February 18, 2025 • 24 mins
From leg-of-mutton sleeves to fur overcoats, the costumes in Robert Eggers's Nosferatu are extraordinarily detailed and, thanks to the research of Oscar-nominated costume designer Linda Muir, incredibly historically accurate. Dana speaks with Muir about her work, and the process of creating costumes for German gentleman, wealthy ladies, and a 300-year-old decomposing corpse.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Today on the podcast, we'll be talking about a Hungarian count,
a three hundred year old, undead Hungarian count who also
happens to be a vampire. Even though usually on this
podcast we talk about real royalty, today we're making an
exception to discuss Count or Locke and the rest of
(00:31):
the characters in Robert Eggers's phenomenal movie No Sparatu or Other.
More specifically, we'll be talking about the costumes, expertly researched
and entirely historically accurate thanks to OSCAR nominated costume designer
Linda Muir. Linda has worked with Robert Eggers on The Witch,
The Lighthouse, The Northman, and now No Sparatu, which required
(00:53):
her to dive into the world of nineteenth century corsets,
leg of mutton, sleeves, boots and coats to transport viewers
to Egger's vision of Germany and Transylvania.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Linda, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
The cost ofs truly, we're one of the first things
I noticed about this film they're incredibly detail oriented and
incredibly period accurate. Can you talk a little bit about
just how you started the process.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
Robert Eggers is an incredibly detail oriented director writer. He
has this wonderful habit of creating look books. So he
gathers together images and he groups them not just for instance,
by character, but he also groups them sometimes under an
(01:46):
adjective or atmosphere or a particular beat in the script.
And so he uses those images while he's writing to
in bead detail actually into the scripts. And so we
being his production team Craigley throughout the production designer, his
(02:07):
DP Jarren and myself costumes, you know, when we start
prep and we usually do you know, a considerable amount
of pre prep on our own together, you know, sort
of wading into it, and we have that as a
starting point, which is absolutely amazing.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
And so you know, really what I.
Speaker 5 (02:27):
Have to do, or what each of us have to
do visually, is to is to go through Robert's images,
because you know, they're not necessarily dead on in terms
of the period, but they give the essence and so
you know, checking for anachronisms is one of the first
things that I do, and also try to broaden out
and obviously have to broaden out the bank of images,
(02:48):
and sometimes that is a hard slog to find things.
You know, the Viking era that we did for the
Northmen was exceedingly difficult because obviously there's this much fabric
that exists, and so you know, you're not looking at
a number of extent pieces. But thankfully for Nospharratu, you know,
the period is much more accessible. Still not photography, you know,
(03:11):
no really fabulous snapshots of people, but beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Portraits fashion plates, I imagine.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
Yes, absolutely, And so the challenge for fashion plates with
Nosphratu was Robert set the story as a book that
it's based on obviously Bram Stoker's Dracula mi'r Now's Nospherratu,
you know, set in Germany at eighteen thirty eight, and
so rather than just looking at English flash fashion plates
(03:40):
or you know, Parisian beautiful as they are, I really
wanted German fashion plates and I don't speak German, and
so really locating a full range of I think it
was Wiener modem w E I N E R.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
M O D E M.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
I believe that was the that was the germ that
I was looking for.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
And eventually due to one of my assistant costume designers,
Anna Monroe, who lives in Berlin and speaks German, you know,
I said, Anna, Anna, Anna, can you please you know,
and she fabulously sent me the full range, month by month,
and I asked, I think I asked for eighteen thirty
(04:22):
five to eighteen thirty nine, and I wanted obviously leading
up to and then I wanted after so that I
wouldn't go if anything was massively different in thirty nine,
I didn't want to go there. So that was really
exciting because then particularly for the gentlemen, you know, I mean,
like the women I could piece together, and the women
(04:44):
were more from portraits. Actually, I got more inspiration from
portraits paintings than I did from the fashion plates. Though
you know, there was a whimsy in the fashion plates
that I, you know, was trying to capture and certainly
the feeling of, you know, is it ever too much?
Speaker 4 (05:03):
It's a very interesting time for fashion, a bit of
a transitional period, if I imagine, because eighteen thirty eight is,
if I'm correct, incredibly early Victorian, and we have these
sort of leg of mutton sleeves that are transitioning away.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
Yeah, the transition happens prior to eighteen thirty eight, starts
to happen at about eighteen thirty six eighteen thirty seven,
and it transitions all through that period eighteen thirty nine
and then forty and then you start to really see
the difference that becomes the forties in the fifties, and
so you've got this transitioning period.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
The forearm in.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
The women's bodict sleeve is changing, and the pieces that
the actual authentic garments that I looked at, I was
sort of chuckling, thinking, Wow, they didn't cut any of
that fibricoat, they.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Just ceed it all. And then I understand.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
Why, what would you say is characteristic of that period?
