‘Doctor Jekyll’ Director Joe Stephenson On Crafting A New Kind Of Hammer Horror Film
Cinema has seen countless adaptations and reimaginings of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The tale of a man whose personality seems to split after an accident lends itself to countless different interpretations. Most recently, director Joe Stephenson has thrown his proverbial hat into the ring with Doctor Jekyll, starring comedian Eddie Izzard in the titular role.
We spoke with Stephenson about working with Eddie Izzard, the film’s distinct lighting, and the importance of queer stories.
Dread Central: Congratulations on Doctor Jekyll! How are you feeling?
Joe Stephenson: It’s been a long road on this film, it’s been years.
DC: Tell me more.
JS: Well, I mean, I’ve made a film in between, it’s been that long since the journey began. So I started developing Doctor Jekyll with the writer Dan [Kelly-Mulhern] during a lockdown in London, just over the phone. And then we got a bit of money together and went to start filming. That was February 2022. And then the shoot was really crazy. Then Hammer came in later on during the shoot.
Then that was a whole process. I don’t want to bore you with a lot of business stuff. But, there was a whole thing with the old version of Hammer. That put the film in a bit of a weird middle status of not really having quite enough to finish. But then the New Hammer came about and picked it up and then we finished it. We got it done and got it out. And then obviously it came out at the end of last year in the UK. So it’s taken this time. Yeah, it’s a bit crazy.
DC: So did you have to stop shooting and then pick back up? Were you still in production when that happened with Hammer?
JS: No, we were in production. So it was literally the day before production that I met with the previous owners of Hammer. They came on and went, “Yes, sure, absolutely, we’re here for it.” So we shot Doctor Jekyll and then when we went into edit. We were going to do some pickup days and then it was around that time that all changed. With the old Hammer, there was a transition. And in that transition period, it meant that the film couldn’t really move forward. So then the New Hammer came to life and yeah, and then we got there. We got there.
DC: Were you a Hammer horror person growing up?
JS: So the idea was to do a throwback to a certain type of British horror, and that really is Hammer. I wouldn’t say I was particularly a crazy Hammer horror fan. But I know British cinema and British humor. There’s so much about that era of filmmaking that I adore and I miss it from cinema. So that was always the design, which is why it was always going to be perfect for Hammer, in my mind. So when they did come on board, it was brilliant. It’s now part of a huge beautiful history of British horror.
DC: So Dan Kelly-Mulhern, he wrote the script, but you said that you were collaborating with him pretty early on. So you’ve been involved with Doctor Jekyll from pretty early on in the process, right?
JS: As a director, I always love to work with writers. I’m not a writer. I don’t write a word in the script. However, I do get involved with story structure. We have conversations and there’s a nice back and forth. So I was involved from the very beginning and it was initially me and him. Then my producer at my production company came in and we started to work on it together.
DC: Was it you or was it Dan that landed on taking the Jekyll and Hyde story? Where did that come to be?
JS: That came about because I went to Dan with this idea that I wanted to do a bit of a two-hander, something that was very specific, something for Scott [Chambers], who plays Rob in the film, because he was the lead of my first film, Chicken. I wanted to do something with Scott again, something very different from what he did in my first film.
Dan hit on this thing of a two-hander would be great, but what about if it was a three-hander? And I was like, “This is very Jekyll and Hyde.” It just sort of organically came through the process of writing. We had a lot of fun, going back to the book and putting things in there that felt like it was almost like the unwritten sequel. Doctor Jekyll isn’t an adaptation of the book so much as a continuation of a timeline, I suppose.
DC: Well, and of course you had the incredible Eddie Izard in the film. I grew up watching her comedy, so it’s amazing to see her now in this role. How did she come onto the project?
JS: So Eddie, I met with her. She was doing rehearsals for her one woman show, and we had a drink and just realized that we were basically on the same page of everything in terms of just life. And it was lovely. Very quickly she came on board and it was quite close to shooting. We had dates in the diary. Eddie is incredibly busy and constantly working. So I think if we hadn’t got dates in the diary, it wouldn’t have been a conversation because you never know when she’s going to be available.
But it happens that it worked. We didn’t re-write it for Eddie, but we basically made this kind of commitment that on set we were going to allow the script to kind of just organically grow. Just allow there to be that improvisation so that we can have fun with it and have a variety of things we can do in the edit.
DC: That’s so cool. So there’s a camp sensibility here, which you talked about with Hammer and injecting that camp sensibility into Doctor Jekyll. What was your, maybe, philosophy in trying to balance gothic horror with a little bit of camp? It’s a hard line to walk sometimes.
