Harper’s Baazar | Lily-Rose Depp Interview: Nosferatu star on following gothic instinct

Rare Bloom: Lily-Rose Depp combines star power with commitment to her craft

A fashion world darling since her early teens, the actress explores her gothic instincts in Nosferatu

It’s really no surprise that Lily-Rose Depp, the daughter of Johnny Depp and the French singer and actress Vanessa Paradis, has a dark side.

But when she breezes into the restaurant of Hotel Café Royal on London’s Piccadilly on a chilly November afternoon, you wouldn’t know it. She has just done a day’s media appearances for her new film, so she’s impeccably made-up, with smoky eyes and not a lock of her slicked-back blonde hair out of place. But she has shed the figure-hugging black Dolce & Gabbana suit she was wearing and now embodies off-duty chic in a vintage Chanel Aran knit and jeans. Minutes after settling down on the banquette with a jasmine tea, she undoes her waistband with a smile and a sigh of relief. “My jeans are so tight – I’m going to undo another button!” she says, laughing. “I’m so sorry. It’s been a long day.”

The 25-year-old is here to talk about the Robert Eggers-directed film Nosferatu, in which she stars with Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe and Emma Corrin. It’s a remake of the 1922 silent horror movie that, as she says, “was banned in some countries because people found it so scary. Which is really cool.” While the same thing is unlikely to happen to this Nosferatu, it is, nonetheless a lot to take, and you may find yourself watching through your fingers.

In the first scene, a dream sequence, Depp has sex with a monster, suffers a shattering series of hysterics and is strangled by a hideous, claw-like hand. And that’s only the beginning. The story is based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but the vampire here is a Count Orlok. Depp plays the Mina Harker character Ellen Hutter, and the Count’s passion for her drives the story. In the best gothic tradition, blood gushes, coffins burst open, rats devour people in their beds, wolves attack and menace lurks in the shadows.

“I remember hearing that movies are supposed to make you feel something,” remarks Depp. “Even if all it does is make you feel totally disgusted, then it’s done its job.” By that measure, Eggers’ Nosferatu is a roaring success. When she first saw the finished film, she thought: “Oh my God! It’s not just scary, it’s gross, it’s revolting. It’s palpably effective.” But the film does not only aim to shock. It’s also astonishingly beautiful, with scenes so painterly they look by turns like a Vermeer, a Rembrandt or an Ingres, which, in a way, makes the revulsion and fear more effective. “It’s the most technical set I’ve ever been on,” says Depp. “It was almost like going to film school. It was intimidating and daunting, but an incredible privilege. I’m very proud, very excited.”

Her father had a long partnership with the director Tim Burton, exploring the supernatural and gory in Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd and The Corpse Bride. Does a fascination for the genre run in the family? “Sure, I guess you could say so,” says Depp. “We’re very different actors, but of course you’re the product of your environment, and it’s a world I’ve always been very interested in.”

Aged three, she remembers, she was allowed to watch Edward Scissorhands, a 1990 fable in which her father plays a mutant but benign boy with blades instead of fingers. “I was traumatised by it,” she recalls. “Not because I thought he was scary, but because everyone was being so mean to him and I got really upset.”

She found the ending – when the townsfolk turn on Edward – so distressing she has refused to watch it ever since. “I remember being petrified by that, which is weird, because I don’t have many memories from when I was that young.” She pauses to reflect. “It’s a difficult childhood memory. Edward’s the good guy and Nosferatu’s kind of the bad guy, but there’s a part of me that feels a little bit of empathy for Nosferatu. I mean, am I sick for feeling that way?”

Depp enjoys exploring her gothic instincts. “I’m interested in the darker underbelly of things,” she says. “As an actor, you hope that your role will be as meaty as can be, so you have as much to dive into as possible.” She revels in the hidden and mysterious, “because nothing is straightforwardly dark, it’s the most complicated stuff”.

Depp is not frightened of revealing too much of herself in her films. “The most exciting thing is getting to explore parts of myself. You get to hide behind all these beautiful artifices, the costumes, the story, but the place I’m drawing from is deeply personal.”

Nicholas Hoult, who plays Depp’s husband in Nosferatu, says of his co-star: “I can’t describe quite how brilliant she is,” and remarks that her acting was “some of the most impressive” he has ever seen. The shoot itself was tough: the team spent 12-hour days on location in Prague over four months, and the film required long, sustained shots that meant the actors relied on each other to stay ‘in sync’. “There was never a moment of ‘I’ve done my bit, now it’s on you’,” Hoult says of his castmate’s exemplary attitude. “I’d work with her again in a heartbeat.”

Born in France, Depp spent her childhood in both the US and France, with school in Los Angeles and summers on the Côte d’Azur. Her parents separated amicably after 14 years, but she has continued her transatlantic life and is bilingual. “There are so many sides to me,” she says. “I really feel that paradox in myself. French and American cultures feel very different, and yet I feel genuinely connected to both. I am very close to the French half of my family, but I only made French girlfriends five years ago. I have had my LA best friends since forever.” She spent lockdown in Paris with her mother and her 22-year-old brother Jack, also an actor, and now lives in Hollywood.

As Ellen Hutter, Depp has the sort of otherworldly beauty that would drive a vampire to distraction. At one point, another character refers to her as a “sylph”; indeed, in person she is extremely striking.