Speaker 5 (06:00):
The embellishments, trying to figure out Anna Harding obviously much
more wealthy than because of her husband's he's a shipman
and he has lots of money to spend on her
and the children, and they are beautiful little replicas of her.
And the story points really were that Ellen had less money,
Hutter had less money, which is why he goes to
(06:22):
count orlock, and so, you know, really trying to figure
out what the garments would be that would tell Ellen's
story and then use Anna's excess really to also tell
the story by contrast.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
And Anna's outfits are just extraordinary. If you haven't seen
the movie yet, Anna Harding is the main character, Ellen's
wealthy married friend. She has these sort of adorable prim
children who are always dressed up to the nines. Yes,
one thing that I thought was a brilliant marrying of
fashion and plot is Ellen's corset. Can you talk a
(07:01):
little bit about the type of corset Ellen is wearing
and how that factored in?
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Yeah, absolutely so. Because Ellen does not have staff, she
doesn't have a chamber maid. You know, I was trying
to figure out really what would tell that story, and
I came across a fan laced courset, which initially I
was referring to because I had been referring to it
with my colleagues about you know, self tightening, and I
(07:26):
realized in interviews that kind of made it sound like
the corset tightened.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Itself, which of course it didn't.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
The wearer tightened it on themselves herself, and so it
still laces up the back. It has a closed front.
So the busk was a center front busk and not
quite the same boning.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
As you have later.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
You know, there's a little less in this corset, so
we still have the lacing crisscrossing and coming up the back.
But what the additional feature is is that all of
those laces are longer, they cross over, and they come
to the front around the waist, and so you can
use the body weight to pull against that and tighten
(08:07):
it and then tie it at the front. And the
reason that that was interesting to me, other than the
fact that it's an interesting piece, was that in our story,
doctor Severs has the now we know and have known
for quite a long time, this guided notion that tightening
the corset can calm the uterusts. And so in the
(08:30):
film when we see this in Ellen's she's convulsing, she's
communing with Orlock. She is not in the room, you know,
with the men that are there. She is away in
her mind. So her body is convulsing, and so the
notion is that doctor Severs will tighten the corset, and Harding,
Frederick Harding, who is her guardian so speak, friend of
(08:53):
her husband, is holding her down. And so if we
had used a typical corset that Lesy's and ties in
the back, she would have been flipped down, you know,
face into the mattress, and we would not have seen
any of Lily Rose's extraordinary portraying of this state. And
so the fact that the corset had ties in the
(09:15):
front meant that they could start flipper over and continue
tightening with her face to the camera, which was you know,
a real boon, obviously, because we want to see that.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
And now to talk about the man of the hour,
the extraordinary costume of Count Or Luck who obviously this
story takes place in the eighteen hundreds, but this is
a man from three hundred years earlier. His costume is
just striking. I particularly love the coat he's wearing. Can
you walk us through the process of creating his costume.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
Robert has had this in his head for a very
long time. He initially saw the images of match Track
in Mayor Now's Nosphratu when he was a boy, you know,
nine years old, ten years old, and went to great
lengths with his mom to obtain a VHS copy of it. So,
you know, he's had this playing in his head for
(10:13):
a very long time. And we also, as his collaborators,
had many false starts. We were initially going to do it,
you know, very briefly right after the Witch and then
the Lighthouse, and then we had a false start the
year before we actually I went to prout for a
week with my assistant, and I had done a number
of the sketches already in Toronto, but then, you know,
(10:33):
we had a cash change, so it was another year
before we actually started and then continued through. So the
point of me telling all of this is that we
have all had this in our heads for quite a while.
Robert has certainly had it in his head for quite
a while, and for him, his version of this story
is really rooted in as much as possible with these
(10:56):
characters rooted in in real time. And so he wanted
to know, Okay, so count or Lock, you know, what
would a Hungarian count of roughly, you know, three hundred
years prior to our story line, you know, what would
he look like? And the first thing I think that
Robert really cottoned onto was the notion that he had
(11:17):
to have a mustache, you know, just you know, there's
no way around this, you.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Know, he has to have a mustache.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
And what a mustache he has, and what a musta
actually have.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
And so when I received the images, that was sort
of like, well, this is interesting, you know, And so
there were a number of different portraits and like a
pastiche of images of this, and so again I start
to because we have to make these pieces, and we
have to and I have to know what they look like,
and I have to get a sense of what fabrics
(11:49):
I'm trying to find, and what buttons and what you know,
embellishments and and that's always a challenge now and it's
becoming more of a challenge because all are closing and
luxurious fabrics if they're even available cost the world. You know,
I have to find textiles that will evoke these things.
