By WILLIAM J. WRIGHT
Robert Louis Stevenson‘s 1868 novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde completes an unholy literary trinity with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Of those acknowledged genre landmarks, Stevenson’s work, as incredible as it may seem, is the most frequently adapted to other media. As of this writing, there are over 120 Jekyll and Hyde films, with at least six silent versions predating John Barrymore’s famous 1920 performance. (Another five were produced the same year.) In the century and a half since its publication, Stevenson’s story of a brilliant physician who, through a substance of his creation, undergoes a recurring physical transformation that is a manifestation of his basest instincts, has been retold both (somewhat) faithfully and played for laughs. Speaking to the nature of good and evil, the duality of man and the darkest desires of the heart, Jekyll and Hyde is perennially relevant.
With DOCTOR JEKYLL, filmmaker Joe Stephenson brings the Victorian classic to the modern era in a film that hews closely to Stevenson’s themes while taking them in new, unexpected directions. Eddie Izzard stars as reclusive pharmaceutical magnate Nina Jekyll. When Jekyll hires and befriends Rob (Scott Chambers), a good-hearted young man recently released from prison, her sinister secret threatens to consume them both.
Recently, Stephenson spoke with RUE MORGUE’s Online Managing Editor, William J. Wright, about updating Jekyll and Hyde for a new century and maintaining Hammer Film Productions’ ongoing legacy of gothic horror.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of the most adapted literary works in film history. In fact, there were at least a dozen produced in the silent era alone. Do you have a favorite version?
Joe Stephenson directs Scott Chambers on the set of DOCTOR JEKYLL
I don’t have a favorite version. I tried to avoid going through them all and getting obsessed with how other people attacked the material before. It’s funny you mentioned the silent ones because they’re the ones that I would go to – probably because there’s something very charming about the restrictions that were there because it was silent and having to tell a story so purely visually. That was kind of the film school that I was brought up with, really, this idea that if you’re doing a film, you should be able to turn off the audio and still be able to understand everything. Then, the composition and everything tells you all you need to know about [Jekyll and Hyde’s] relationship to each other and to things. So, those were the ones that I would keep having a look at, but I wouldn’t say that I have a particular favorite one because I did want to try and make this purely my own and purely our story and not be too heavily influenced. I think I get quite obsessed quite quickly.
Why do we need another take on Jekyll and Hyde in 2024?
It speaks so much about the complexity of human nature, basically about the duality that’s within us all and how somebody can do something bad and be good at the same time – and how we deal with different things. Obviously, our version spins out mostly on the disparity between the wealthy and those without. That’s part of the sort of duality of society that I wanted to bring into this story. But there are so many instances of it.
John Barrymore and Martha Mansfield in DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1920)
We will always keep going back to [Jekyll and Hyde] because it does a good job of simplifying those complexities and telling them in a very clean way, in a way that can be entertaining and not preaching, which is my type of movie. I don’t really like films that are heavily expositionally telling us about an issue but rather have that in their DNA – and which you can choose to see or not see. I think the story lends itself to that very well. Today, we live in a world of extremes. It’s always the worst thing in the world or the best thing in the world. It’s your right or your left. It’s a world in which we are very much dealing with black and white and kind of ignoring the gray in the middle. It felt like it was the right time to go in and have a look at some of that gray in the middle. There are different parts of ourselves that we shouldn’t shy away from and should face head-on.
Did you revisit Stevenson’s original novella going into the project? And speaking to some of those earlier adaptations, were there things specifically that you wanted to use or subvert – or even avoid – such as elaborate transformation sequences?
I didn’t go back to the novel, but the writer, Dan Kelly-Mulhern, did. It was important that we went back, and we made sure that we were being faithful to the work in one way but were not being tied down by it. So, he went back to it, and there are a lot of references. Even the “missing persons” [report] on the television at the beginning is a reference to the death in the book. There are references dotted throughout the film, and Dan needed to go back for that. But I wanted to tell our story, and again, not get too bogged down, considering it has been done so many times. It felt like we doing something different here. So let’s keep on track with the story that we want to tell, and not worry too much about where we’re deviating – and in terms of the other films.
The transformation, obviously, was a big thing. That was a very clear decision when we made this film. The audience is going to be ahead of the game anyway. They’re going to have seen a Dr. Jekyll film. They know what’s going to happen. And so how do we make it interesting and exciting in some engaging new way so that the audience is participating in trying to work out which one is which and who is on screen at any one time? Obviously, you can’t do that if that transformation is a physical one. What we did do was go back to some of those silent films and some of the ways that they were doing those transformations for the finale scene and for the later part of the film. How do we do something that feels like a throwback to both old Hammer films and some of the elements of previous adaptations but really saying fresh? You can’t help being influenced by the past. I suppose we call this sort of a sequel, In a way, it’s the continuation of the timeline of the original.
