‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’ Star Corey Hawkins Talks Being a Black Leading Man in a Dracula Movie: ‘It Was Thrilling for Me’

In “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” Corey Hawkins’ Clemens finds himself on the unenviable position of being trapped on a ship — with Dracula.

Based on a single chapter from Bram Stoker’s original novel (“The Captain’s Log”), “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” uses the titular ship’s voyage to England, with Dracula part of the cargo, as an exercise in claustrophobic horror, inspired, in part, by Ridley Scott’s immortal “Alien.” Corey plays a young doctor named Clemens, who boards the ship when it makes port in Bulgaria. Can he find a scientific explanation for the strange happenings on the ship? And is there any way to cure a young stowaway, who seems to only be there to supply Dracula with fresh blood?

TheWrap spoke to Hawkins (in an interview conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike) about the challenges and joys of playing a Black British doctor in a period film (in theaters now), the draw of horror films and who is scarier – King Kong or Dracula (Hawkins appeared in “Kong: Skull Island”).

This is your first horror movie. What was that like?

Yeah, it’s my first horror film, but my first entree into horror on television was “Walking Dead.” And so that was because I was a fan of the comics for a long time. And I just remember being like, I want to get on the show somehow. And then I got to play Heath, which was really cool and interesting and different. And I just tend to throw myself at things that people don’t normally or wouldn’t normally expect.

But I’m a fan of the genre, my first introduction to Dracula, actually, funny enough is “Blacula” – William Marshall in a blaxploitation film, it was just really f–king cool. And here’s this thing, I’m a horror genre nerd, but I never saw myself as an actor, Corey, like being in the thing. Because also it takes a lot to get it right. And I think it starts with the characters on the page. I think it starts with what the situation is, all that kind of stuff plays into it. But for me, I read this and I was just like, Oh. Because “Blacula” led me to reading “Dracula.” And I remembered this specific chapter from that and being like, this shit needs to be a film. And, you know, they had been working on it.

What was the appeal of this specific horror story?

I like to do things that surprise people and also do things where we do things that haven’t been done before. To be a Black man leading a horror film, in a real way, in a very big film, and with all the practicality and the lore and it’s Dracula, it’s the return of Dracula to this this franchise. It was thrilling for me as a Black man to be able to lead that charge.

I remember doing “24” on Fox. And that was a network show. And for me, the appeal of that was to be able to be a Black hero on television that didn’t have superpowers. He wasn’t this magical whatever, he was real. And Clemens existed, these Black Cambridge-educated doctors existed, they were able to get to certain stations in their lives and then they couldn’t practice because of the color of their skin. And not that the film is necessarily about that, but you can’t discount that. You have to honor that. And so that was the appeal as well. In addition to me being a horror nerd and loving vampires and Dracula and all that kind of shit. I was like, Yeah, this is this is definitely up my alley and up my alley, because it’s a risk. There’s the also the challenge of being a Black American actor, who gets to go and be British, which is cool. And to live in that for months. That was fun.

Yeah outside of Steven Soderbergh’s “The Knick,” it’s hard to think of another time a Black British doctor was seen.

I think it’s incredibly refreshing and I think the problem is when people see it, people go, “Oh, that’s not possible.” You know, and the reason people say it is because we don’t see it enough. We don’t know the history of it. Kids don’t grow up watching that, they haven’t grown up seeing that. He’s not this dashing sailor who’s who just comes on the boat and starts killing off all the monsters. He’s a doctor who believes in science. He doesn’t believe in in superstitions and his journey is from scientist to believer to killer, the guy who has to go after the evil in the story. And I thought that was cool. And thought that was worth exploring. It’s worth exploring with this group of actors and with this director. And [director] André Øvredal and I said, “Let’s go, like, let’s see what we can find and do something different.” And we did.

Can we talk about your British accent? There were certain Idris Elba vibes.

He was not an inspiration. But maybe his ancestors were because his accent is a bit more modern. That was the other thing – I’m doing a British accent and it’s great. I got to work with my voice coach who trained me who worked with me at Juilliard. And I’ve also worked with her on Broadway. They were like, “Who do you want to work with?” I was like, “Kate Wilson, she’s incredible.” She works with everybody.

But the fact that she worked with the entire cast on it. And it was wonderful to work with her on this. But again, we had to find this, this accent, where we didn’t have dialogue from Black men who maybe grew up in Portsmouth, who were sailors. If you didn’t have dialogue from the 1890s that were recorded. A lot of it was phonetics and trying to find where Clemens’ voice lived. And the best compliment I got was from my boys on set because we were pretty honest with each other, which was the beautiful part of working with great actors. And they were just like, “Just keep keep going. Because the accent is there.” It just liberating to be able to do that, because not that many of us get the opportunity to play British characters. It’s usually the reverse and that’s OK. I just wanted to do it well.

Who is scarier? King Kong or Dracula?

Well, Kong wasn’t there. I was talking with Sam Jackson. We just finished working on “The Piano Lesson.” And he we were talking because we worked on that movie together [“Kong: Skull Island”]. And we like, “We really had a tennis ball that week that they put right there and said, ‘So that’s King Kong.’” Your reaction, it’s different. But again with this movie, because it was so practical, we had him there. So that was scary. Dracula gets the edge.

“The Last Voyage of the Demeter” is in theaters now.

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