(12:10):
So I started research, research, research, and I started looking.
I would love to be able to go to museums
all around the world and look at these things. Unfortunately
that's not quite you know, where we're at, and so
I try to go online and find museum online collections.
That is obviously easier if it's something that is at
the DNA or something that's at the met These were
(12:31):
not necessarily so, you know, I'm looking at museums again
where I can't necessarily speak the language of the museum
it is operating in. So I'll find images and then
I'll have to have the text translated, and that also
applied to you know, the folk costuming in both the
Inn and the Roma and the monastery.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
For listeners who haven't seen the film yet, one of
the characters, Thomas, travels to visit Counterlock and interacts with
a large group of peasants sort of outside of his castle.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Figuring out the garments that would make up an outfit
for a Hungarian count of great wealth, entitlement, and personality
from around fifteen sixty to fifteen eighty to roughly sixteen
twenty inch, and that consisted of the very large overcoat
which has the incredibly long sleeves, which actually I realized
(13:27):
through researching the peasant costuming that that is a feature
that kind of seems to have come from shepherds wearing
the sheepskins as cloaks, but without arms, and that slowly
starts to develop into these sheep skin coats with arms,
but the arms are always really really long, and they
don't seem to be always, especially for the nobility, intended
(13:51):
to be worn with arms through the sleeves. It's more
of a show of I have all of this money,
I can have luxurious fabrics that make up the body
of the overcoat. It's all fur lined to keep me
warm in my stone castle with no essential heating.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
And I've got.
Speaker 5 (14:10):
You know, gold gold galloons and incredible buttons, and the
buttons were often painted glass buttons painted with gold images,
you know, I mean, not possible to find these days.
So we ended up actually crocheting gold buttons and then
weighing them with fish weights to give them, you know,
a bit of heft. And so the Mente y Nte
(14:35):
actually has these slices that are like kind of you
know here in the fabric, and they're fur trimmed as well,
and the arms can go through that.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
So you can actually keep.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
This big overcoat on by putting your arms through those slits,
but you can't put your arms through the sleeves and
keep it on, which I found really interesting.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
It gives it a sense of menace too. It does
make it sort of a cape.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
And for our purposes, because Bill, he's gliding effortlessly, you know,
through this this castle, but because of the weight of
the overcoat, every time in fittings it would just slide
off his shoulders.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
And so for.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
Practicality and for the image of it, we in a
costume department devised a harness that he wore underneath the dolmen,
which is the tunic that he wears under the overcoat,
and there were slices it hidden in the shoulders and
they had quick release mechanisms that we could snap and
(15:35):
then you know, a companion piece on the inside of
the mente so that it would just stay on his
shoulders and float around with him and he could really
recede into the bulk of it. When he wanted to
not be visible, he could you know, expand his chest
and have not just the galloons that are visible on
the overcoat, but also all of the incredible gold lace
(15:59):
overlay that is is present in the dolmen as well,
and all that could be visible. So it gave Bill
confidence that he could act with the costume and not
have it be cumbersome. So then he had silk trousers,
a tight fit, and they went into one of my
favorite pieces, which were the boots. And in reality they
(16:22):
would have been leather mules with about a four inch
steel heel that is kind of horseshoe shaped, really freaky,
and a leather sack that slid into the mule for
our safety and for convenience purposes. You know, I designed
it so that it was all one and Bill Scarscar
is a very tall actor man anyway, and Lily Rose
(16:44):
is quite petite, and so you know, there was a
real overpowering presence. And then he had the coal pop
hat kolpak and that is a crazy weird design. It
sort of is like a like a large tube that
folds back, you know, and so you've got this potentially
quite overwhelming hat, right, And then it had the embellishment
(17:11):
of hawk feathers and be jeweled at the front with
the pearls and jewels. So all of that was intended
to allow Robert our director writer, to obscure when when
Thomas Hutter first comes to the castle, it's such a
weird world. He's as soon as he comes into the
(17:31):
Carpathian mountains, he encounters, you know, our villagers, he encounters
the Roma, he encounters another very disturbing event in the
woods that night that he's not quite sure did he
see that or did he not see that? You know,
by the time he gets to the castle, at least
his horse is gone and is met by this unbelievable carriage.