“You get to hide behind all these beautiful artifices, but the place I’m drawing from is deeply personal”
She enjoys fashion and dressing up, appearing on the red carpet in a parade of looks that range from sugary-pink princess dresses to black full-length gowns. When she’s at home, you’ll find her dressed down. “I’m wearing sweats – I love a matching pyjama set for the holidays.” But on a night out, she’ll embrace high heels – “no pun intended, they elevate everything” – and she’ll keep them on all evening as “nothing can mimic the allure wearing a high heel gives you”.

Inevitably, Depp gets approached by strangers for selfies. “I don’t think I’m a shy person necessarily,” she says. “But I’m shy when people come up to me.” Unsurprisingly, she finds it especially embarrassing if she’s “eating, or in the bathroom. But it is what it is if you do this job.” Sometimes, she adds, she wishes she had an “anonymous uniform” (her mother, apparently, has a good one, though Depp won’t reveal what it is to save her from being recognised). But for the moment, she’s not “prepared to sacrifice the feeling of walking down the street in Paris in a cute outfit”.

Depp is also something of a beauty addict. “I grew up watching YouTube gurus,” she says. “I was obsessed with make-up when I was younger – I used to wear way more when I was 12 than I do now.” Eleven years ago, she found a photo of her mother in the Nineties wearing lip liner (Paradis has been famous since 1987, when, as a 14-year-old, she had an international hit song with ‘Joe Le Taxi’), and, she says, “I’ve worn lip liner every single day of my life because of that.” Today, it’s Nude Brun, a Chanel shade: “I’m a Chanel girl. Of course.”

Depp’s fashion education started early, when Karl Lagerfeld brought her into the fold aged 15 – her mother had also been working with Chanel since her teens. Depp has joked that the first word she learned to read was ‘Chanel’, and her proudest fashion moment was taking to the couture catwalk for Lagerfeld as a runaway bride in 2017. “He was incredible,” she says of the designer, who died in 2019, aged 85. “He was always the wittiest, sharpest person in the room. I think about him all the time.”

Just as important as the maison’s creations (today, she’s carrying a vintage Ligne Cambon pochette filched from her mother’s wardrobe) are the relationships she has forged. “I’ve been lucky enough to meet some amazing people along the way, and you really get to feel like family.” Loyalty – that of Lagerfeld to his team, and her own to her friends and colleagues – ranks highly for Depp. “I love people who love their people,” she says. “The fashion industry, the film industry… these are crazy businesses. When you find people who feel real and you connect with them, you have to hold onto that.”

Depp is rumoured to have had relationships with the actors Timothée Chalamet and Austin Butler, but for the past two years she has been with the rapper and singer Danielle Balbuena, who performs as 070 Shake. Balbuena calls Depp her “muse” – Depp dances alluringly in the video of her new song ‘Winter Baby/New Jersey Blues’. Balbuena has said: “I don’t really identify myself as queer or gay or anything. I just like girls”, while Depp calls her “‘my boyfriend’, because that’s what she feels like”.

“I’m tearing up! It’s so crazy. I must be jet-lagged,” she says, her eyes suddenly watery. “She’s just the most amazing person I’ve ever met. Honestly, the most kind-hearted person. I’m super in love and I’m super happy. I’ve always been really private about my personal life, but it’s hard not to talk about her because I’m so happy.” She wipes her eyes. “It’s just when you know, you know.” For Depp, “love is love. You fall in love with who you fall in love with. It’s never seemed more complicated than that.”

The couple are in nesting mode and like their evenings at home with Depp’s seven-year-old flat-faced Persian cat Pumpkin: “my little boy – we’ve been through everything together”. Depp is an enthusiastic cook, whose specialities include French roast chicken, breakfast burritos and anything with onions (“I love a stew more than anything: simple, comforting stuff”). Is she any good? “I’m not tooting my own horn, but I like my cooking,” she says. A little less sophisticated is her penchant for coffee “with all the disgusting syrups. At the moment, it’s the blueberry muffin lattes from Dunkin’ Donuts – I’m a 12-year-old girl when it comes to taste.”

Her tastes may be childlike, but as a woman in Hollywood, Depp has had to grow up fast. In many ways, she feels there has been significant progress – she contrasts how her mother was treated as an ingénue in the 1980s with the enhanced protection that young women have in the film and music industries today, such as the provision of intimacy coaches and chaperones. But she is deeply upset by the election of Donald Trump. “I feel we’re going backwards, which is endlessly disheartening and heartbreaking,” she says. “It’s a horrific time, and I’m scared, and I’m sad. I don’t really know where we go from here.”

Her solution is to prioritise loyalty and friendship: “When things feel out of control and you feel powerless, you have to hold tight to the people you love and look after those people.” And with that, Depp is off to the Mayfair Chippy for fish and chips with her long-term security guard, who says she is “like a daughter” to him.

Her films may be dark, but Lily-Rose Depp is clearly someone who will always look for light and love.

‘Nosferatu’ is in UK cinemas now. The February issue of Harper’s Bazaar is on sale now.

Hair by Stéphane Lancien at Callisté Agency. Make-up by Christelle Cocquet at Callisté Agency, using Chanel Beauty.

Source: Harper’s Baazar UK

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