Guillermo del Toro, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska: "Crimson Peak"

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[APPLAUSE]
DANA HAN-KLEIN: Thank you so much for joining us.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Thank you.
So I think we're gonna see a little bit of the clip, right?
DANA HAN-KLEIN: I think we are, yeah.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Or let's see a trailer,
while I adjust my knees.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Ghosts are real.
That much, I know.
I've seen them all my life.
-Beware of Crimson Peak.
-Would you be mine?
Edith, this is my assistant.
-I don't think she's the right choice.
-You have to trust me.
-Thomas, your bride is frozen.
-I'll run you a hot bath.
-There are parts of the house that are unsafe.
-What was that?
-A house as old as this one, becomes in time a living thing.
-Never go below this level.
-It starts holding onto things.
-Has anyone died in this house?
Specific deaths, violent deaths.
-In your best interests, proceed with caution.
-Keeping them alive when they shouldn't be.
-If you're here with me, give me a signal.
-She has everything.
-Do we have to do this?
Must we?
-Yes.
You have no idea what they do.
-What do you want?
-I have to leave.
-You have nowhere else to go.
This is your home now.
[END PLAYBACK]
[APPLAUSE]
DANA HAN-KLEIN: We are also feel lucky enough
to be joined by the cast.
So please also welcome Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston,
and Mia Wasikowska.
[APPLAUSE]
DANA HAN-KLEIN: Thank you all so much for being here.
Welcome to Google.
So this movie was terrifying.
And I spent most of it just kind of like slowly sinking,
and then jumping up every once in a while.
So congratulations.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Thank you.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: You know, it's this kind
of horrific "Jane Eyre" meets "Flowers In the Attic,"
meets "The Shining," is what I felt watching it--
and that and terror.
Can you talk about some of the influences from it?
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Well, in the 18th century, at the end of it,
in a reaction towards the Age of Reason,
there was a counter movement of romanticism.
And one of the things that was created back then
was Gothic romance.
And now Gothic romance, they used
to call it a policing terror, you know,
in the Victorian drawing rooms.
And it was a very titillating mix of violence, sexuality--
and it was the first time that in literature somebody
created a romantic sensation about the past.
Gothic romance is about the past,
and about the marriage of love and death.
So it's sort of the proto-emos of the world,
where [INAUDIBLE].
And then in Victorian era, it became an incredibly popular.
It affected Jane Austen.
It affected Charles Dickens, The Brontes-- I mean,
you can feel the repercussions of it
on anything from "The Secret Garden," to "Wuthering Heights"
to "Great Expectations," and to our days.
I think that in many ways, that genre is still
alive very, very different now.
A lot of people, when you say Gothic romance,
they imagine Fabio in the cover of a paperback
novel in an airport, carrying a girl full of very
ornamental dresses, you know?
But ultimately that's part of the spirit.
But it's a genre that exists somewhere within fairy tale
and horror, and romance.
You're not going to get pure horror,
and you're not going to get "You've Got Mail" or "Sleepless
in Seattle."
You're going to get a very strange mixture,
but beautiful, I think.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: So what was it exactly that drew you to this,
you know, beautiful-- it seems to fit your kind of film
making style.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: I've been a freak for it as a kid.
I read-- the first movie I saw at age four
was "Wuthering Heights."
And I don't know if that had anything
to do with-- but that was the first movie.
And I've said it in interviews more than a decade
and a half ago.
So I'm not especially changing it for "Crimson Peak."
My mother took me to the movie, and I was terrified
and I was mesmerized.
It was the first time I saw a movie on the big screen.
And I started reading the typical things, "Jane Eyre,"
"Wuthering Heights" and so forth.
And little by little I graduated.
I have a big collection of Gothic romance.
Ann Radcliffe, which you've read.
And Radcliffe was the preeminent Gothic romance writer.
And finally there's a novel that I recommend for anyone curious.
It's called "Uncle Silas," by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.
And it has a lot of the crimson spirit there.
But I wanted to make a movie that
was beautiful and sort of really creepy and dark at the same.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: One thing I loved
about this movie is that you have
two very powerful female characters.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Yeah.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: And Gothic romance
doesn't always-- sometimes it's oh, she's a girl,
and then meets a guy.
And there's something going on.
But this is too very strong willed women.
So ladies, could you talk about kind
of your involvement in the film, and what
it was like to step into these characters?