You know, every event leading up to the castle is
(17:53):
plummes to more and more and more, and so he
comes in and the count has this luxurious voice, you know.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Deep, deep, deep deep.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
He's certainly unique, certainly not in the same era, that
almost empty castle, and he's terrified. And because Orlock is
three hundred years old, and Robert has chosen to really
go with the embodiment of a folk vampire, which is undead,
(18:26):
he's reanimated, so he is a corpse that is reanimated,
come back to life, and so he's rotting.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
It's such an interesting interpretation.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
I feel like we're used to seeing very sexy vampires
who are sort of dashing gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
You know.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Orlock is very sexy in his way, but now maybe
in his physical body.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
It was always amazing to me to watch Bill in
full makeup and costume, and still I could feel the
power of the man from three hundred years what he
would have been like as a living person. And that
I think is an extraordinary accomplishment for him to have
(19:07):
made in portraying this character. And so the idea of
the huge hat that for a caller that comes up
quite a bit. It has a sort of dual purpose.
It's obscuring or Locke obscuring all of that rot until
he gets that signature. And also it's kind of an
ode or a homage, a nod whatever to the previous
(19:27):
iterations of vampires, whether they be a black satin cape,
you know, whether they be incredible costuming of Francis Ford
Coppola's Dracula, The notion with that Dracula was that he
was a shape shifter.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
He could force people.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
To imagine or see any number of different versions of himself,
you know, the Dracula that Gary Oldman played in so
many different extraordinary time periods and costumes. This Nosratu has
its feet in reality, so that you know, the notion
is that, and I certainly, you know, stand by this
(20:04):
notion for myself that you know, it could be more
terrifying if what you're looking at is potentially real, you know,
then it really does close that gap between the fantastical
and real.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
We don't have a ton of time left to before
I let you go. Can I ask did you have
a favorite costume in the entire film?
Speaker 5 (20:26):
I'm asked this and I realized over and over again,
it's like choosing a favorite child. You know, I love
them all and for different reasons. But you know, Orlock
is because it could have been an incredibly terrifying notion
to design such an iconic character. And you know, due
to the fact that Robert had such very clear ideas
about what he wanted, you know, that fear was didn't
(20:49):
actually really even come up. I think designing the men's
where that is at that period so romantic and so lush,
that was a real treat.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Willem Oh, we're such an extraordinary if I remember correctly,
sort of floral coat in one scene.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yes, you don't.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
See it a lot in his Arctic room because it's lit,
you know, very very sparsely, with candles and oil lamps
and things like that. But he had beautiful little curl
told slippers and you know, a very oriental gentleman's kind
of eveningwhere. But you know the other thing you asked
about the folk costuming, and yes, it is incredibly authentic.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
In fact, I.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
Am moved beyond belief. In my Instagram account, there's a gentleman.
His page is called Transylvania dot heritage, I believe, and
he's messaged me just to say, finally, finally, respect given
to the folk costuming of Romania, and I can't time.
(21:50):
I'm going to start crying, you know, because it was
really difficult, really difficult to find the information because neither
Robert nor I speak Romanian. And you know, you're looking
at a lot of modern photographs of people who still
create this costuming, but what we were looking for was
pre photography, so we were relying on illustrations and written
(22:12):
accounts and then having that translated, and then also in
the monastery the Great Schema. Abbess Robert's writing is often
quite feminist, and he was quite determined that the exorcism
would happen with a mature nun, and as it turned out,
we needed a priest. This we couldn't quite escape the
(22:33):
religious reality. But you know, the Great Schema, abyss her
Analev was so researched, so we had to give her
a name embroider that across the bottom in a cyrillic alphabet,
along with the psalm that she would have chosen from
her Bible that would have been indicative of her religious
(22:55):
journey to get her to the place of great learnedness.
And so the icons, there's the ladder, there's the there
are the angels, there is pillar. All of these different
icons are things that were thoroughly researched, and the colors
that would have been used in the embroidery, and the
and the applicat work was all researched as well. So
(23:17):
that is really dear to my heart, you know, because
it was such a journey to get there, and you know,
the hand inbroidery took a good deal of time to do.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
I can only imagine. Well, thank you so much for
joining me. The movie knows Faratu. The costumes are absolutely extraordinary.
