The Willem Dafoe role inspired by a character from ‘The Simpsons’: “It’s this close”
Theoretically speaking, Willem Dafoe is such a versatile and chameleonic character actor that if The Simpsons were ever given the live-action treatment, there aren’t many roles he couldn’t play.
He’s capable of doing bumbling comedy and emulating a number of accents, so it’s not out of the question to suggest he could do a decent Homer. He can do the villainous thing in his sleep, so Mr Burns wouldn’t exactly be pushing him towards avenues he hasn’t explored countless times before.
Stick a moustache on him, and he’s Ned Flanders. He can do the stoic and authoritative thing, too, which would make him a solid Principal Skinner or even Superintendent Chalmers. Groundskeeper Willie? Poor Things showed he’s got the questionable Scottish accent down pat, so absolutely.
It’s all just ludicrous spitballing, of course, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t do it. After all, Dafoe has played almost every kind of character under the sun and has remained constantly in demand for so long because there are no limits to which characters he plays, how he’s willing to play them, or the sacrifices he’s happy to make in serve of the story and the director’s vision.
Not that Springfield’s first family would ever be considered for live-action when that’s about as off-limits as it gets, never mind the fact it would be terrifying to look at. Still, he got his inadvertent fix of The Simpsons anyway, with Robert Eggers admitting that on the page, The Lighthouse‘s Thomas Wake wasn’t all that dissimilar from a longtime fan favourite.
“I mean, look,” the filmmaker confessed to Rolling Stone. “His character, especially in the early drafts, is a kind of hodgepodge of Captain Ahab, Long John Silver and the sea captain from The Simpsons. It’s this close to, ‘Shiver me timbers!’ We researched things to the point where it felt like something authentic, but we needed an actor like Willem to make that character feel real.”
After being said out loud, it immediately becomes impossible to imagine Dafoe in The Lighthouse without thinking of the sea captain, one of those characters who most definitely isn’t known by their actual name, Horatio McCallister. The beard, the cap, and the corncob pipe might be period-accurate and driven by Eggers’ constant desire to achieve the utmost authenticity, but pointing it out was a mistake.
It’s easy to overlook or ignore the influences of Moby Dick or Treasure Island because those are both serious – and seminal – seafaring stories. The sea captain, however, is much harder to shake. It might have been Robert Pattinson who took things too far while shooting The Lighthouse, but Dafoe’s performance has been permanently altered in an instant knowing that the shadow of The Simpsons was looming overhead during Eggers’ writing process.
