Willem Dafoe has opened up about his role in Tim Burton’s upcoming Beetlejuice sequel in a new interview.
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Speaking to Variety from this year’s edition of the Marrakech Film Festival, the veteran actor discussed various topics relating to his latest projects, including his involvement in Beetlejuice 2. Dafoe straightforwardly explained his role, stating: “I play a police officer in the afterlife, so I’m a dead person. And in life I was a B-movie action star, but I had an accident and that’s what sent me to the other side. But because of my skills, I became a detective character in the afterlife.”
“So that’s my job,” he added. “But it’s coloured by the fact of who I was [when I was alive]: a B movie action star.”
The sequel, scheduled for release in September 2024 – almost 40 years after its 1988 predecessor – will once again be helmed by Tim Burton. While he has remained tight-lipped on the movie’s plot, Michael Keaton has been confirmed to return as the titular character, alongside original castmates Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara. Other actors confirmed for the film, in addition to Dafoe, include Justin Theroux and Jenna Ortega.
In September, Burton stated that Beetlejuice 2 was “99 per cent done” before the SAG-AFTRA strike put production on hold, adding that the film would have wrapped in two days if not for the strike.
“Literally, it was a day and a half,” Burton said. “I feel grateful we got what we got… We know what we have to do. It is 99 percent done.”
Elsewhere in Dafoe’s Variety interview, he commented on his involvement in Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest Emma Stone-starring fantasy film, Poor Things. He expressed how author Alasdair Gray, whose novel of the same name served as the basis for the film, served as inspiration for his performance as surgeon, Dr. Godwin Baxter.
“I don’t know this for a fact, but I think there’s a lot of Alasdair Gray in that character,” he said. “And he’s quite an amusing guy. He’s eccentric, he’s intellectual, he’s playful. He’s a thinker; a free thinker. So I think that I was working from watching videos of him, partly.”
In March, Dafoe was reported to have made Emma Stone slap him 20 times in a scene during the production of an upcoming film from Lanthimos, And. Lanthimos expressed his praise for Dafoe, stating: “That’s what you want from actors. To want to be part of it in any way.”
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