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