MIA WASIKOWSKA: It was great.
The characters kind of evolved as we went along.
And Guillermo was super collaborative with us.
And we had a lot of opportunities
to discuss with him.
And then he really kind of helped
us tailor the characters to ourselves in a way,
or make choices that made it easier for us,
or more truthful for us.
And that's really rare in a director,
and really always so appreciated.
So it was great.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: I was really excited when I got the script.
Because I'm not used to being in movies where actresses
get to talk to each other.
And I'm always looking for that.
I did "The Help," and that was probably
the best experience of my life, working with those women.
And so I was very excited about this.
And then also Guillermo had talked to me
about Lucille and Edith being kind of two types of love.
And there was something about Lucille
that I just found so heartbreaking and devastating.
And I just wanted to explore it.
It was a minefield of where you could go psychologically,
and how deep you could go into a character-- which for an actor,
that's what you want to do.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: It was wonderful sort of seeing,
I feel like your character kind of represented
this sort of innocence and progression,
and wanting to move forward with love.
And then your character was so steeped in, like--
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: The past.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: --tradition and the past,
and like they both were kind of fighting for your character,
Tom, who was sort of stuck in the middle between these two--
TOM HIDDLESTON: Yeah.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: --important women in his life.
And so you guys kind of have a very interesting dynamic
that progresses over the film.
What to you was kind of like the point
where you were like I am solid in this character.
This is her decision to stake her claim in Tom's character?
JESSICA CHASTAIN: I'm constantly-- it's funny.
I see the movie now too, and this
is-- I was talking to someone in Toronto,
and they had just seen the film.
And I was like, isn't Thomas Sharpe so selfish?
I was like, because everything Lucille does,
she does for history and the family.
Every decision she makes is for her brother.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Yeah.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: And she even tries
to protect Edith in the beginning of the movie,
by saying she's too young and you know--
TOM HIDDLESTON: Yeah, maybe.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: The very beginning.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Lucille tries to protect Edith.
That is a statement that is open to interpretation.
Yeah.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: That's true though, the--
TOM HIDDLESTON: I know what you mean though.
Sorry.
I'm just teasing.
There is a-- sorry, you go, Guillermo.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: No, no--
TOM HIDDLESTON: You have more interesting things to say.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: You have a better accent.
My accent is not that charming.
TOM HIDDLESTON: I find it personally very charming.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Thank you.
TOM HIDDLESTON: What did I interrupt?
I'm sorry.
Oh yeah, I suppose-- yeah, but I think
in terms of what Jessica reads as Thomas's selfishness is
actually a sort of struggle for freedom and free will.
And the film dramatizes a tension
between the past and the future.
It's Thomas Sharpe, my character,
feels like he's bound up by the past,
and literally haunted by the secrets of the past--
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: And in love with the future, literally.
TOM HIDDLESTON: And yeah, and in love with the future,
in love with Edith, eventually.
And that I think is in so many ways, that's
what Crimson Peak dramatizes, is that every-- each, all three
of us in our characters, have a struggle to be free.
We're all fighting for something different.
And it's about how the secrets of the past
can catch up with you if you don't confront them.
And somehow the three characters become self-aware
over the course of the story.
There is a kind of a battle for the truth.
And once the truth is out in the open air,
some kind of resolution can be found.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: But that was what
Henry James, the fine Gothic romance, he said is about--
and it was so perfect.
He said it's about-- the ghosts represent the past,
and is the struggle to move into the future.
And it really, it's so well put, so eloquent.
And the idea for me in this movie,
is normally even when-- they are mostly directed by men,
and they are mostly oriented towards some ideas
of the past about the feminine.
That's why I love the Brontes.
You know, the Brontes are so progressive for their time.
And they are so full of real sort of,
almost like a hall of mirrors of neurosis and real complexity.
And I wanted very much to not make it
about who saves the heroine.
I'm not spoiling it-- you guys saw it, right?
So I'm not spoiling anything.
Big spoilers if anyone is here by mistake
or wants the canapes.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: No.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: But I wanted her to save herself.
And I wanted her, in fact to be the one that
saves the hero, the guy that was going to save her.
And I tried to make to different degrees, the male figures quite
useless in a way.
Thomas is almost a teenager, emotionally,
in that he has been loved and bullied, and manipulated--
no pun intended-- into being completely dependent.
And Lucille is the sister and the mother, and the lover,
and is everything.