To any listeners who haven't seen it yet, watch it
and then watch it again, just with an eye to
the costumes, especially that coat, those sleeves that go to
the knee for orlac They're incredible. Thank you so much,
and best of luck at the Oscars. These these costumes
(23:50):
are are OSCAR nominated, so I'll be keeping our fingers
crossed for you.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Thank you very much, have a wonderful day.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional
writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender, Amy
hit and Julia Melaney.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with
supervising producer rima Il Kaali and executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
For more podcasts
Speaker 4 (24:36):
From iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Today on the podcast, we'll be talking about a Hungarian count,
a three hundred year old, undead Hungarian count who also
happens to be a vampire. Even though usually on this
podcast we talk about real royalty, today we're making an
exception to discuss Count or Locke and the rest of
(00:31):
the characters in Robert Eggers's phenomenal movie No Sparatu or Other.
More specifically, we'll be talking about the costumes, expertly researched
and entirely historically accurate thanks to OSCAR nominated costume designer
Linda Muir. Linda has worked with Robert Eggers on The Witch,
The Lighthouse, The Northman, and now No Sparatu, which required
(00:53):
her to dive into the world of nineteenth century corsets,
leg of mutton, sleeves, boots and coats to transport viewers
to Egger's vision of Germany and Transylvania.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Linda, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
The cost ofs truly, we're one of the first things
I noticed about this film they're incredibly detail oriented and
incredibly period accurate. Can you talk a little bit about
just how you started the process.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
Robert Eggers is an incredibly detail oriented director writer. He
has this wonderful habit of creating look books. So he
gathers together images and he groups them not just for instance,
by character, but he also groups them sometimes under an
(01:46):
adjective or atmosphere or a particular beat in the script.
And so he uses those images while he's writing to
in bead detail actually into the scripts. And so we
being his production team Craigley throughout the production designer, his
(02:07):
DP Jarren and myself costumes, you know, when we start
prep and we usually do you know, a considerable amount
of pre prep on our own together, you know, sort
of wading into it, and we have that as a
starting point, which is absolutely amazing.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
And so you know, really what I.
Speaker 5 (02:27):
Have to do, or what each of us have to
do visually, is to is to go through Robert's images,
because you know, they're not necessarily dead on in terms
of the period, but they give the essence and so
you know, checking for anachronisms is one of the first
things that I do, and also try to broaden out
and obviously have to broaden out the bank of images,
(02:48):
and sometimes that is a hard slog to find things.
You know, the Viking era that we did for the
Northmen was exceedingly difficult because obviously there's this much fabric
that exists, and so you know, you're not looking at
a number of extent pieces. But thankfully for Nospharratu, you know,
the period is much more accessible. Still not photography, you know,
(03:11):
no really fabulous snapshots of people, but beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Portraits fashion plates, I imagine.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
Yes, absolutely, And so the challenge for fashion plates with
Nosphratu was Robert set the story as a book that
it's based on obviously Bram Stoker's Dracula mi'r Now's Nospherratu,
you know, set in Germany at eighteen thirty eight, and
so rather than just looking at English flash fashion plates
(03:40):
or you know, Parisian beautiful as they are, I really
wanted German fashion plates and I don't speak German, and
so really locating a full range of I think it
was Wiener modem w E I N E R.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
M O D E M.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
I believe that was the that was the germ that
I was looking for.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
And eventually due to one of my assistant costume designers,
Anna Monroe, who lives in Berlin and speaks German, you know,
I said, Anna, Anna, Anna, can you please you know,
and she fabulously sent me the full range, month by month,
and I asked, I think I asked for eighteen thirty
(04:22):
five to eighteen thirty nine, and I wanted obviously leading
up to and then I wanted after so that I
wouldn't go if anything was massively different in thirty nine,
I didn't want to go there. So that was really
exciting because then particularly for the gentlemen, you know, I mean,
like the women I could piece together, and the women
(04:44):
were more from portraits. Actually, I got more inspiration from
portraits paintings than I did from the fashion plates. Though
you know, there was a whimsy in the fashion plates
that I, you know, was trying to capture and certainly
the feeling of, you know, is it ever too much?
Speaker 4 (05:03):
It's a very interesting time for fashion, a bit of
a transitional period, if I imagine, because eighteen thirty eight is,
if I'm correct, incredibly early Victorian, and we have these
sort of leg of mutton sleeves that are transitioning away.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
Yeah, the transition happens prior to eighteen thirty eight, starts
to happen at about eighteen thirty six eighteen thirty seven,
and it transitions all through that period eighteen thirty nine
and then forty and then you start to really see
the difference that becomes the forties in the fifties, and
so you've got this transitioning period.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
The forearm in.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
The women's bodict sleeve is changing, and the pieces that
the actual authentic garments that I looked at, I was
sort of chuckling, thinking, Wow, they didn't cut any of
that fibricoat, they.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Just ceed it all. And then I understand.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
Why, what would you say is characteristic of that period?
