Universal’s Renfield brings Dracula to a modern landscape as the titular loyal henchman decides it’s finally time to escape his narcissistic boss. The 2023 horror-comedy movie is directed by Chris McKay (The Lego Batman Movie) with a screenplay from Ryan Ridley (Rick & Morty), based on an original idea from Robert Kirkman. Renfield‘s all-star cast features Nicholas Hoult as Renfield, Nicolas Cage as Count Dracula, Awkwafina as Rebecca Quincy, and Ben Schwartz as mobster Teddy Lobo.
The film takes Count Dracula to modern-day New Orleans while giving a much-deserved spotlight to Dracula’s loyal henchman Renfield. After a century of servitude and obeying Dracula’s every vile demand, Renfield has a new lease on life as he realizes there’s more to be experienced outside his narcissistic boss’s shadow. As Renfield forms an unlikely connection with disgruntled traffic cop Rebecca Quincy, he’s also battling mobsters and trying to navigate how to end his codependent toxic relationship with the Prince of Darkness.
Screen Rant spoke with Chris McKay about his first feature horror movie, Renfield. McKay discussed why he wanted to cast Nicolas Cage, Nicholas Hoult, and Awkwafina, as well as how the story evolved after Robert Kirkman’s initial treatment. The director also talked about the movie’s timely themes of toxic work environments and the influences of past Dracula adaptations on the characters and style of Renfield.
Chris McKay Talks Renfield
Screen Rant: Can you tell me about your experience joining Renfield? Did you know you wanted Nicolas Cage, Nicholas Hoult, and Awkwafina in the lead roles?
Chris McKay: Yeah, when I read the script the first and only person I thought of for Renfield was Nick Hoult. He just has an incredible range, he’s charming, and he’s unafraid to do weird stuff. Warm Bodies, Fury Road, and things like that aren’t your typical choices, maybe that somebody like him would make for a movie… doing a completely nonverbal zombie performance or being a head-to-toe bald, white, nihilistic desert warrior for George Miller [laughs].
I knew that I needed some of this from somebody who could also do comedy and know their way around a joke. Somebody who wasn’t going to be afraid of eating bugs [laughs] and could do the stunt work. There’s a fair amount of fighting and stuff like that in the movie, too, so I needed somebody who was going to throw themselves into that. I had met Nick once before, and I was just seeing a lot of his movies and television, The Great and stuff like that, and always was really impressed by him and really wanted to work with him. As soon as I read [Renfield], I just immediately was like, this is the guy: He can be wild, he can be funny, he can be as charming as Hugh Grant or something like that. He’s got it all, and I thought he would make a great Renfield.
When you start looking at Dracula, there’s a pretty freakin’ short list of people that you want to see do Dracula. When you think about it, you make a lot of choices, but it’s like, ‘Who are you really hungry to see take on the role of Dracula?’ For me, Nick Cage was just so exciting. I’ve loved him since Birdy, the Alan Parker movie, and obviously Vampire’s Kiss. But also, [we want] somebody who has a love for genre. There are a lot of people who are sort of allergic to it, or maybe it’s not part of their wheelhouse or something they grew up loving. Cage grew up loving Christopher Lee and Hammer Dracula movies, loves macabre stuff, silent movie acting, and all of that kind of thing. He’s just such an interesting and fun actor to watch. I mean, he can create chemistry with everybody and has chemistry with the camera.
[Cage] doesn’t mind being theatrical or playing all the notes of the character, and I wanted Dracula to be scary, and sometimes tragic… feeling betrayal and righteous anger that Renfield wants to leave. He had to understand narcissism and kind of be a gaslighting boyfriend on some level, and Cage threw himself into all of that. It was a joy to work with him. He always brought really great ideas, line tweaks, you know, and words that sounded more Dracula. There’s a lot of stuff he brought to the table, and then [Cage] endured hours in the makeup chair, then hours on sets. And then hours at the end of the day to take the heavy makeup off – [Dracula] starts the movie a little destroyed and needs Renfield to bring him back to full power, and all that kind of thing.
Awkwafina, between The Farewell and Crazy Rich Asians, I wanted somebody who was authentic, could do comedy, and could do drama. Awkwafina is somebody who can be a little bit of a cartoon character… When you watch Nora From Queens, she makes shapes with her body and her face that would be at home in a Stephen Chow Kung Fu Hustle movie. She is somebody who, again, is just unafraid to try things and do things and bring her own comedic persona to the table. At first, when I thought about her for the role, I think she might have been busy. And then we found out that she wasn’t busy during the time we’re gonna shoot, so we got really lucky. Again, I got three really amazing leads who were perfect for these roles.