Much of the press around the film refers to DOCTOR JEKYLL as an adaptation, but it’s actually something quite different. It is indeed a sequel. You mentioned that the film is a throwback to old Hammer films. Were you a fan of classic Hammer horror growing up?
Not really, not growing up. I was exposed to commercial American cinema the most when I was younger. So it was always the Spielbergs and the Camerons I was brought up on as well as some Rodgers and Hammerstein for some reason. When I knew that what I wanted to do was to direct, I started to do my own film studies and watch my own things. That’s when I started watching some films of that period of British cinema in particular.
Going into this, we always felt like it was about a type of film – a type of structure to a film– that doesn’t really get done anymore, mostly because I think audiences have been trained so much to be quite impatient. I wanted to go, “You know what? Actually, no, we’re going to do this. We’re going to take our time. It’s going to build up to a big, smashing finale, and that’s kind of the structure. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have a bit of fun along the way.”
I wanted it to be a combination of films of that time and have sort of the pace of things that I love. I’m definitely a massive fan of a lot of the Hammer films, and that was a lot of the references. So, when Hammer came on board, it just felt like a beautiful connection and a chance to become part of this lovely history of British cinema and a pantheon. Hammer has its own history with Jekyll and Hyde, so there was something very nice about making DOCTOR JEKYLL officially part of that journey.
One of the most frightening aspects of DOCTOR JEKYLL is Eddie Izzard’s brilliant performance. You’re never 100% sure whether you’re dealing with Jekyll or Hyde. How did Eddie Izzard come to the project?
It was quite traditional casting in a way. We were casting gender-blind. We were talking to several people, coming up with different ideas of who might do it. We talked to cis men, cis women, and then suddenly, it was suggested that Eddie might be a good shout. And it made total sense. Eddie’s wonderful skill and slightly surreal, stream-of-consciousness kind of style just felt perfect for what we wanted to do. And I knew that she would completely get it on an intellectual level. We went for a drink, and we got on amazingly well. This was actually very close to the shoot and so, it was very much like, “Okay, well, this is obvious.”
We agreed that there would be a certain amount of improvisation so we could bring Eddie’s voice in a little bit more and play to Eddie’s strengths. The decision to make Jekyll trans wasn’t ever going to affect the story. That wasn’t going to change the story. The character is trans – and that’s it. The script always said “Dr. Jekyll,” and so whatever gender plays Dr. Jekyll would be the gender of the character. So, Eddie came on to it, and a couple of weeks later, we were shooting. We worked intensely on the floor to adapt to Eddie’s style – the type of humor that was in the script versus the humor that Eddie’s most comfortable with. It was a very smooth process, a very quick process, but very smooth.
Eddie Izzard seems like a force of nature. How do you direct her?
It’s collaboration. It’s completely a collaboration. One thing about Eddie, yes, she’s an absolute force of nature. However, she’s so open, so trusting and so open to collaboration, which you have to be if you’re going to do improvisation. For example, Scott Chambers, who plays Rob also has to be on board with where you’re going. They have to work together, and film only ever works as a collaboration. And Eddie knows that. Eddie’s been around some wonderful roles on television and film, but this was a new type of role, and it was, think I’m right in saying, her first role as a trans woman, playing a trans woman, and so it was quite special and quite unique. She’d bring ideas to the table. Sometimes we’d have a chat through the script before shooting. It was a lovely process. And we all got on. It was like a little family.
Early on, and because of Eddie Izzard’s involvement, it seemed to many that DOCTOR JEKYL could possibly go the way of another Hammer film in its portrayal of gender, 1971’s Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, directed by Roy Ward Baker. However, what you have here is one of the most refreshing examples of trans representation that I’ve ever seen in that it’s treated just matter of factly, and for the most part, gender has little bearing on the story. Is there a subtext – or what some will interpret as a subtext?
There isn’t for me, and there wasn’t for Eddie. As I said, the story was the story, and it was never about gender. Bringing in somebody who is trans and making the character trans didn’t change the fact that the story wasn’t about that. The story was always about the disparity between those with and those without. It’s always about greed and power. When we announced the casting, immediately, there were a lot of people who just assumed that we were going to do that or a reverse of that, but there was just never a question. I feel very much that in terms of representation, stories that are about transness and the trans experience absolutely should exist. On top of that, I’m not trans. It wouldn’t be my place to tell that story. I can’t give anything to that. That’s not mine to tell. So yeah, it’s refreshing for me. I think it’s the same thing with gay people, and with queer identities in general. It’d be nice to see more people, more characters, existing with a queer identity and it not having to affect the story all the time in the same way that just because the character is straight, their straightness doesn’t affect the story. I was kind of proud and pleased. It felt like a little bit of a radical choice not to do anything with it and actually just make sure that everybody knew that the character was trans – and that was enough.