And he kind of goes along.
And the father is dominant, but he
is incapable of having a really mature conversation
with the daughter.
And Edith becomes a really strong woman.
I remember when we were shooting,
we would have weeks and weeks of Edith being scared.
And then I would need to promise Mia,
tomorrow you won't be scared.
Tomorrow you'll be strong.
Oh, thank you.
But you had to map it.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: Yeah, I think one of my favorite lines
was about wanting to be Marry Shelly, not Jane Austen.
[INAUDIBLE]
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: You know, the funny thing
is she gets her wish.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: Yep.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: She's the widow.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: She predicted that one.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Yeah.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: But no.
It's this wonderful sense that she's in this relationship
because she wants to be, not because that's
what society expects of her.
And I thought the scenes with your father were great.
Because it was like, oh yeah, that's-- she doesn't care.
She's very modern in that sense, in that whatever.
And that she wants to pursue her own career,
and isn't going to be bothered by kind
of what other people think.
What was it like working with your father character?
Because it seemed like such a short-lived important part
of it?
MIA WASIKOWSKA: Oh, Jim was wonderful to work with.
And I think we actually shot all those scenes at the very end.
So we sort of started with all the stuff
in the house, and all the horror.
And we progressively got more and more of a nightmare.
And then we got to the end.
And we had the last three weeks were around like outside
in Toronto, and felt like a different film
to have some of those really lovely scenes with Jim--
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Yeah.
MIA WASIKOWSKA: --and go actually back to the beginning,
after filming the end.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: Let's talk about ghosts.
Because they are awesome.
So the ghosts in this movie, as you were saying,
they do represent the past in a sense.
But there's also a very physical metaphysical representation
of them.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Yep, yep, yeah.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: Can you talk about where
you decided to use them visually,
as opposed to this kind of the specter of them?
And I don't know how these people lived in this house.
It's terrifying.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: The thing is there are two things that
are counterpoint in "Crimson."
One of them is obviously in the normal movie that
is Gothic and horror, and all that,
you want-- the whole audience is rooting for the villains
to be killed.
When they get killed, you will cheer
and that's a huge release.
And I wanted to go counter.
And if we did our job right, for you to actually
feel progressively more ambivalent about the villains,
and go Jesus, they do have a story.
They do have a [INAUDIBLE].
And the same with the ghosts.
The problem is the easiest way to scare
someone is to give the ghosts a Judeo-Christian
or a moral value.
Now you can say it's demonic.
And it's something people go, ooh, I understand.
Each construct is own.
But it's easy to make it scary because they're demonic.
Or you say in this house there lived a woman that
murdered her five children and stabbed her husband 20 times
in the eye.
Oh my god.
Already there's a moral value.
But the tricky line that I've decided to in "Crimson"
is the ghost needed to be revealed
to be wanting to help Edith.
So I couldn't make them evil.
I still needed to make them creepy,
but I couldn't take full advantage of the other stuff.
And what we did is we said, well, they're
all trying to warn her.
But conveniently, the first ghost has no tongue.
The second ghost has a broken neck.
And finally the mother that can talk.
And so we did it progressively.
And we wanted very much-- I decided
to make them physical for the actors to have them on the set.
I didn't want them to be acting against a tennis
ball with an X. Because it helps much more to have it there.
It's just a decision.
I believe in makeup effects.
I believe in the craftsmanship of that.
And the whole movie, the proposal of the movie
was for it to feel like a handmade film.
From the wardrobe, to the sets, to the makeup,
I wanted it to be, for lack of a better
analogy, an installation.
A world that you can fall into, you know.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: I think the best sort of manifestation of that
is the house itself--
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Yes.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: --which was horrifying and beautiful
at the same time, where it felt very real.
And it was I'm sure for you guys,
it was great actually being in a tactile scenario.
And not being like please talk to this green wall of books.
But for me, the house actually also
sort of became a character in this sort of symbolic form
of your siblings' past, and what they're holding onto,
and it's just in this state of decay.
What was it like shooting there?
JESSICA CHASTAIN: What was-- I mean, even if you look at this,
I haven't seen these costumes in a long time.
They're very painful to wear.
I'm like, my shoulders go up as soon as I see it.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: I never tried them.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: But what's incredible
about it is the way Guillermo and the team designed
is, is that Thomas and Lucille are of the house.
And so much so that the colors kind of blend into each other.