Speaker 5 (06:00):
The embellishments, trying to figure out Anna Harding obviously much
more wealthy than because of her husband's he's a shipman
and he has lots of money to spend on her
and the children, and they are beautiful little replicas of her.
And the story points really were that Ellen had less money,
Hutter had less money, which is why he goes to
(06:22):
count orlock, and so, you know, really trying to figure
out what the garments would be that would tell Ellen's
story and then use Anna's excess really to also tell
the story by contrast.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
And Anna's outfits are just extraordinary. If you haven't seen
the movie yet, Anna Harding is the main character, Ellen's
wealthy married friend. She has these sort of adorable prim
children who are always dressed up to the nines. Yes,
one thing that I thought was a brilliant marrying of
fashion and plot is Ellen's corset. Can you talk a
(07:01):
little bit about the type of corset Ellen is wearing
and how that factored in?
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Yeah, absolutely so. Because Ellen does not have staff, she
doesn't have a chamber maid. You know, I was trying
to figure out really what would tell that story, and
I came across a fan laced courset, which initially I
was referring to because I had been referring to it
with my colleagues about you know, self tightening, and I
(07:26):
realized in interviews that kind of made it sound like
the corset tightened.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Itself, which of course it didn't.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
The wearer tightened it on themselves herself, and so it
still laces up the back. It has a closed front.
So the busk was a center front busk and not
quite the same boning.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
As you have later.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
You know, there's a little less in this corset, so
we still have the lacing crisscrossing and coming up the back.
But what the additional feature is is that all of
those laces are longer, they cross over, and they come
to the front around the waist, and so you can
use the body weight to pull against that and tighten
(08:07):
it and then tie it at the front. And the
reason that that was interesting to me, other than the
fact that it's an interesting piece, was that in our story,
doctor Severs has the now we know and have known
for quite a long time, this guided notion that tightening
the corset can calm the uterusts. And so in the
(08:30):
film when we see this in Ellen's she's convulsing, she's
communing with Orlock. She is not in the room, you know,
with the men that are there. She is away in
her mind. So her body is convulsing, and so the
notion is that doctor Severs will tighten the corset, and Harding,
Frederick Harding, who is her guardian so speak, friend of
(08:53):
her husband, is holding her down. And so if we
had used a typical corset that Lesy's and ties in
the back, she would have been flipped down, you know,
face into the mattress, and we would not have seen
any of Lily Rose's extraordinary portraying of this state. And
so the fact that the corset had ties in the
(09:15):
front meant that they could start flipper over and continue
tightening with her face to the camera, which was you know,
a real boon, obviously, because we want to see that.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
And now to talk about the man of the hour,
the extraordinary costume of Count Or Luck who obviously this
story takes place in the eighteen hundreds, but this is
a man from three hundred years earlier. His costume is
just striking. I particularly love the coat he's wearing. Can
you walk us through the process of creating his costume.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
Robert has had this in his head for a very
long time. He initially saw the images of match Track
in Mayor Now's Nosphratu when he was a boy, you know,
nine years old, ten years old, and went to great
lengths with his mom to obtain a VHS copy of it. So,
you know, he's had this playing in his head for
(10:13):
a very long time. And we also, as his collaborators,
had many false starts. We were initially going to do it,
you know, very briefly right after the Witch and then
the Lighthouse, and then we had a false start the
year before we actually I went to prout for a
week with my assistant, and I had done a number
of the sketches already in Toronto, but then, you know,
(10:33):
we had a cash change, so it was another year
before we actually started and then continued through. So the
point of me telling all of this is that we
have all had this in our heads for quite a while.
Robert has certainly had it in his head for quite
a while, and for him, his version of this story
is really rooted in as much as possible with these
(10:56):
characters rooted in in real time. And so he wanted
to know, Okay, so count or Lock, you know, what
would a Hungarian count of roughly, you know, three hundred
years prior to our story line, you know, what would
he look like? And the first thing I think that
Robert really cottoned onto was the notion that he had
(11:17):
to have a mustache, you know, just you know, there's
no way around this, you.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Know, he has to have a mustache.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
And what a mustache he has, and what a musta
actually have.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
And so when I received the images, that was sort
of like, well, this is interesting, you know, And so
there were a number of different portraits and like a
pastiche of images of this, and so again I start
to because we have to make these pieces, and we
have to and I have to know what they look like,
and I have to get a sense of what fabrics
(11:49):
I'm trying to find, and what buttons and what you know,
embellishments and and that's always a challenge now and it's
becoming more of a challenge because all are closing and
luxurious fabrics if they're even available cost the world. You know,
I have to find textiles that will evoke these things.
