The director, Elordi, and Oscar Isaac join EW for a laugh-filled conversation about the new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel.

Guillermo del Toro on the Frankenstein scene he had to argue for, and how Jacob Elordi found the Creature’s voice

The director, Elordi, and Oscar Isaac join EW for a laugh-filled conversation about the new adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic novel.

By Gerrad Hall

Gerrad Hall is an editorial director at **, overseeing movie, awards, and music coverage. He is also host of *The Awardist* podcast, and has cohosted EW's live Oscars, Emmys, SAG, and Grammys red carpet shows. He has appeared on *Good Morning America*, *The Talk*, *Access Hollywood*, *Extra!*, and other talk shows, delivering the latest news on pop culture and entertainment.

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November 7, 2025 9:01 p.m. ET

Director Guillermo del Toro and Oscar Isaac on the set of 'Frankenstein'. Credit:

Ken Woroner/Netflix

Guillermo del Toro loves a good movie monster.

In the case of his latest, *Frankenstein*, he actually has two. Yes, there's the Creature (a prosthetics-covered Jacob Elordi) created by scientist Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), but he, it turns out, is just as monstrous, if not worse — cruel and abusive in his treatment of the experiment he thinks is unsuccessful but in reality just needed more of his time, attention, and love.

The Creature is the latest on a long list of del Toro "monster" movies, including the Pale Man and Faun in *Pan's Labyrinth*, the Amphibian Man in *The Shape of Water*, and *Hellboy*'s Abe Sapien. But his monsters aren't there just for the sake of pure horror; they often symbolize the story's deeper meaning. In this case, it's a father-son relationship and Frankenstein author Mary Shelley's core themes of pain and regret. But del Toro expands the emotional spectrum with forgiveness.

The director has waited his whole life to make this movie — he's a superfan of Shelley's 1818 novel and has a collection of Frankenstein memorabilia at his famous Bleak House in Los Angeles — and at one time, it was going to be two movies: one dedicated to Victor, and the other to the Creature; now it's one movie in two acts. After premiering at the Venice Film Festival and a successful limited theatrical/Oscar-qualifying run, it's now available to stream on Netflix.

Jacob Elordi as the Creature and Mia Goth as Elizabeth in 'Frankenstein'.

Courtesy of Netflix

Below, del Toro, Oscar Isaac, and Jacob Elordi sit down with ** to talk about the director's vision for his long-gestating film, how Isaac found his way into the mad scientist, how Elordi connected with the Creature and found his voice, and more.

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**: Guillermo, I know this movie was a dream of yours to make for a few decades, and you had a very specific vision for it. But what did these guys bring that you weren't expecting? What did they bring that wasn't necessarily part of that vision? **

**GUILLERMO DEL TORO:** Honestly, themselves. And each of them was a surprise because when I met with Oscar the first time, we were just having a general meeting.

**OSCAR ISAAC:** He wasn't even into my acting.

**DEL TORO: **I thought he was an insurance man. I said, "I'll take that." [*laughs*] No, but when we started talking about our fathers and being fathers and the lineage of pain in a family, how it passes from one generation to the next, at the end of the chat, I said, "I'm gonna write it for you." And when I spoke with Jacob the first time on Zoom, I texted Oscar, timestamped, and I said, "I found him. We found him." You can talk about range, you can talk about this, but it's essence. If the character's essence is perfect for the actor, or the actor's to the character, you don't have to think again. You just tailor it to them, and watch them grow. They can't fail.

**Oscar, you had previously told me Victor Frankenstein was not on your list of dream roles, but the experience became a dream...**

**OSCAR ISAAC:** I mean, you say what you gotta say when you're in room... [*laughs*]

Oscar Isaac in 'Frankenstein'.

Ken Woroner / Netflix

**But you did say that it was kind of a dream experience for you, and what you got to do here. How did this push or change you or challenge you in ways that previous roles haven't?**

**ISAAC:** The form of it is so heightened and extreme, which was really exciting. And very early on, Guillermo said, "This is not naturalism. This isn't naturalistic. I want speed: speed of thought, speed of language. You've got lots of things to say, but I need it to move at a much quicker pace than maybe you'd think naturally you would want that to be." Finding the voice, we talked a lot about what that would be, that would ignite that way of speaking. And also, he encompasses such an incredibly physical character. It's very elemental. He's Jungian, he's archetypal...

