Having first watched F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent horror classic Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror as a child, and then directed an amateur stage version in school aged just 17, it would be fair to say that for Robert Eggers, his own cinematic take on the quintessential vampiric chiller has been a long time coming. But whilst much of the focus in the build-up to The Witch director’s Nosferatu has been on its old-school Gothic vibe, its all-star cast (Lily-Rose Depp! Bill Skarsgård! Nicholas Hoult!), and what sounds like another legendarily difficult Eggers shoot, few could’ve guessed his movie’s secret weapon — a Tik-Tokking Romanian granny!
As Eggers reveals to Empire in our Ultimate 2025 Preview issue, one of the most challenging sequences of the movie to shoot was the one in which Nicholas Hoult’s estate agent Thomas Hutter arrives in a rural Transylvanian village en route to Count Orlok’s castle in the Carpathian Alps. After working his way through a sea of Roma actors, dancers, and musicians dressed in early 19th century Romany garb (captured, it’s worth nothing, in a crane-assisted oner), our man Hutter enters an inn, where one particularly anguished, remarkably real-feeling old lady desperately tries to warn the young realtor not to go to Orlok’s abode. And the woman behind this concerned elder? “She goes by the name Bunica, which means 'Granny',” Eggers tells Empire of his scene-stealing star, “and she has a TikTok account that her niece makes for her, where she cooks traditional Romanian food. That's how we found her."
A little research on Empire’s part reveals that said Tik-Tokking Bunica is Bunica Ghergina (TikTok: @bunica.ghergina), who’s amassed almost 700,000 followers and nearly nine million likes on the platform since joining in 2022. As Eggers tells Empire, not only did Bunica’s social media stardom help her get into character, but she also helped bring an added layer of authenticity to his typically hyper detailed work. “She had some camera savvy because she's been on talk shows,” says Eggers. “And she has an imagination — she's from Southern Romania, but she did a Transylvanian accent for the movie. Which I wouldn't know, but she does." We don’t know the accent either, but with their commitment to the period setting and getting Nosferatu just right, it sure sounds like both Eggers and Bunica are speaking our language.
Read more about Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu in Empire’s January 2025 issue — out on Thursday 21 November. Pre-order a copy online here. Nosferatu release in cinemas stateside on Christmas Day, before flying into multiplexes in the UK and Ireland on 1 January, 2025.