[Editor's note: This interview was recorded prior to the SAG strike.]

The Big Picture

• The Last Voyage of the Demeter marks Corey Hawkins' very first time being #1 on the call sheet.
• The André Øvredal-directed film is inspired by a single chapter from Bram Stoker's Dracula.
• Hawkins discusses his experience being the lead of a feature film and the additional backstory work he did to prepare to play Clemens.

Corey Hawkins has appeared in three Oscar-nominated films (Straight Outta Compton, BlacKkKlansman, and The Tragedy of Macbeth), he scored an Emmy nomination for his work in Survive and has delivered show-stopping performances in blockbuster productions like In the Heights, but he’s yet to be credited as the lead of a film — until now. Hawkins is #1 on the call sheet for The Last Voyage of the Demeter.

Hawkins plays Clemens in the André Øvredal-directed film. He’s a physician who travels to Eastern Europe for a job opportunity only to have that offer rescinded due to his race. Eager to get back to England, Clemens snags a spot on the crew of the Demeter, a merchant ship carrying 50 unmarked wooden crates to London. Unfortunately for Clemens and the rest of the Demeter crew, those crates came from Carpathia and are the property of Count Dracula.

With The Last Voyage of the Demeter making its way into theaters nationwide this week, I had the opportunity to chat with Hawkins about his experience making the film. He broke down the additional work he did while developing Clemens’ backstory and discussed his experience being the lead of a feature film for the very first time.

Hear about it all straight from Hawkins himself in the video at the top of this article or read the interview in transcript form below.

PERRI NEMIROFF: I want to dig into Clemens’ backstory a little bit. I know we get some information in the film, but I'm always looking for more. Are there any specific details you came up with on your own that maybe we don't see or hear about in the film, but we could feel informing your performance and the choices he makes throughout the film?

COREY HAWKINS: It was important in my conversations with the producers, with Andre that whatever we do with Clemens I think he just needed to make sense, and it just needed to be honest. And so that led to a lot of research because I've become a bit of a nerd when it comes to my characters. It doesn't matter how off-kilter or whatever it is, I'm a student when I dip into these different worlds and time periods and stuff. So it was important to research these Black men who were Cambridge-educated or whatever sort of higher learning during that time at the turn of the century. That was important to me to highlight that. If he's going to be a Black man, it has to make sense, and so it just was a little bit more digging into that.

Also, what I found out was that a lot of Black American men, mostly, would have gone overseas in order to get that higher education. Now whether or not they'd be able to practice it, practice their trade or their occupation, was another story. But I think that just informed a lot of his journey because, like he says in the film, his reputation preceded him, but the color of his skin didn't and so there was information there about him being “the other,” about evil and the things that he confronted on the day-to-day. So when he confronts this other evil presence named Dracula on this boat, what does that mean? Because Dracula is also the other, and he is the other, and what do they see in each other as well?

So I just thought it was fascinating, and just to explore that without hitting the nail on the head or being didactic about it, but it's the reality of it. Like, I'm a Black man about to go and do this role, and we have to make it make sense.

I always appreciate that level of research and preparation, but on the other side of it, there's always opportunity to discover new things about your character along the way, so can you isolate something specific you learned about Clemens, but only because you were on set working with your scene partners and Andre in the thick of it?

HAWKINS: Specifically with Clemens, it was his journey. We also realized that, well, I learned that I'm a bit claustrophobic. [Laughs] I think it was just realizing that this man of science, when he talks earlier in the film about seeing the goodness in people and wondering why there’s so much good in the world and yet evil things still happen to good people or whatever, he’s pondering something. It’s a bit of a foreshadow because there's this level of adaptability that he has that he isn't allowing himself. He's a scientist, so when he's presented with Dracula and the supernatural, he doesn't want to believe it.

I think it's the adaptability of who he is, it's his constitution that he had growing up that separates him from the other sailors on the boat. He grew up a sailor in terms of the backstory. He saw his father on boats, and so he's aware of all of the ships, myths and cabals and all of that kind of stuff. But the man he's had to become is a man of ones and zeros, science, in order to get through the world. But in order to survive, he has to be adaptable. It was just such a cool lesson for me to watch Clemens sort of go on. It’s like, “Oh, I get it.” And talking with Andre and the producers through that, and the other actors in this with Aisling [Franciosi], who plays Anna, just finding out new things about our characters as we were going over the months of shooting this.

Those layers make him especially exciting to track.

A personal question about the roles you jump into. There was a quote from you in our production notes that caught my eye; it said something to the effect of, you tend to run toward things that scare you as an actor, so it made me wonder, whether it's this project or anything else you've done thus far, which role do you deem the scariest that you've tackled?

HAWKINS: Well, this is my first time, I would say, stepping into a bit of a lead role, taking the helm and actually being number one on the call sheet and having to take that responsibility on, but also learning how to lead and learning what makes a good leader on a set. I've had some great mentors, Sam Jackson and Denzel Washington and Francis McDormand, and all those incredible talents of the world, but it's scary. It's a bit of a challenge.

And so my thing is, I don't really wanna do it unless it excites me, and it's a marathon and it's not a sprint. So yeah, I'm gonna run to the things that scare me. I'm gonna run and go play, go do a British accent. I mean, I know how it could be received if it isn’t done well, but I also know, why do it if you’re not stretching yourself? And I wanna look back and just say, oh yeah, I've tackled that. I've tackled this. I've tackled these different things, and not because I'm picking these things. I'm going after what is different and what appeals to me. They came to me with this opportunity. It's been around for a while, different iterations of it, and we got it made, which is really cool to bring Dracula back with this new version of Dracula – or old version, I guess I could say.