Willem Dafoe has opened up about being “uncast” from a film after starring in Martin Scorsese’s hugely controversial 1988 movie The Last Temptation of Christ.
Dafoe, who is currently promoting the new horror movie Nosferatu, played Jesus in the Nineties drama, which ends with Christ coming down from the cross and being tempted by Satan.
It depicts Jesus as having a yearning for family life and having sexual interests, and was met with much controversy when it was released, especially from the Church.
Dafoe has reflected on the fallout in an interview on the new series of The Louis Theroux Podcast, saying: “It’s just strange, in a world of slasher films and porn, that people got so upset about this, because it’s based on a novel and, broadly speaking, they’re changing the classic story a little bit to consider the character of Jesus in a different way, that’s all.
“It’s not this plot to overthrow or change religious thought. It’s a consideration, another way of looking at the human aspect of Jesus, as opposed to the divine part.”
When asked whether any of the controversy affected him, Dafoe said: “Only to a degree.”
“I mean, down the road there was one project in particular that I was cast in and the studio uncast me because they didn’t like that I was associated with Last Temptation. But I don’t want to do a big, crocodile tears about that because it could have been much worse.
“But I didn’t feel it so much. I think most of the responsibility fell on Martin Scorsese.”
The actor added: “It became a huge antisemitic thing too, because there was an association that this religious right talked about. ‘The evil people in Hollywood.’ So, in America anyway, that was the main fight.”
In the interview, he also discussed his 1993 film Body of Evidence, a much-derided erotic thriller also starring Madonna.
“You know, every time I come to the UK they give me a hard time about Body of Evidence,” he laughed, “but if I’m in a Latin American country, they love it.”
He added that many compared it to the film Basic Instinct, which had come out the year before: “People that didn’t care for it, they thought it was a knockoff of that. I don’t think that was it. It was kind of an old fashioned courtroom drama thing, with this sex spin on it. Madonna was doing her Sex book then, she was at the height of her sexiness, and I think, I don’t know, I won’t judge a movie, but some people like it, some people don’t. What can I say?”
He described the famous sex scene in the film where Madonna dripped hot wax on him as “no big deal”. He called the scene where he is buried alive in the 2019 horror The Lighthouse as something genuinely “extreme” he has filmed.
