Nosferatu’s casting director has admitted she was adamantly against giving Lily-Rose Depp a main role in the horror movie because she ‘couldn’t act’.
The 25-year-old French American actress has been establishing her own name as an actress in Hollywood, separately to that of her famous parents – Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp, 61, and French musician and actress Vanessa Paradis, 52.
She’s appeared in films including Voyagers, Silent Night and Netflix’s The King, opposite Timothée Chalamet and Robert Pattinson, as well as taking the lead role in The Weeknd’s much-maligned HBO TV series The Idol in 2023, which garnered the most attention of her career to that date.
But British casting director Kharmel Cochrane, who worked on Robert Eggers’ atmospheric vampire flick, has revealed Depp’s acting talents had left her far from convinced initially.
Discussing how she has been ‘an opinionated person from day one’ in her chosen profession – ‘I was the assistant who wouldn’t make tea’ – Cochrane revealed that she was not afraid to admit when she was wrong.
‘With Nosferatu, I was like, “Absolutely no way to Lily-Rose Depp”. I didn’t think she could act. I hadn’t seen anything that I thought could show she could act,’ Cochrane told the audience, including Metro, at the Sands International Film Festival of St Andrews on Saturday.
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‘And I’m not even bothered by the nepotism thing; I think that’s a whole other conversation.
‘And then she auditioned, and I had to text her and say, “I’m sorry, I was wrong” – because I was, and I’ve got no shame in saying if I’m not right,’ the industry professional added.
Depp went on to garner some of the best reviews of her career so far in Nosferatu, a remake of the classic 1922 silent film, where she played Ellen Hutter, a young woman tortured by a psychic connection to the evil, demonic and Dracula-esque vampire, Count Orlok (an unrecognisable Bill Skarsgård).
As well as inspiring Oscar talk, the actress also impressed fans with her intense physical acting during scenes where she was writhing and thrashing around on her bed, possessed by Orlok.
Cochrane also spoke about other ‘weird conversations’ she’s had behind the scenes when casting projects, which include Saltburn, Warfare and A Quiet Place: Day One, as well as giving Anya Taylor-Joy her breakthrough role in 2015’s The Witch – also directed by Nosferatu’s Robert Eggers, a key collaborator for the casting director.
‘Morfydd Clark, when we cast her in Saint Maud, somebody who shall not be named said, basically, on my head be it. And I was like, “Okay, yeah, Fine”. And she was great!’
Discussing the moment she decided casting was the career for her, Cochrane revealed that she had championed another young British acting talent in the past.
‘There was a role for an Asian boy, and I’d been watching Skins. So I said, “Oh, there’s this guy, Dev Patel”.
‘And with commercials, you didn’t really get in touch with film actors, it’s such a separate thing. And they auditioned Dev and another actor, and they gave it to the other actor – big mistake – and suddenly I was like, “Oh, I had an opinion and someone listened to it”.
‘Then I kind of connected the dots and was like, so this is going to be how it works.’
Upcoming projects that Cochrane has cast include Emerald Fennell’s much-discussed adaptation of Wuthering Heights, as well as Lena Dunham’s next project, Good Sex starring Natalie Portman, and Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut The Chronology of Water, which is set to premiere at Cannes Film Festival next month.
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