They obviously all have these great skill sets that you’re looking for, but was there anything about their performances that surprised you and made the movie better?
Chris McKay: Sometimes you start a scene and when you’re done with rehearsals, you kind of get a feeling of what everyone is going to do… and maybe you start your day in one direction or something like that, and, and then maybe through some choices, some small images, or pieces of direction… you evolve the scene into something that becomes a multiplicity of things that’s both funny and dramatic, funny and scary, funny and tragic. That happened a lot with Cage and Hoult.
There’s a scene where Dracula confronts Renfield and it starts where [Dracula] is like a jealous boyfriend on the way out and has caught Renfield in a lie. There was something very funny about the top of the scene, and then the scene turns, and Dracula’s jealousy and sense of betrayal and righteous anger come out. The way Cage and Hoult played it evolved. If you were to survey the crew about what they expected from the movie versus the way some of the scenes turned out… the fact that there were moments of drama and tragedy, and moments of feeling like this is a real relationship. Not just a comic relationship, not just played for laughs or being silly, but there was some pathos that was really surprising and moving at times. Every time the two of those guys got together, something like that came out of it.
And it was the same for Nick Hoult and Awkwafina. There were moments where it was meant to be very funny, and moments where you really get a sense that there’s a real relationship here. It’s not necessarily a romantic relationship, even though there are probably elements of that, but there’s a real friendship there and something that you earn over the course of the movie. I think it’s really sweet that preview audiences were really affected by that and they really like the two of them, because, again, they’re sort of at odds at first but they come together by the end of the movie.
Can you talk about what Robert Kirkman originally brought to Renfield’s story, and how much of the narrative has changed since its inception and when you were brought on?
Chris McKay: Robert had a really thorough take on seeing Dracula through the eyes of his long-suffering assistant and creating the idea that there’s a boss from hell: “You think your boss is bad? Well, look at this guy’s boss. Literally the boss from hell.” The main theme of the movie and a lot of the slapstick humor that happens in the movie were established by Robert’s treatment, so that was really fundamental to the pitch. Also, just his sense of love of this genre that we’re in, and being respectful of the history but also looking forward and making it modern. [Kirkman brought] some of the devil may care and almost punk rock worldbuilding. It’s a little bit in our own world and definitely has an anchor in the real world, but it’s also a little heightened.
I came in as a director. They had a script they generally liked, and I wanted to make sure that it felt like we have one foot in the real world but also could be heightened. The color palette of the movie is something that I brought to the table, and I’m trying to find a way to make a movie that sort of feels like a Basil Gogos painting. [Renfield] can be scary, it can be dramatic, it can be funny, and I think that the palette helps. I also wanted actors to feel free to riff on things, so kind of a loose energy where stuff can be combustible and people can go and try things. I wanted that kind of energy in the DNA of the movie.
For lack of a better way of doing the action scenes, a little bit of Jackie Chan. There’s plastic but also, hopefully, very kinetic action scenes where one thing flows into the next. There are little comic moments within the action beats, and that was something that was really important to me. The action just didn’t play. It’s not a John Wick movie. There have to be moments that make you laugh or surprise you in the action scenes and a kineticism to that. Chris Brewster and I looked at a lot of Jackie Chan stuff for inspiration for that because we wanted to move that fast and sometimes have moments that would just be a little funnier or put a smile on your face while you’re watching it. Not just serious like “Pop, pop, pop, pop, kill that guy.”
What was your relationship with the Dracula story like heading into Renfield? Were there any past adaptations of Dracula that inspired you for the characters, action, and set design?
Chris McKay: It obviously starts with the Tod Browning 1931 movie starring Bela Lugosi; that look and that feel. Early on in the movie, we do a quick sort of flashback to Renfield and Dracula’s relationship beginnings, and we basically shot Hoult and Cage on a green screen and comped them into the Tod Browning movie. You see Cage on the staircase with the giant spider web behind him and Renfield showing up, their very first meeting, “I don’t drink wine,” and all that kind of thing. We get a sense of their history. If it was up to me, I would have continued that through the Hammer movies and through the 70s and everything, but it starts there.
For me, I really love the Technicolor feeling and set design of the Hammer films and Christopher Lee movies. So that was something that our production designer Alec Hammond really dug into. He found a way of giving us kind of a realism of what we required for some of the locations. Their lair in this movie is an abandoned hospital that they kind of fashion into a Dracula Castle, so to speak, using elements that they found.