**DEL TORO:** And running up and down...

**ISAAC:** Yeah! Those tiny little boots, running up and down those steps.

**DEL TORO:** Those cute little boots.

**JACOB ELORDI:** So cute. [*laughs*]

**ISAAC:** So everything about that, which was also what was so indelible and so pleasurable about that, was also what the big challenge was, encompassing all that.

**Your dad is a doctor, and he got to come to set. You told me you were going to take him to the premiere. What was that experience like for him?**

**ISAAC:** Yeah, he came to set and he criticized Guillermo [*laughs*] and he didn't understand why he was doing so many takes.

**DEL TORO:** He said, "I think you got it on the take before." [*laughs*] I said, "Thank you, sir." And then I understood everything.

**ISAAC:** Then he really understood me! He was like, I made the right decision. [*laughs*] And I did, I brought him to the screening in Venice, and at a certain point I was watching it, and I heard some sniffles behind me. I think it really impacted him.

**DEL TORO:** But funny, his dad was very pleased that we had a medical advisor on the set. He goes, "Does he know about Victorian surgery?" ... "He does." ... "Okay."

Jacob Elordi as the Creature in 'Frankenstein'.

Ken Woroner/Netflix

**Jacob, when you look at yourself in the movie, what do you see?**

**JACOB ELORDI: **I love it. It's really nice because I can see how I feel inside when I watch the film, but I can't see me. So it makes it a lot easier to enjoy the picture as a whole 'cause if it was me on screen without all of that, I think I'd be sitting there scratching holes in my head. But I see a lot of myself behind closed doors.

**Oscar mentioned finding the voice. Was there a lot of trial and error for you, finding that very specific sound?**

**ELORDI:** Yeah. Even while we were filming, [Guillermo would] come back from the edit the next morning and he'd say to me, "There's a gravel that needs to be there," because I was developing with the Creature as the Creature developed in the film. I was lucky enough to, for the most part, shoot it in something of a chronological order. So I got to develop the voice as I played it live. But I had a lot of conversations with [*pointing at Oscar*] Gerry early on, and there was this kind of throat chant thing that we would practice and work on, but it was something that evolved.

**DEL TORO: **Tibetan.

**ELORDI:** Tibetan, yeah. A Tibetan throat chant. But it was something that evolved, depending on the physicality of the scene or how he's being treated in the moment affects the way his voice works. And there's also a sensitivity that you wanna find because you don't just want to growl and do something that doesn't mean anything. But I think the voice really comes from every incision, every memory, every different bit of flesh, every life lived — you have to build something that sounds like that.

**ISAAC:** We worked with Gerry Grennell, was a great voice coach.

**DEL TORO:** [Jacob] didn't think [Oscar] was Gerry. [*laughs*]

**ELORDI:** This is my buddy, Gerry.

**ISAAC:** He calls me Gerry. It's totally fine.

**DEL TORO:** The other thing that was very fortunate, not by design, is the way we shot the movie. We started with the scenes where he was most articulate, and then we went to the ones where he was learning vowels and consonants with the Blind Man (played by David Bradley). It happened in the right way, finding the "f" and the "s." The monologue with the Blind Man was out of the teeth...

**ELORDI:** And David Bradley is also super instrumental in the voice, because I had recordings of him doing Shakespeare when he was younger, and then I had him sitting in front of me telling stories about drinking with John Hurt. And you can hear the way he draws words out. And when he remembers something, the way his voice would change to when he's speaking in the present, the way his voice would change. There was just so much to absorb and draw from.

Director Guillermo del Toro and Jacob Elordi on the set of 'Frankenstein'.

Ken Woroner/Netflix

**How closely does the final look of your Creature resemble your original ideas of what he might look like?**

**DEL TORO:** I have a sketch from 1987 that has a couple of the...

**ISAAC:** He had it on set!

**DEL TORO:** The thing that evolved was newly minted. It needed to feel not like a repaired body but a newly minted individual, a soul. And I think the evolution, if you've see *Cronos*, when I'm trying that look with the vampire, and then I try it again with a vampire in *Blade*, it takes a while to find somebody like Mike Hill, who is a true artist and is a true partner in creation to make it feel exquisitely designed, frail, and vulnerable — all these things that should not go together. The difference between Mike and everybody else: 99 percent of makeup artists are gonna create a monster; one percent are gonna create a character, and Mike is in that one percent.