And there was even a hallway with the spikes around it
look like teeth.
And those are on my dress.
So there's all these subtle details.
And the first time I went to the house
and they were building it, I saw it in many stages.
It actually informed the character so much.
She is really physically part of her past.
It's painful for her to leave.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: If you see it again--
and I'm sorry to interrupt the flow with continuing there--
but if you see it again, some architectural details
are in the lace.
So I wanted Lucille to be the house, very much
to be linked in.
If you see it again, when she gets angry, the house breathes.
Even when she's off camera in the beginning,
she's looking through the key hole, and the house breathes.
Because he's too near to her.
And she's watching.
And every time that she's going to get this flare,
the house breathes.
And it's because like in "The House of Usher,"
another magical tale of incest, "The Fall
of the House of Usher," Edgar Allen Poe's,
the house represents the decay of the characters.
It's sort of an entity that contains them all.
Sorry to interrupt.
Keep going that way.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Well, honestly the set on "Crimson Peak"
was the most beautiful set I've ever seen.
The most fully realized, architecturally
sound set I've ever worked on.
It was really extraordinary.
It was like-- because often as actors,
if it's a smaller film, set in the contemporary world,
they use real locations.
If you're shooting in a restaurant,
you could find the restaurant and shoot there.
But it all feels natural.
Or if you're in a very-- if you're
in another realm, another universe,
that necessarily is so much post-production computer
graphics.
But this was physically there.
And it was like stepping through a magic portal
into another world.
It was truly an immersive experience.
And I think that the time we all spent on the set
was about six weeks.
MIA WASIKOWSKA: Hm.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Six weeks of shooting at the beginning,
and using different parts of the house.
You can walk up the stairs.
Everything you see, it was real.
And for us I think, not having to supply
the detail with our imaginations,
and just having to live and breathe and behave, and respond
to each other in the house, was a really rare privilege
as an actor.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: It was very claustrophobic.
Six weeks in that house was pretty tough.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: I can imagine.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Yeah.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Mia?
MIA WASIKOWSKA: Yep.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: I mean, I think the house
is such an important symbol.
And especially for your two characters,
who are in a very interesting kind of power dynamic.
They are siblings, but it's a time--
it's a very patriarchal time.
And yet Lucille wears the not-pants,
but pants like-- she wears the petticoats,
I guess in the relationship.
But to me, it was about very much kind
of breaking out of tradition, and breaking away with family,
which is doubly hard to do.
And then some extra complications
that come along with their relationship.
What was kind of that development
like for those characters?
Because it's your character kind of came into his own,
with a certain set of consequences out of that--
TOM HIDDLESTON: Sure.
Well done for not spoiling anything.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: I'm trying not to.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: Oh right.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Yeah.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: We can't spoil anything?
TOM HIDDLESTON: No, but--
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: They all saw it.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: OK.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Yeah, I mean, one
of the things-- it was a wonderful weekend, where
before we started, about two weeks before we started,
I was doing a play in London and Jessica
and Guillermo came to see me-- to see me
in it, which was lovely.
And then the next day, we spent the whole day together talking
about this relationship.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: And we have been friends before too,
so it was a very comfortable place to start from working.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Yeah.
And it really was about jumping straight
into the complex intimacy between them.
They have been codependent from a very, very young age, growing
up without parents, from pre-teenage years, essentially.
And so there's a degree of intimacy,
which is actually very precious and very delicate.
And the difficulty comes when of course,
the individual desires and characteristics
start to separate.
And so I think actually kind of calibrating that and plotting
that out was fascinating.
I personally found it fascinating to really
kind of find the points of difference
and the points of similarity, which I felt can be very true.
People are different from each other.
And there's something very interesting
in that this is 1901.
And the period setting is an age where--
and this is what Edith is pushing against rightly--
is a woman's power is expressed through the man closest to her.
And I think it's amazing that that's
what Guillermo has decided to put at the center of his film,
that it's about-- it really is about the female strength.
But Lucille-- and maybe you could speak to this--
but Lucille is having, is forced into a situation where
her status is expressed through Thomas.
But Thomas has his own ideas and his own ambitions,
and his own heart, quite simply.
It is the very individual heartbeat he has,
which separates them in the end.
What do you think?
JESSICA CHASTAIN: Well, speaking along
the lines of what you're talking about,
with the patriotic article society,
these are two people that have made every decision together.