DOCTOR JEKYLL has some of the most innovative approaches to classic elements from the original story. Among them is the way that you treat the transformative drug and the character of Hyde. Is there a metaphor for addiction and possibly generational trauma in Hyde?
Definitely. Absolutely. The addiction thing is a big one. Nina Jekyll has made her money in drugs, by making them, selling them – and has taken them. On the flip side, you have Rob, who has taken drugs and been punished for it and not had the money to get them and has been punished for that. So, you have a complete flipside of addiction and the way that society treats people who have addictions. We wanted very much to bring that all together. Even just making the potion a cigarette made total sense to kind of carry that through. And it’s about how even the characterization of Rob is a reflection of how that is a switch, basically, on a kind of stereotype that people expect. People would expect somebody with his past to behave a certain way, be a certain way, not to really be sensitive and probably be quite hard and sort of, I suppose, “street.” We wanted to flip that and go, “Actually, no, that’s not always the case.” People who take drugs are all different types and take them for different reasons. That’s a huge part of the story.
In my mind, it’s interesting that everybody’s making it so literal because, for me, I always was going, “Well, do you trust Hyde? What’s Hyde saying? Do you trust that?” Hyde is obviously in a mania of some sort and has issues of mass grandeur. Everything that she says isn’t necessarily true. She’s been taking drugs for a very long time, over many years. When that drug is then passed over to Rob, and he continues this journey, that grandeur, that idea, that connection to this big, worldly idea of yourself doesn’t mean that it’s the same Hyde. It can be that person’s Hyde. It’s just that the influence of those drugs and that mania makes you believe you’re connected to something far greater in the same way that people who might have bipolar disorder can have moments of absolute high and believe that they’re connected to something greater. The film, on a very surface level, is telling you that that is the case, but I was surprised how few people have actually looked a little bit deeper to kind of go, “Well, there’s nothing to say that this isn’t just the effect of the drug.” So there’s a whole load of different ways of looking at it, and I’m kind of open to everybody just taking their own opinion and reading what they want to read from it. But the drugs thing is all the way through, and it’s very much about addiction and how we treat people in society who have those issues.
The film poses some interesting questions about Hyde. Is Hyde an entity unto itself? Is Hyde the classic interpretation, a manifestation of our base instincts? Or is Hyde the drug itself? Dr. Hunter S. Thompson famously wrote, “You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when it’s waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eye…”
I think that’s an interesting one, and I don’t mind which way people want to believe. Ultimately, it’s all in there. Hopefully, people might give it a second thought every now and then. You know, it’s all there to be looked at, which is the fun of film.
Earlier, you said you’re not much into exposition, and I enjoy that. You’re working on the audience’s expectations of what a Jekyll and Hyde film is, and then, you subvert those expectations. However, DOCTOR JEKYLL seems like a sequel to a version of Jekyll and Hyde that was never made. Would you ever like to revisit Nina Jekyll’s world and explore her past in another film?
Oh, absolutely. It’d be nice to get to see a kind of clean adaptation of the original work. I think my feeling was very much about generating interest in this project because, ultimately, it’s a very low-budget movie, and so you have to kind of work to try and find a way to make it the most appealing to a modern market. Budget restraints mean that you can’t do certain things. So doing a period film is going to cost you a lot more than doing something in the modern day. We were never going to be able to tell that story. Having Jonathan Hyde on to play Henry Jekyll was wonderful. We only had him for a day, and it was such a joy. And he’s so good that I did when shooting, think it would be lovely to do a few more [scenes] and live in that world – and tell it in black and white as well. It would make so much sense.
So, what’s next? Another horror film perhaps?
I am developing one. I’ve shot a film since finishing DOCTOR JEKYLL that’s going to be out in the U.K. at the end of this year and in the U.S. at the beginning of next, which is actually not a horror. It’s a drama. It’s about Brian Epstein and the Beatles. So that’s all finished and on its way.
And I’m developing a couple of genre things. I really enjoyed being in that space. It’s funny because DOCTOR JEKYLL is such a unique, strange little film, as I keep calling it. It’s not sort of playing into the more commercial and traditional horror kind of tropes of modern cinema. There’s a part of me that kind of would like to actually play in that and do something a little bit more “Blumhouse” – a little bit more commercial, I guess. So, yeah, there are some things I’m working on. We’ll see what happens.
DOCTOR JEKYLL is now playing at selected U.S. theaters and streaming nationwide.
