Willem Dafoe has been in the entertainment industry for nearly five decades now. Besides being nominated for numerous accolades such as Academy Awards, BAFTA Awards, and Golden Globe Awards, he has received the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. Although he has played some great roles, he is best known for his role as Green Goblin/Norman Osborne in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man film series.
Dafoe most recently appeared in Poor Things, which is nothing short of a cinematic masterpiece. The film, starring Emma Stone in the lead role, is a front-runner at the Academy Awards with 11 nominations this year. While her co-stars have been all praises about her stunning performance in the movie, Dafoe wanted to replace her for one particular scene.
Willem Dafoe Wanted to Replace Emma Stone for This Scene in Poor Things
Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, is based on Alasdair Gray’s 1992 eponymous novel. The movie is a dark comedy set in Victorian London. It follows Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a young woman revived through a brain transplant, who embarks on a journey of self-discovery.
Willem Dafoe plays the role of Dr. Godwin Baxter, an eccentric surgeon, who performed the brain transplant on Bella. Despite this, he wishes he could have replaced Bella in the iconic dance sequence between her and Mark Ruffalo’s Duncan Wedderburn.
Speaking of that scene, Ruffalo said (via Searchlight Pictures):
“We shot that about 60 times and we’d worked on it quite a bit so we knew, we knew it went pretty well by that time. It was so much fun and free. It has the whole, our whole relationship was in it. I just wish Willem was there.”
Dafoe then remarked: “I’m jealous.” He began reenacting Bella’s moves and claimed that he could have done what Stone did in the scene. Ruffalo agreed saying that The Fault in Our Stars actor could have done it.
Mark Ruffalo on the Iconic Dance Sequence in Poor Things
Ruffalo’s performance in the movie is undoubtedly one of his best to date. During an interview with Collider, he was asked about the scene carried with him or influenced all the other scenes that he did. The Normal Hearts actor said:
“The dancing. The dancing has so much in it, and it was something that we worked on and we collaborated on, Emma and I. It was choreographed, but then we also threw some of that out and were just playing and finding some of that.”
Ruffalo claimed that the dance was a depiction of his and Stone’s characters’ relationship. Although they were playing their respective characters in the scene, the dance was fun and free in a way.
Even then, Dafoe did not hesitate to say that he was jealous. Ruffalo retaliated saying that he was happy if The Lighthouse star was jealous because he was jealous of him the whole time.