You know-- and then it's really interesting,
when the movie begins, you actually without knowing it
when you're watching the film, you witness the cracks in that.
Because for the first time I think in their lives,
he starts to make decisions without her.
So you see that from the very beginning of the film.
And then when we go back to the house,
that really is where Lucille starts
to gain her power again-- so much so that even
with the costumes and the sets.
Lucille, the longer she's in the house, the bigger she gets--
even with her clothing--
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: That happened to me too.
Catering.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: Dam you craft services.
[LAUGHTER]
JESSICA CHASTAIN: But also with Mia, she would get smaller.
The furniture around her would get larger.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: We made the furniture in several sizes.
But also Lucille has this condescending point of view
about what it is to be a female in the world.
I mean, she is a character with many scars.
And I think that I make a point that I find it very funny,
but it is very cruel.
When you see the portrait of a mother,
you have no doubt of their upbringing.
You go, ah-- and then they talk about their father breaking
her mother's leg.
I mean, what a family.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Yeah.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: Yeah.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: But she makes a point to Edith,
that if you're pretty, you are delicate.
And I think that's the wrong information.
And I think that that's why we used
the motif of the mouths and the butterflies,
because Lucille think she's a moth.
And she's all powerful and dark.
And that Edith is-- because by virtue
of being of [INAUDIBLE] of this position or American,
or young and pretty, she must be a little butterfly,
that she's going to be able to pin to her wall.
And the whole point for me was to show
that butterflies can be brutal.
You know?
DANA HAN-KLEIN: Yeah.
I think even visually, you did such a lovely job of having--
you know, you stood out in the house
in these wonderful yellow colors,
which are right behind us.
I saw them assemble one of those-- kudos to you
for wearing that, because that thing looked complicated.
But it was very interesting.
Did you feel kind of being dressed that way
and being in this kind of-- did that help you kind of step
into that part of it?
MIA WASIKOWSKA: Yeah, they are definitely super uncomfortable,
you know, and horrible.
And I've swore after my first period film,
I'd never do another one.
That hasn't happened.
But they're great.
They do give you like a certain kind of there's only really one
option in how to carry yourself and be--
so there's a certain amount you draw from them.
And they're really beautiful.
And Kate, who designed them, is just a genius.
So I have like a love/hate relationship with them,
for sure.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: You're a very strong butterfly in them.
MIA WASIKOWSKA: Thank you.
I had various different wings, different sizes.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: Large wings-- I'm going to bring up a point,
just because I felt like this was a parent's cautionary tale.
Because there was a line in the beginning,
that was your father's character.
And he just goes, like I don't like him, and I don't know why.
And I just wrote, I scribbled down and was like,
listen to Dad.
Just listen to Dad.
And then your mother's kind of warning you against stuff.
And it was very interesting kind of having
these specters of parental history
speak out against this male character,
and just go nope-- like nope, bad idea, bad idea.
And I wasn't sure if that was kind
of guiding away from the historical role
of a Gothic romance male, or--
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: No.
The idea for me is-- what is interesting
for me is that there is-- Thomas arrives to that meeting,
I think with every intention to woo the American ambassadors,
her father in particular.
And there's a very subtle moment where
the father notices that she's looking at him from the door.
And he doesn't like that.
It's this very patriarchal thing from the 19th and 20th century,
where daughters basically if they didn't marry,
they took care of the father, you know?
And there is that sort of jealousy.
He doesn't like him because of that.
But also the beauty for Thomas is
that, I think he likes Edith.
But little by little, he falls in love with her.
In the beginning, actually I think
he invites her to the waltz to offend the father
or to go against that that he feels.
But I think that it's those little things that interest me.
I think the father is a character I understand.
But I think that it's a character that I
sympathize with in many ways.
But he should have just straight out-- like in every melodrama,
there are things that some people don't say.
He is your father, you're her brother, whatever.
They keep it for the whole movie.
And the father should have told her straight away,
this is why I don't like him.
I found out this.
But he didn't trust her to be that strong.
That's what is interesting.
I think parents in the movie are the root of all disgraces.
And the other thing I wanted to do, is most of these movies end
up with the dark and brooding gentleman
actually being innocent.
And then he can become [INAUDIBLE] and married.
And this, I wanted them to love each other
in spite of what he had done.
And for horror to start with the marriage, not end.