(12:10):
So I started research, research, research, and I started looking.
I would love to be able to go to museums
all around the world and look at these things. Unfortunately
that's not quite you know, where we're at, and so
I try to go online and find museum online collections.
That is obviously easier if it's something that is at
the DNA or something that's at the met These were
(12:31):
not necessarily so, you know, I'm looking at museums again
where I can't necessarily speak the language of the museum
it is operating in. So I'll find images and then
I'll have to have the text translated, and that also
applied to you know, the folk costuming in both the
Inn and the Roma and the monastery.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
For listeners who haven't seen the film yet, one of
the characters, Thomas, travels to visit Counterlock and interacts with
a large group of peasants sort of outside of his castle.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Figuring out the garments that would make up an outfit
for a Hungarian count of great wealth, entitlement, and personality
from around fifteen sixty to fifteen eighty to roughly sixteen
twenty inch, and that consisted of the very large overcoat
which has the incredibly long sleeves, which actually I realized
(13:27):
through researching the peasant costuming that that is a feature
that kind of seems to have come from shepherds wearing
the sheepskins as cloaks, but without arms, and that slowly
starts to develop into these sheep skin coats with arms,
but the arms are always really really long, and they
don't seem to be always, especially for the nobility, intended
(13:51):
to be worn with arms through the sleeves. It's more
of a show of I have all of this money,
I can have luxurious fabrics that make up the body
of the overcoat. It's all fur lined to keep me
warm in my stone castle with no essential heating.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
And I've got.
Speaker 5 (14:10):
You know, gold gold galloons and incredible buttons, and the
buttons were often painted glass buttons painted with gold images,
you know, I mean, not possible to find these days.
So we ended up actually crocheting gold buttons and then
weighing them with fish weights to give them, you know,
a bit of heft. And so the Mente y Nte
(14:35):
actually has these slices that are like kind of you
know here in the fabric, and they're fur trimmed as well,
and the arms can go through that.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
So you can actually keep.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
This big overcoat on by putting your arms through those slits,
but you can't put your arms through the sleeves and
keep it on, which I found really interesting.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
It gives it a sense of menace too. It does
make it sort of a cape.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
And for our purposes, because Bill, he's gliding effortlessly, you know,
through this this castle, but because of the weight of
the overcoat, every time in fittings it would just slide
off his shoulders.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
And so for.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
Practicality and for the image of it, we in a
costume department devised a harness that he wore underneath the dolmen,
which is the tunic that he wears under the overcoat,
and there were slices it hidden in the shoulders and
they had quick release mechanisms that we could snap and
(15:35):
then you know, a companion piece on the inside of
the mente so that it would just stay on his
shoulders and float around with him and he could really
recede into the bulk of it. When he wanted to
not be visible, he could you know, expand his chest
and have not just the galloons that are visible on
the overcoat, but also all of the incredible gold lace
(15:59):
overlay that is is present in the dolmen as well,
and all that could be visible. So it gave Bill
confidence that he could act with the costume and not
have it be cumbersome. So then he had silk trousers,
a tight fit, and they went into one of my
favorite pieces, which were the boots. And in reality they
(16:22):
would have been leather mules with about a four inch
steel heel that is kind of horseshoe shaped, really freaky,
and a leather sack that slid into the mule for
our safety and for convenience purposes. You know, I designed
it so that it was all one and Bill Scarscar
is a very tall actor man anyway, and Lily Rose
(16:44):
is quite petite, and so you know, there was a
real overpowering presence. And then he had the coal pop
hat kolpak and that is a crazy weird design. It
sort of is like a like a large tube that
folds back, you know, and so you've got this potentially
quite overwhelming hat, right, And then it had the embellishment
(17:11):
of hawk feathers and be jeweled at the front with
the pearls and jewels. So all of that was intended
to allow Robert our director writer, to obscure when when
Thomas Hutter first comes to the castle, it's such a
weird world. He's as soon as he comes into the
(17:31):
Carpathian mountains, he encounters, you know, our villagers, he encounters
the Roma, he encounters another very disturbing event in the
woods that night that he's not quite sure did he
see that or did he not see that? You know,
by the time he gets to the castle, at least
his horse is gone and is met by this unbelievable carriage.
