so cool.

DEPP: He’s the coolest person ever. Wait, do you have siblings?

PORTMAN: I’m an only child.

DEPP: No way.

PORTMAN: Yeah. Single tear. So, you’ve been doing so much great work in so many different mediums. You’ve been doing TV, film, music videos. I saw your recent one with your partner [070 Shake], which is so great.

DEPP: Thank you. It was so fun.

PORTMAN: What do you prefer?

DEPP: I feel like, even though it’s all different, it’s all the same, because you’re working internally. Of course you adapt to your surroundings and the pace at which you’re working, but to me, a character is a character. Even before we shot Dani’s video, we were talking about how we wanted it to feel like it was just like an excerpt from a movie, because we were especially inspired by that scene in Y Tu Mamá También when she’s dancing. The thing I had not been used to with TV is just how long you stay with the character.

PORTMAN: It’s a marathon.

DEPP: And in a way it’s harder. I’ve only done one TV show. Maybe it’s just that I loved that character so much, but I feel like because of how long I stayed with her, it’s harder to let go. But also because that particular character is kind of who I wanted to be when I was six.

PORTMAN: That’s always the most fun thing about acting, is you can dip into some life you dreamt about.

DEPP: I was going to say, which of your characters would little Natalie have dreamed of the most?

PORTMAN: I got to play an astronaut once, and I dreamed a lot about going to space.

DEPP: Would you still go to space?

PORTMAN: Yeah, if I could. Would you?

DEPP: No, I am so scared. [Laughs] There’s so much that’s so crazy on Earth that I’m like, “I’m already shocked by the world.”

PORTMAN: What’s the most dare-devil thing you’ve done?

DEPP: I used to be way more daredevil-ish when I was a kid, and now I’m scared of everything.

PORTMAN: What happened?

DEPP: I don’t know! I think the world started to scare me a lot. I’m super scared of things that I used to not be scared of. It’s weird.

PORTMAN: Dang.

DEPP: I wonder if I’m more aware of the dangers of the world or something? But I would never jump out of a plane. I would never go bungee jumping. I don’t even think I’d want to go zip lining, honestly.

PORTMAN: No, I get it. I wouldn’t want to jump out of a plane, either. That seems like a nightmare to me.

DEPP: That sounds like a total nightmare to me. But some people are, “So fun, what a rush.” I’m trying to think of the scariest thing I could possibly do. Maybe like a haunted house? I feel like people always ask you when you’re shooting a horror movie, is it actually scary and stuff ? And it’s like, of course not. But, there were moments on Nosferatu when I was shooting with Bill [Skarsgård] where I was like, “I’m actually scared of you.”

PORTMAN: [Laughs] I can understand. He’s really scary.

DEPP: So scary. The face and all of the details and the voice. And also, when you’re shooting in such a precise manner and doing a lot of takes, you end up feeling like you’re in this time warp loop with this demon. I was like, “Oh my god, what is happening?”

PORTMAN: [Laughs] Were they obsessed with how to get the blood right? Because I feel like directors are always obsessed with how the blood looks.

DEPP: Yeah. They want it to drip in a certain way, for sure. There was blood that I would have to put in my eyes, and I’m tearing up just talking about it. My eyes are very sensitive, so the eye blood was a whole thing for me.

PORTMAN: That sentence, “the eye blood.” [Laughs]

DEPP: The eye blood was a lot for me. Also, there was a moment when—without giving anything away—there’s a lot of blood on my bare body. And because the camera’s so precise, I had to sit in that position for so long. I was just thinking to myself, “Everything is mental. I’m good. I’m chilling.”

PORTMAN: I love the self–pep talk to not have a total panic attack that you’re covered in corn syrup.

DEPP: Do you ever do that?

PORTMAN: Totally, because there’s so many things that we end up doing that are so uncomfortable. Someone said to me once, about being an actor, that the hardest thing is that you have to have such a thin skin for what we do emotionally, and then you have to have such a thick skin for what we do publicly.

DEPP: It’s so true.

PORTMAN: How do you switch between the two?

DEPP: Honestly, that’s a really good way to describe it. That’s going to stay with me. I’ve grown up being taught that your private life and your inner life is so precious, and that it really needs to be protected. Because in this business, and especially today with social media and how much access we have to each other, it’s important to protect that inner life. And to me, when you go on set is the only time you let that out. You have all your super-private feelings in your backpack, and you go to work and the scene starts and you let it out.

PORTMAN: Right.