Because normally these movies end, everybody's happy,
throwing rice and-- I say no, no, that's
when things start actually.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Yeah.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: This is life after that.
Say what you will whether that that implies about marriage.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Also can I just--
to a point I may embarrass Guillermo now-- but the novel--
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: You're not talking about my tennis shoes
now?
TOM HIDDLESTON: They're very beautiful shoes.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Male [INAUDIBLE] model.
TOM HIDDLESTON: I'm not going to talk
about Guillermo's footwear.
When I came onto the film, he shared
a number of Gothic romance novels with me,
chief of mine which was as he's already mentioned,
"The Mysteries of Udolpho," by Ann Radcliffe, which is I
think almost the first time a writer had written
a story about the supernatural, explained
in terms of past trauma.
But there was in a way, she was one
of the primary inventors of the genre, of Gothic romance.
A young innocent heroine, a tall, dark stranger
to whom she is drawn by some sort of sexuality and charisma,
only to be surprised and terrified by certain secrets.
And that seems to be like what Gothic romance is all about.
So the rebellion against parents is
a way of taking possession of your own sexuality,
I think-- saying I'm going to chase this.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Mm hm.
TOM HIDDLESTON: But then the twin aspect of Gothic romance
is the prospect of death, is that sometimes your sexuality
can put you in a dangerous situation,
and after which you will never be the same.
And I think that's what Guillermo
so beautifully kind of brings together in this film,
is while doffing his hat to traditional Gothic romance,
he inverts it and confounds people's expectations.
I personally think it's like--
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: It's also important to show the heroine
fucking and surviving.
Don't you think?
JESSICA CHASTAIN: Yes.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: I think that Gothic romance and fairy
tales are two types, anarchic or repressive.
A lot of the fairy tales are be careful and obey your parents.
And horror functions in many ways the same way.
And it requires chastity from the main character,
or sexuality gets punished.
And when we were working, we said
we have to make it a point that she is not pure,
nor she is-- she has to be in charge of the sex scene.
She has to be willing, and it has
to be a given that it is not a negative.
I think the movies-- and when you
against so many things against the grain,
there's a different feeling to the movie--
sometimes less commercially able to entrap you.
But I think it's far more satisfying in the long run.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: I mean, it felt much more sort of realistic.
It's like we can't-- the human race has continued
on, and there's one way it did that.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Well, pharmacists
would sell-- if it was real, pharmacists
would sell condoms and a gun.
Just in case.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: Oh my goodness.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: But no, it was definitely an interesting kind
of embrace of just like, being like look,
they'd-- and I like that your character initiates it,
you know.
She's very embracing of it.
She knows that this is something logical that
comes as the next step in their relationship.
And when Thomas is kind of reticent, she's like nope,
I'm going to find a way to make this happen.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: I'm gonna make you some tea.
No, not tonight.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: Yeah, pass.
There's a kind of thing that does go hand in hand
with the amount of passion and stuff that goes into this film.
And that's the violence that comes out of it.
And it felt very kind of the other side of that coin,
where it's like these are very passionate caring characters,
who maybe don't know how to communicate.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: And she was raised
by these horrible parents.
And the way they communicated was through that.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: That was life.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: I mean, you understand
that she has scars in her face.
There was a scene where she used to have her back exposed,
and she has huge scars in her back.
She took canings for her brother.
She says that.
And you know, she sort of-- I think
all of the mistakes that exist in the world
initiate in childhood.
If we took care of children for the first 10, 12
years of their life, the world would be perfect.
But it's because that is what destroys them as kids.
And they carry it the rest of their life.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: We're going to open it up
to audience questions in a moment,
if anyone wants to lineup.
One question I'm really afraid to ask is for Guillermo,
but what's something that scares--
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: My weight?
DANA HAN-KLEIN: No, my god, no.
I was gonna say, I'm afraid to ask,
what's something that scares you?
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: You know, people.
I mean, I'm afraid of politicians.
I'm afraid of super structures.
I mean, I think that we live in a world
where I think that-- another thing that scares me-- and this
is why I made the movie-- is because I thoroughly believe
in love, and I think that love has become almost something
to be afraid of.
I mean, we are almost in the equivalent of modern times
to Victorian times.
Victorian times was afraid of sexuality.
And they used these tales to talk
about sexuality in veiled way.
And I think that we are in a world where
I feel we become very reticent to talk about emotional love.
That scares me a lot.
And I think because we don't want to be vulnerable.