There’s some sort of very hospital-looking chair and they turn that into a throne, having these blood bags that they got from the blood bank, but it created this Throne of Blood that’s got this blood bag kind of fanning out behind it. So there’s some really interesting ways of putting together the castle that, to me, combined some things they must have carried over the years from one castle and one home to another, so there is this mixture of the Hammer, old world detail but also this kind of ad hoc Throne Room that they made in this abandoned hospital.
That was kind of inspired by things like the Hammer movies and the framing of the John Badham and Frank Langella movie that have crazy candles. There was one scene in the Frank Langella movie that’s just got candles everywhere, and it’s got these telephoto lenses shooting through candles and it’s just crazy. I just love it and I was like, “Fill it up with candles!” As much as the fire marshal would allow us. We did that and found a lot of inspiration, like his teeth. Dracula’s teeth are inspired by Lon Chaney, Sr.’s London After Midnight vampire. The top hat and cane that [Dracula] wears in a scene are inspired by how Bram Stoker described Dracula in the original text.
There are lots of things like that along the way and little Easter eggs for people that love that stuff, and, for me, what I would love. They’re there for the guy or girl like me who watches these movies, who sees little reference points and stuff like that, so I had a lot of fun playing around with that world. But also making our own rock and roll Dracula that you would sort of expect from somebody like Nicolas Cage.
What did you want audiences to understand about the character of Renfield that wasn’t apparent in the book or past adaptations, or that you really wanted to drive home with this character and the themes that you’re exploring?
Chris McKay: The thing that has always really fascinated me is Dwight Frye interpretation of Renfield. It’s obviously very old school acting in the movie and the way it’s shot, but there’s something kind of modern in his performance. You can see Johnny Depp or somebody taking inspiration from the way Dwight Frye throws himself into that performance. There’s something very modern about its weirdness and its eccentricity. But I guess specifically about the character of Renfield, I’m always really moved by his moral dilemma that is kind of peripheral to the Tod Browning movie. But it is sort of what sets up the ending conflict on the staircase in Dracula, and I always really liked that. They didn’t explore it in that movie – it’s like an 80-minute movie – but I always thought that was something really cool.
And when I read Ryan [Ridley’s] script, and the fact that it starts off with this guy who had been working for Dracula for 90 years and he’s confronted, maybe for the first time, with how the blood that Dracula spills is on his hands, I always really liked that we started in that place, and started with this guy who was sort of struggling with the weight of the moral decisions that he had made, and the implications of that. And so to have him then start to sort of think about, “Gosh, I’m stuck.” It’s kind of like you’re in a bad relationship, where, maybe over the course of time, you don’t realize how you’ve changed because of the relationship you’re in or the compromise that you made or something like that. Maybe a friend comes along, a book you’re reading, or something makes you look at your life in a slightly different way and realize, maybe you’re no longer making the same choices that you made.
Definitely when you talk about bad bosses, and obviously with the recent events, Me Too and things like that, and definitely heard a lot about bad bosses and how that can maybe change people and how people along the way realize. There was a really great NPR story not too long ago about people who work for a particular boss in Hollywood, and how they had changed as a result of that and maybe made some decisions or put up with s*** that they realized they didn’t need to put up with after a while.
There’s something to how you can get swept up in somebody else’s drama and somebody else who can play with your feelings, maybe your dreams and your goals, and have this carrot that they’re dangling in front of you, so you’re not paying attention to the stick and what they’re doing. And to me, there’s something really modern about doing a Dracula movie with that as the theme, and it was very much in line with the Renfield from the book and the movie. So the fact that that was something we could do was really exciting to me.
About Renfield
In this modern monster tale of Dracula’s loyal servant, Nicholas Hoult stars as Renfield, the tortured aide to history’s most narcissistic boss, Dracula (Nicolas Cage). Renfield is forced to procure his master’s prey and do his every bidding, no matter how debased. But now, after centuries of servitude, Renfield is ready to see if there’s a life outside the shadow of The Prince of Darkness. If only he can figure out how to end his codependency.
Check out our other Renfield interviews here:
- Nicolas Cage
- Nicholas Hoult
- Awkwafina
Renfield arrives in theaters on April 14, with a new trailer out on March 22 and tickets going on sale the same day.
Key Release Dates
Renfield
Release Date:2023-04-14