DEPP: But I also think it’s important for me to, when I’m not shooting or promoting something, have a very normal life. You and I have always connected about that. I love going to the butcher and the grocery store and having dinner at my friends’ houses. Or, having a lazy morning with my boyfriend. Those things are always going to be the center of my life. Even if I’m working really hard, those things will never lose their value. That’s when things get dangerous, when you don’t see those things as valuable anymore.

PORTMAN: Totally. And when you need to live through characters to experience things, that’s when you see people start getting in trouble.

DEPP: Absolutely. This industry can be so crazy and you can lose your footing really easily. I feel like it’s corny because people always say this, but you have to have people around you that you’ve known forever that are going to anchor you. Even you, I’m so grateful that I met you when I was 16, and to have one of my very favorite actresses to be able to call when I’m struggling with a scene.

PORTMAN: You’re so sweet. And I know that you’ve had France and the U.S. in your life, and I see it with my kids, and I’m so curious what you feel like having those two cultures has given you as an actress.

DEPP: It’s funny because sometimes my French girlfriends are like, “Haha, you’re so American about this,” and my American friends are like, “French girl over here.” I feel like I’ve always been full of dualities, and my double culture adds to that. It’s almost like a character. I feel like when I’m here for long enough, I can really drop into my Valley girl vibe. I’m a Valley girl. I went to high school in the Valley.

PORTMAN: That’s amazing.

DEPP: And I love that about myself and my friends. And then when I’m in Paris for long enough, I feel like I can super connect to that energy. And my family’s French, so when I’m with them, I feel like I’m 100 percent French, and when I’m with my dad’s side of the family, I’m like, yeah, we’re all Kentuckians.

PORTMAN: Yeah, I feel like when you have these two cultures, it’s like you’re a stranger everywhere, where you never totally fit in.

DEPP: Absolutely. Something that also falls into that category is being able to make yourself at home in a place that’s not home at all.

PORTMAN: That’s true. It’s an aspect of the job that no one ever talks about. Everyone always talks about getting into character, but actually, you have to completely relocate to some other town and be with a whole new group and it’s hard.

DEPP: That’s what a lot of my friends have said to me before, is, “I don’t know how you do that.” Not the actual work, but relocating to a different place. Finding a little coffee shop you can go to on the weekends, finding some restaurants. I guess this is not a good question—I shouldn’t ask you this actually. I was going to say, is there a place where you were ever like, “Ah, I can’t,” but let’s not.

PORTMAN: Well, it’s gotten harder with my kids to relocate, because then you have to think not only, “How do I acclimate?” but, “Can my kids find life and friends that they enjoy while I’m working?” Because I don’t want them to be miserable while I’m away during the day. But I obviously want them with me. I don’t leave them.

DEPP: That’s something I think about a lot, because I definitely want to have kids and when that time comes, I’ll be bringing them around. But we’ve talked about this. I grew up that way, and as much as there were moments where I was like, “I want to be at school with my friends,” now that I’m older, I’m so grateful. Not only that I have traveled so much, thanks to my parents having to bring me around, but also for what I now see as the work that they put into making sure that my brother and I had a life in these places that were not ours. And making sure that we had something fun to do on the weekends and a park to go play in. At the time I wouldn’t have seen it, but now I see that as conscious efforts that my parents were making to make me and my brother feel at home.

PORTMAN: That’s really awesome. I’ve always been really impressed with your film knowledge and how expansive it is. Have you considered doing other things in film besides acting?

DEPP: Yes. I really want to produce things.

PORTMAN: Amazing. I’m excited to see you produce alongside acting, because you are so, so incredible. Thank you so much. I love talking to you, Lily.

DEPP: I love talking to you. Thank you for doing this.

PORTMAN: Yeah, it’s my pleasure. Let me know what’s up. Let me know when you come over.

DEPP: I will.

PORTMAN: To Europa.

DEPP: I’ll be there soon, probably. I’ll text you.

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Hair: Bryce Scarlett at The Wall Group.

Makeup: Nina Park using Chanel Beauty.

Nails: Zola Ganzorigt using Chanel Le Vernis in Vamp at The Wall Group.

Set Design: Brittany Porter at Artistry.

Tailor: M’Lynn Hass.

Photography Assistant: Steve Yang.

Fashion Assistants: Greer Heavrin and Abby Depass.

Production: The Morrison Group.

Production Management: Cecilia Alvarez Blackwell.

Production Assistants: Ernie Torres, Frankie Benkovic, and Tyreek Voltaire.

Post-production: Nora Mitchell.

Special Thanks: Cha Cha Matcha.