We want the automatic pull is to distant and aloof.
And you instantly are smarter if you're a skeptic.
And I think if you're a believer, you instantly
sound stupider.
And this thing scares me quite a bit.
And you can see it like when people
think about why those "Twlight" is so successful.
Strangely enough, for whatever Gothic elements "Twilight" has,
you realize that now we're using it to articulate love.
That's what-- they couldn't talk about sex in the Victorian era.
And now the only way that a fantasy about a perfect love
can be articulated is Gothic.
There's this strange-- the guy has to be a vegetarian vampire.
And it speaks of the mores over time.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: It feels very kind of cyclical,
where we're kind of reverting back in this.
All right, well--
AUDIENCE: Hi.
When we were watching the trail earlier,
I had two thoughts go through my mind.
And the first was I wonder how many times you
have seen that trailer, as you were standing in the back.
But the second question was, when I saw the trailer,
I thought there was gonna be a lot more about ghosts.
And I was curious how you decided,
what's the process of making that trailer?
How do you decide what you include, and what you cut?
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Well, actually I
got to speak this way, because they put the little thing here.
It's very strange.
But actually the filmmaker is involved somewhat
in the marketing, but not fully.
You have to watch with faith and horror
when they market your movie.
And it's a mixture depending on how good the marketing
department is.
They capture the essence of the movie somehow.
Now Gothic romances are particularly cagey.
Because it's not a horror-- if you
go expecting a full-blown horror movie,
you are not going to get it.
And if you go expecting a full-blown romance,
you're not going to get it.
So I actually think "Crimson" is hard to communicate
the full spectrum of the movie.
I think it's more a drama with ghosts in it, which is what
Edith says about her story.
But how do we communicate that in a sort
of purely commercial way?
So I don't know.
I love the trailers that they've been doing.
I think they represent one side of the movie.
And inevitably there will be a side of the movie
that people have not seen, so they'll
discover in the theater.
But that's why we do these things.
That why if you like it, help us to send the word out.
Tell your friends, you youngsters.
And tell those things, you know?
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: I seen it a shit load of times.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: That's an actual number count.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Yeah, a shit load.
AUDIENCE: Hey, this is a question for Tom.
I'm a huge fan of everyone, but especially Tom.
[LAUGHTER]
And my question was-- it's actually really funny,
because I like you a lot as an actor.
But I found your character the most despicable
of the characters in the movie.
TOM HIDDLESTON: OK.
AUDIENCE: And so I found this inner conflict,
which is really-- because I feel like Lucille
was so obviously messed up towards the end,
you could tell.
But your character, you can sense a bit of good in him.
But that almost made his actions worse.
So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.
And then maybe how you drew that out in your portrayal?
TOM HIDDLESTON: OK.
Well, yeah.
I think I found-- the reason I wanted
to play Thomas was when I first read it,
I could see a character embroiled
in some very dark action and material,
so guilty and so ashamed, and really struggling
to free himself.
Struggling to somehow right the ship back onto an even keel.
Someone who was actually impelled by-- who
understood, who was beginning to understand his own shame.
There was so much shame in the character.
And someone who was actually innately gifted.
I think the engineering, his engineering gift,
his mechanical sort of inspiration and capacity,
is a very genuine talent.
And someone, if he had been a healthier kind of man,
would have maybe gone on to be a great industrialist,
a great engineer.
And I think, I truly think that Edith
is a light which shines on him.
And it takes him completely by surprise.
And she shows him how to be good.
And then for the rest of the story,
he is struggling to weigh his responsibility for the past,
and his desire for freedom.
His sense of responsibility to Lucille, his love for her,
which is unhealthy in lots of ways, but he still loves it.
And it comes from damage.
And one of the defining quotes that was a headline for us,
was damaged people are dangerous because they
know how to survive.
And in spite of what you found despicable,
which is completely within your rights to feel--
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: He's crying in the inside.
AUDIENCE: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
TOM HIDDLESTON: It was-- no, no, it's OK.
Because actually the reason I wanted to play it,
was it was someone moving from a place of shame,
to try to be a better man.
And I do think that there is a redemption, that he
achieves a kind of redemption.
Without spoiling anything, it is clearly not an easy one.
And there is a catharsis that he finally
is able to see concede responsibility, and be
accountable for what he has done.
But he makes a couple of very, very good choices
towards the end.