**When we spoke in Toronto, I had not seen the movie yet, and I asked you to describe him. You said "staggeringly beautiful," and I was like, *What's that going to mean*? And when I saw it, it really blew me away.**

**DEL TORO: **Because it is about, can we ruin something beautiful? And sadly, the answer as humans is yes.

**ELORDI:** Always.

**DEL TORO:** You have to see the purity of the moment when Victor touches his cheek and understand that there *could* be a happy ending, but there won't be. When I saw Jacob in *Priscilla*, there's a moment of rage there, I knew from talking to him on the Zoom that he had all this innocence and pain in his eyes, but the *Priscilla* rage, I went, *Okay, this is what can happen*. The work of a director is to watch and listen.

**Jacob, when I spoke with Guillermo in Toronto, he shared with me that you had said you felt the Creature was more you than you. Can you elaborate on that? What is it about what you got to explore that you connected with so deeply?**

**ELORDI:** I was thinking about this as I was driving here. I don't think you can attempt to find truth in something like this without mining into yourself. You can't just do a roar or bend your fingers a certain way. It has to be everything that you have. And I had such a short amount of time from Guillermo calling to go and shoot the film that the only way through was to go and find a place that I hadn't been to before, which is also — [*pointing to Oscar*] which you'll attest to — the treat of acting. It's constantly evolving, and every time there's somewhere else you can go. The Creature gave me this sort of space. It's the kind of character that allows you to fully go to the bottom of whoever you are, and you have to go down there to play it. Otherwise, you sort of have no chance of attempting to do it honestly if you don't,

Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi in 'Frankenstein'.

Courtesy of Netflix

**What was the hardest part about making this for each of you that you weren't expecting? Aside from the days your dad was there.****

**DEL TORO:** Honestly, the way you connect, it becomes a hall of mirrors. And you are all looking for truth and sincerity. I jokingly say it is the first time I have method-directed because it affected me emotionally in a way that no other movie had. Perhaps *Pan's Labyrinth* and *Shape of Water* — those and this are the three times. But this one, I lasted from sort of the first quarter all the way to the end. I felt emotionally involved with the Creature and, sadly, for me, with Victor. [*laughs*] I identified the good traits and the bad traits, and it made me softer.

**For you guys? ****

**ELORDI:** Probably working with Oscar.

**ISAAC:** Me too.

**ELORDI:** Tough stuff. [*laughs*]

**DEL TORO:** Finally, they agree on something. [*laughs*]

**I think people would expect maybe prosthetics, but was that a limitation? **

**ELORDI:** It was so delightful. And I knew it was gonna come to an end as well. There's a finite amount of time that you can put them on for, 'cause the movie has to finish. So to squander any moment in them, I would've just hated myself. People say this all the time, but the more I look back on it, and I look back at being in it, it was just delightful. It was like your dreams playing live, and you are in them, and you're fully conscious and fully awake in your dream. So I can't say anything that was difficult.

**ISAAC:** It's funny 'cause it's not just like looking back now with rose-colored glasses. I kept a journal, and throughout it's like, "This is amazing! ... Oh my God, this day was even better than the last day!" And it really was like that. But of course, there's days where it's like, *Oh, I didn't trust enough, I didn't quite find my flow state, and I was reaching for something when I didn't need to*. So you come in really wanting to leave everything out on the floor, but that's not necessarily different from other films where you just wanna make sure that you're giving everything you can, but the actual joy of doing it was daily.

**Guillermo, you put your own spin on this story, and that includes changing the end of Mary Shelley's version. How did you come to this conclusion? **

**DEL TORO:** I knew I wanted the Creature to have his only act as a human. Meaning, he reacts to love with love, he reacts to hatred with hatred. But the moment they make each other human — father and son — he comes out and he decides in a beautiful moment to say, "The people that attacked me, I'm gonna free them." And turns and pushes [the ship]. And to me, how moving it was... and we were missing a shot that I had to argue with my producing partner — I said, "No, you don't understand, we need that shot." Because you're pushing the ship and looking at it for a second, that gained a lot more weight, I thought. It's a liberation. And I think that's the difference with the book. This ends in a note of possible hope.

*This interview has been edited for clarity and length.*

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