Hollywood's new Dracula is played by horror's greatest secret weapon

Javier Botet has frightened literally millions of people by portraying monsters in movies like 2013's Mama, 2015's Crimson Peak, 2016's The Conjuring 2, 2017's Alien: Covenant, 2018's Slender Man, and the same year's Insidious: The Last Key. But it was the Spanish actor's turn to be unnerved ahead of playing the iconic role of Dracula in the Malta-shot horror film The Last Voyage of the Demeter.

"In the beginning I was a bit scared," Botet, 46, tells EW in an interview, which took place before the start of the SAG-AFTRA strike. "I was sure it would be wet in the boat, a lot of hours in the night. So, I thought we were going to be cold, but in Malta, in the summer, the weather was perfect to make the movie."

Like nearly all of Botet's on-set experiences, the shoot was still something of an endurance test. The Last Voyage of the Demeter is adapted from the seventh chapter of Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula that finds the iconic vampire killing off a ship's crew, who are unwittingly transporting the aristocratic bloodsucker from Eastern Europe to England. "The movie is really Alien-on-a-ship in 1897," says director André Øvredal, who previously cast Botet as the Corpse character in 2019's Guillermo del Toro-produced Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. "Dracula is the creature that they have to contend with."

Rainer Bajo/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment Director André Øvredal on the set of 'The Last Voyage of the Demeter' with Javier Botet in full prosthetics as Dracula

To enhance the Alien-style vibe, Øvredal decided to depart from the human-like look and aristocratic costuming of previous big-screen Draculas for something more monstrous. "It was always about being a demon, because that's what they call him. They call him 'the Devil,' and that's a big statement," says the filmmaker, whose movie costars Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, and David Dastmalchian. "It was always my wont to create a creature movie here, to portray Dracula in a way we haven't really seen much. It's not really described much in the novel, how he looks when he's out on the boat. We just know that he has the ability to change into all kinds of shapes. So, we were free to create this demon as we pleased."

Audiences will witness a dramatic change in the Dracula creature over the course of the film as he gains strength by feasting on the blood of the Demeter's crew. "One side [is] the old fragile man, who's over 400 years old, who is now suffering from a lack of blood, and he's become almost like an addict," Øvredal says. "When he regains his powers, through killing the crew one by one, he then becomes the demon. For that version of Dracula, we were going for references in animals, and especially of course in bats, to portray muscle movements and how they used their wings."

Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment Javier Botet gives the camera a big smile as Dracula in 'The Last Voyage of the Demeter'

The director's vision, turned into reality by prosthetic makeup designer Jörn Seifert, meant long hours in the makeup chair for Botet, but the actor believes the results were worth the effort. "It's been one of the best makeups, for sure, I've had," he says. "Jörn and his team made amazing designs. We had three, four different looks. In the beginning, it was more skinny, more white, more weak, and then it started getting bigger. After we release the movie, we will show a lot of photos of the procedure, and it will blow the mind of a lot of makeup lovers."

Botet is talking over Zoom from his home in Spain while one of his two cats wanders around in the background. "He's Selva," the actor points out. "Selva is 'jungle' in Spanish. And the other guy is Akira, like the comic." Amiable, garrulous, and clearly in love with the filmmaking process, Botet could not seem more different from the fear-inducing ghouls he specializes in playing onscreen. "He's just the sweetest guy, he truly is," says filmmaker James Wan, who cast the actor as supernatural fiend the Crooked Man in The Conjuring 2. "All the great cinematic horror movie monsters are played by the sweetest, nicest actors, and Javier is very much in that camp."

You could say that the 6 feet 7 inches tall Botet was born to play the kind of elongated or otherwise outsized creatures that pepper the filmographies of Wan, Øvredal, and Del Toro, the latter of whom cast him as multiple ghosts in Crimson Peak. As a child, the actor was diagnosed with Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder which increases growth in limbs and extremities. Not too long ago, it would likely have shortened his life by decades.

"Marfan syndrome is a connective tissue disorder," he explains. "It makes you so flexible in the joints, very long. In childhood, you grow so fast if you have Marfan. The doctor told my father, 'Your child probably [will] never get 20 years.' I was so lucky because medicine has changed so much. Now, the expectancies of Marfan life, it's so big, it's like 75 or even more. But, yes, I need to take care, be responsible, and go to the doctor yearly."

Eduardo Parra/Getty Images Javier Botet

Botet fell in love with movies after seeing the creature-filled The Empire Strikes Back and he spent his teenage years making short films with friends. Later, Botet joined a makeup workshop which led him to be cast as an emaciated ghoul in the Madrid-shot Beneath Still Waters (2005), directed by Brian Yuzna (Bride of Re-Animator). "I needed a monster. I wanted to have somebody who crawls out of the deep," Yuzna says. "I said, 'I want to get someone really thin, that we can then put full body makeup on, and have a cool-looking monster.' And they found Javier. I did audition multiple actors for the part, and Javier proved himself to be the best choice due to his incredible ability to act physically, almost like a dancer."

The filmmaker says his new cast member took to performing for the camera like a duck to water — or like an undead creature emerging from the murky depths anyway. "I don't think he had ever acted before, but he was terrific," the director says. "Quite frankly, he's the best thing in the movie."

Over the next few years, Botet racked up an impressive number of credits in locally shot movies, most notably appearing as a possessed and horribly changed girl in Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza's 2007 acclaimed found-footage horror film [REC] and its two sequels.

Botet's biggest break came when he attended Austin's Fantastic Fest in 2009 to promote [Rec] 2 and encountered Argentinian filmmaker Andy Muschietti, who was screening his horror short Mama. Muschietti went on to cast Botet in the title role of a vengeful ghost in hit feature film version of the concept, which was produced by Del Toro and shot in Toronto.

"It was my first big international experience," the actor says of shooting Mama. "It was hard. It was so cold. I was shooting almost naked in the forest sometimes." Botet compares Muschietti to the legendary director and perfectionist Stanley Kubrick. "He makes always 30, sometimes 40 takes," he recalls. "Sometimes 10, but he never does it in two or three takes. [You think] okay, we're here, and if you think it's going to go better, let's do it 1,000 times, no matter. But Mama was a beautiful experience and the movie was number one in the USA box office."

Botet's terrifying performance in the film attracted the attention of other Hollywood filmmakers, including Wan. The Conjuring 2 director describes the Spaniard as "a real performer," saying, "He plays these roles that are so much larger than life, and he brings such a unique stamp and creativity to it."

It is a sentiment with which Øvredal enthusiastically agrees after working with Botet on The Last Voyage of the Demeter. "We wanted to focus on the beast in a way, but still it has to be Dracula. He was able to portray that," the director says. "He gives performance after performance, take after take, with different nuances in accordance to how he thinks the character should behave and also what he hopes that I would enjoy."

Botet himself is delighted to have gotten his chance at portraying Stoker's vampire and says he would happily reprise the role, no matter how much discomfort that involved. "In the last years, everybody asked me what monsters I want to do. I always say Dracula, Nosferatu," he says. "Yes, I would love to play Dracula again, in a sequel or even in another franchise or another studio. Dracula never dies, never stops. He's immortal!" To the horror crowd, so is Botet.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter hits theaters this Friday.

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