And so in a way, I will defend him to the death.
But then so would these fine ladies by my side.
So part of the job of an actor is
to fill the shoes of somebody else
from a place of compassion.
So I can only feel and understand his pain.
And if I were to have to defend him,
I would say, well, he is who he is because
of what happened to him.
And Mr. Guillermo said, those choices
were taken away from him when he was very young.
So it actually has this beautiful arc,
from shame to freedom.
AUDIENCE: All right, thank you.
And I am still a fan.
AUDIENCE: Thank you, director and the cast,
for giving me a very terrifying and a violent movie yesterday.
I was kind of shaking four or five times
in my seat, when I saw some of the hands creeping,
and the thing on the head.
The house was pretty scary.
So my question was that initially when
the-- even in the character of Mia's character, where
she tries to get her story about ghosts, get through,
and she's a-- the reaction she gets, is like hey,
why don't you-- nobody wants to really see ghosts.
Do they really like it?
Why don't you do a love story?
And she said no, it's just a story with ghosts in there.
It's not a ghost story, right?
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Yeah, yeah.
AUDIENCE: So in real life, like I rarely get
to see that many ghost stories.
If you look at movies, most of them are like the characters.
Like they try to say it's more like love stories
and feel-good movies.
This one came up, so I jumped into the chance to get in.
The last one I think I saw was "Evil Dead"
in the '80s or '90s.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: So how do you as--
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Man, I've got
to give you a watching list.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, some came, but then the ghosts
were more like shadows.
And they didn't make sense.
I was mostly laughing along the way.
But this one was different.
I didn't laugh at all.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: But what you're saying,
actually that used to happen.
Like the Brontes-- all the Bronte sisters, all of them
had to publish under a pseudonym, a male pseudonym.
They kept their initials, CB, AB and so forth.
But they had to publish under a male pseudonym.
And purposely in many ways, even change their narrative
a little, so it was less evident that they were female.
And to this day, I mean, I called her Edith
for Edith Wharton, who was in my opinion
as good with ghostly tales as Henry James.
But people tend to disqualify her
as a pale imitator of Henry James.
Those were things based in some facts.
And what I like is that, if you watch carefully
at the end in the credits, she wrote the novel
about "Crimson Peak."
And her first experience is based
on a ghost that appeared to my mother when she was a kid.
Her grandmother sat on her bed the night
she died, and touched her on the shoulder.
And she heard the springs in the bed creaking.
And she used to tell me these things
irresponsibly, when I was a child.
There they are.
AUDIENCE: Is that the-- how do you
like judge between whether to make
this kind of a movie, which are very rare in general,
compared to versus like hey, let's make a love story.
As like actors, how do to jump in to do it,
versus as the director, how do you
like try to like weigh between the movies?
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: I only do weird shit, basically.
And they can answer--
[APPLAUSE]
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: They can answer themselves.
JESSICA CHASTAIN: This is the second time
I've worked with Guillermo.
I did "Mama" with him, that he produced.
And I like doing his weird movies so much.
The character of Lucille, you know-- sometimes actresses,
actors, everyone gets typecast.
And I'd never played a character like that.
And I just loved her.
So that's-- for me, it was a great opportunity to play
the roll.
TOM HIDDLESTON: I'm always drawn to a complex material, I think.
I enjoy characters who have a very-- deep souls in a way.
They're complex people.
Because I think most people are actually very complex.
And so if I read a piece of writing like this was,
the sensitivity and the delicacy with which
the human characters were written
was incredibly inspiring.
I tend to think the types of characters,
some of the types of characters that you see in movies, they--
I'm sure we could all think of things that we just go,
that was a bit thinly drawn.
But these characters were so multi-dimensional,
they seem so rich, so real in a way.
And I'm a big fan of this guy.
So that's why I did it.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Thank you.
Me too, of you, I mean.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Thanks, dude.
[LAUGHTER]
MIA WASIKOWSKA: I just-- like same,
I wanted to work with Guillermo.
I think he's brilliant, and I loved his films.
And I really liked the character.
And I wanted to see what would happen with it,
and where it would go.
And yeah, it was a great experience, yeah.
DANA HAN-KLEIN: Well, thank you all so much
for joining us today.
It was such a pleasure to have you.
And everyone go enjoy "Crimson Peak."
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Thank you, guys.
TOM HIDDLESTON: Thank you, guys.
[APPLAUSE]