You know, every event leading up to the castle is
(17:53):
plummes to more and more and more, and so he
comes in and the count has this luxurious voice, you know.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Deep, deep, deep deep.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
He's certainly unique, certainly not in the same era, that
almost empty castle, and he's terrified. And because Orlock is
three hundred years old, and Robert has chosen to really
go with the embodiment of a folk vampire, which is undead,
(18:26):
he's reanimated, so he is a corpse that is reanimated,
come back to life, and so he's rotting.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
It's such an interesting interpretation.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
I feel like we're used to seeing very sexy vampires
who are sort of dashing gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
You know.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Orlock is very sexy in his way, but now maybe
in his physical body.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
It was always amazing to me to watch Bill in
full makeup and costume, and still I could feel the
power of the man from three hundred years what he
would have been like as a living person. And that
I think is an extraordinary accomplishment for him to have
(19:07):
made in portraying this character. And so the idea of
the huge hat that for a caller that comes up
quite a bit. It has a sort of dual purpose.
It's obscuring or Locke obscuring all of that rot until
he gets that signature. And also it's kind of an
ode or a homage, a nod whatever to the previous
(19:27):
iterations of vampires, whether they be a black satin cape,
you know, whether they be incredible costuming of Francis Ford
Coppola's Dracula, The notion with that Dracula was that he
was a shape shifter.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
He could force people.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
To imagine or see any number of different versions of himself,
you know, the Dracula that Gary Oldman played in so
many different extraordinary time periods and costumes. This Nosratu has
its feet in reality, so that you know, the notion
is that, and I certainly, you know, stand by this
(20:04):
notion for myself that you know, it could be more
terrifying if what you're looking at is potentially real, you know,
then it really does close that gap between the fantastical
and real.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
We don't have a ton of time left to before
I let you go. Can I ask did you have
a favorite costume in the entire film?
Speaker 5 (20:26):
I'm asked this and I realized over and over again,
it's like choosing a favorite child. You know, I love
them all and for different reasons. But you know, Orlock
is because it could have been an incredibly terrifying notion
to design such an iconic character. And you know, due
to the fact that Robert had such very clear ideas
about what he wanted, you know, that fear was didn't
(20:49):
actually really even come up. I think designing the men's
where that is at that period so romantic and so lush,
that was a real treat.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Willem Oh, we're such an extraordinary if I remember correctly,
sort of floral coat in one scene.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yes, you don't.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
See it a lot in his Arctic room because it's lit,
you know, very very sparsely, with candles and oil lamps
and things like that. But he had beautiful little curl
told slippers and you know, a very oriental gentleman's kind
of eveningwhere. But you know the other thing you asked
about the folk costuming, and yes, it is incredibly authentic.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
In fact, I.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
Am moved beyond belief. In my Instagram account, there's a gentleman.
His page is called Transylvania dot heritage, I believe, and
he's messaged me just to say, finally, finally, respect given
to the folk costuming of Romania, and I can't time.
(21:50):
I'm going to start crying, you know, because it was
really difficult, really difficult to find the information because neither
Robert nor I speak Romanian. And you know, you're looking
at a lot of modern photographs of people who still
create this costuming, but what we were looking for was
pre photography, so we were relying on illustrations and written
(22:12):
accounts and then having that translated, and then also in
the monastery the Great Schema. Abbess Robert's writing is often
quite feminist, and he was quite determined that the exorcism
would happen with a mature nun, and as it turned out,
we needed a priest. This we couldn't quite escape the
(22:33):
religious reality. But you know, the Great Schema, abyss her
Analev was so researched, so we had to give her
a name embroider that across the bottom in a cyrillic alphabet,
along with the psalm that she would have chosen from
her Bible that would have been indicative of her religious
(22:55):
journey to get her to the place of great learnedness.
And so the icons, there's the ladder, there's the there
are the angels, there is pillar. All of these different
icons are things that were thoroughly researched, and the colors
that would have been used in the embroidery, and the
and the applicat work was all researched as well. So
(23:17):
that is really dear to my heart, you know, because
it was such a journey to get there, and you know,
the hand inbroidery took a good deal of time to do.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
I can only imagine. Well, thank you so much for
joining me. The movie knows Faratu. The costumes are absolutely extraordinary.
To any listeners who haven't seen it yet, watch it
and then watch it again, just with an eye to
the costumes, especially that coat, those sleeves that go to
the knee for orlac They're incredible. Thank you so much,
and best of luck at the Oscars. These these costumes
(23:50):
are are OSCAR nominated, so I'll be keeping our fingers
crossed for you.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Thank you very much, have a wonderful day.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional
writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender, Amy
hit and Julia Melaney.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with
supervising producer rima Il Kaali and executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
For more podcasts
Speaker 4 (24:36):
From iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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