JS: At the end of the day, I suppose it’s my sense of humor. And I also think that you can’t really plan some of these things. And sometimes there are jokes in the film that I know nobody else is getting, but that’s fine. I don’t mind that.
DC: It’s your right as a director to have a couple of little jokes for yourself in there, I feel like.
JS: But also as well, what’s interesting is watching some people’s reactions I suppose, and seeing people respond to the film. You get some people going like, “Lh, but that jump scare didn’t work for me.” And I think it’s really funny because you jumped because she said lunch. You know what I mean? I’m obviously not being serious, am I? So I dunno, some of it will translate. With everything, when you do things, you do what you want to see. And I guess I wanted to have fun. I love films that know they’re films and get to have fun with that. I didn’t want to take it too seriously. This elevated horror is wonderful in lots of ways, but I really wanted to just have fun. So I guess that’s where it comes from.
DC: Like you said, I think horror is getting very serious, which I love. But I also need more of that, like you said, Hammer sensibility, a little bit of fun, a little bit of silly because I want to also laugh and be entertained with my horror sometimes.
JS: We don’t need to be just focusing on one type of horror or any one type of genre. For me, some of the scariest things I’ve watched are films that you wouldn’t think are classified as horror. I like genres to mix up. I like there to be humor, and the best way to make people cry is to make them laugh first. It’s the rule.
I don’t really see films in those hard lines. If I want to do something scary in a comedy, I’ll do it. If I want to do something funny in a scary movie, I’ll do it. Life is far more interesting than just one thing. So I’m trying to bring that to it, I guess.
DC: So I’m assuming you’re familiar with the Hammer film, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. I know you’ve probably heard plenty of comparisons. So I’m curious what your thought process was like there, especially with a trans woman playing a trans character.
JS: With Sister Hyde, I didn’t go back and watch any previously told versions of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I decided when I was going into it that I didn’t want to do that because there are over a hundred adaptations, and I just didn’t want to go into that. I wanted to just tell our story in the way that I felt was the way I wanted to tell it.
Now, naturally, the fact that it’s a trans performer, a trans actress, a trans character, a lot of people made an assumption that that’s going to be a huge plot point. And in my head, it was kind of frustrating because obviously as well, I saw people who were being very transphobic. But for me, it’s radical enough to just have a trans character and have it not be the plot point. It’s happening more and more and it’s fantastic. But the character’s transness has nothing to do with the story.
DC: Yes, exactly.
JS: But in fact, what we’re saying is that whether it’s Jekyll or it’s Hyde, her transness transcends those characters. That is who she is. We have the flashback of her, obviously as a child, and there was a real conversation about how we were going to represent Nina as a young child. And we just thought, “Well, actually, this is a memory. This is how she sees herself, this is how she remembers her life, and she remembers herself as a little girl.”
So we wanted to show how Nina remembers her past as a little girl. And that’s the most we really did. There’s a deleted scene that’s on the Blu-ray that’s coming out that does have Rob talking to his brother saying, “Did you know she’s trans?” And the brother just not caring, whatever. But even just referencing in that way, we don’t need to do that. It makes a point of it. Why make a point? It doesn’t matter.
DC: But I love that though. I’m just glad that we continue to have filmmakers like you who are willing to do this. It’s nice to see this more in 2024, that progression, especially as a queer woman myself.
JS: I feel the same way as a queer director. I’m keen to start seeing more and more queer stories told that allow a character to be queer without needing it to influence the story that’s being told. I guess that’s my big wish.
DC: Amazing. I want to hear more also about how you worked with your cinematographer Birgit Dierken in shaping the aesthetic of Doctor Jekyll.
JS: There’s a big thing in that period of horror where the yellow night is quite a strange look. It’s quite a unique thing. And that was a big obsession of mine. It’s not logical, it doesn’t make any sense. But the whole point of Doctor Jekyll is that it’s a bit of a fairytale. Nothing really matters in that sense. But hopefully, it doesn’t take you so out that you go, “Why is it yellow?” It’s things like that where we want hard shadows, light coming from different places, never worrying about light sources. I always wanted to do a black-and-white version of this. We really modeled the lighting design on the rules of black-and-white photography. And so if you did turn it black and white, it would look good.
DC: Black and white cut when??
JS: I know, I know. I’ve tried. Let’s make a hit out of it and then we’ll get it. So that was the rule really. We wanted the hard shadows and the striking lighting, taking what they did in the past and trying to evolve it slightly and have a bit more flexibility. But it was hard to do on the budget that we had. Those setups take that much longer because you’re dealing with a lot of light and putting them in very strange places and working with shadows. It takes a long time. So it made the shoot very difficult at times on our budget, but I’m really pleased with it.
Doctor Jekyll is out now on digital.
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