Dan Stevens on What It Takes to Be King Kong’s Dentist
Having already fought Godzilla, there was only one more daunting obstacle for King Kong to deal with next: A trip to the dentist. Luckily, in the new movie Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, the world’s foremost kaiju tooth specialist has a great bedside manner. Dan Stevens plays Trapper, a confident and laid-back dentist to the mon-stars who fixes Kong’s toothache before joining Kong expert Dr. Ilene Andrews and conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes (Rebecca Hall and Brian Tyree Henry, returning from 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong) on a journey into the depths of Hollow Earth to learn about a new threat that will force the title monsters to team up.
It’s not the first time Stevens has co-starred with giant monsters. He was in the Anne Hathaway movie Colossal a few years back, and he lent his voice to Netflix’s Oscar-nominated animated flick The Sea Beast. And, of course, he played an iconic monster, albeit on a more human scale, in the live-action Beauty and the Beast.
Godzilla x Kong isn’t just a return to monster movies; it reunites Stevens with director Adam Wingard, who directed him in the modern cult classic The Guest a decade ago. It’s a reunion for Stevens and Hall, too, as the pair’s friendship goes back 20 years when they were flatmates at the University of Cambridge, and they’ve since acted onstage and onscreen together. But, as nice as that might be for Stevens, it’s clearly Godzilla and Kong who are the big names in this big, silly movie. To stand out, Stevens had to make sure his monster dentist could chew the scenery himself.
How do you deal with being a human character in a movie where the monsters are clearly the main draw? Is it a challenge? Do you try to go bigger than Godzilla?
It’s both a sort of treat and a challenge, in that you know the movie is about these two Titans. I find that when I am watching these movies and you cut to the human story lines, you don’t want to see it taken too seriously. Obviously, the threat of peril is there, but you want to see some fun, some humor. It’s the reason why the humans are there; you want human responses. Everybody can’t be deadly serious all the time, being like “Kong’s on the move” or “Godzilla’s on the move.” Especially when the two main events are not physically present.
Compared to Godzilla Minus One or even the 2014 Godzilla that started the MonsterVerse, The New Empire is gloriously, unabashedly silly. What’s it like slotting into a franchise that has such a wide range of tones? Are you playing this like a comedy?
With every movie, they get to sort of stand on their own, and they should stand on their own. That’s one of the foreboding things about franchises sometimes. “Oh God, do I need to have seen every other iteration of this to understand what’s happening?” The answer should be no.
This has the tone of adventure movies. There’s an ’80s-throwback feel when you’re in the hands of Adam Wingard. Rebecca and I talked a lot about things like Romancing the Stone. It’s a romp. It’s an adventure where they’re having fun. Sure, there’s peril, but you know they’re going to get out of it. There’s a character in there who has got a bit of charm and is throwing in odd humor at the weirdest times. That, for me, fits in this world. It was nice to pop that piece in the puzzle.
Rebecca Hall floors me in these movies because, on the one hand, she directed Passing and starred in some truly bold, fucked-up horror movies. And, on the other hand, she says lines like “Kong bows to no one,” and when she says it, I believe it. You’re doing the same thing here too. Given that you go way back with her and have a genre-spanning filmography yourself, was it helpful to have her as a guide?
Rebecca is extraordinary. An artist in every sense of the world and a master at her craft in many different guises. She will say she takes perverse pleasure in delivering extremely serious dialogue to a tennis ball at the end of a stick. It’s a real skill that not everybody can do, and she does it amazingly well. The fun of this movie is that it’s pretense on such a grand scale. Sure, acting is imagination, it’s pretending — this is just titanic-size imagination. The silliness that goes on in between takes of a scene where Rebecca, for example, is delivering heavy exposition, is delightful. We all know how silly it is. It’s part of the fun of these franchises, really.
And you’ve worked with Adam Wingard before this. Does this feel like some sort of natural culmination?
Oh God, I hope it’s not a culmination. I hope it’s a continuation. We’ve only done the one project together, but we’ve been friends ever since and have talked about many other things in the meantime of varying shapes and sizes in various sorts of genres. Adam’s a terrific filmmaker and somebody I’ve been lucky to consider a friend. He’s such an enthusiast for the cinema, really. He’s so steeped in it. I could watch as many movies as I can for the rest of my life and I will not have seen as many as Adam Wingard. I hope that there are more things to come from the two of us.
I have a lot of questions about Trapper’s backstory. How does one become a kaiju dentist?
I think he’s had a bit of a checkered career. He was academically on par with Dr. Andrews back in the day, or at least they shared a few classes together at college. We had the thought that perhaps his parents ran a zoo. And he would go off around the world on these wild trips. There are very few jungles or deserts that he hasn’t been to. So therefore there’s very little that fazes him, and he could transition to treating titanic-size creatures very easily. I guess he’s like a cross between a Steve Irwin or Bear Grylls, with a bit of Ace Ventura and Crocodile Dundee peppered in there.
Were there any other inspirations behind Trapper?
Definitely some ’80s Kurt Russell or Michael Douglas vibes in there. Movies like Romancing the Stone and Big Trouble in Little China, which Adam and I have always been fans of. Those have characters who have a certain kind of movie cool about them. Even though in Trapper we kind of send that up a little bit. He’s not quite as hard as you’d expect. He’s got a curious softness to him but also pulls off cool moments when you need them best.
I can’t tell if it’s surprising or if it makes sense that the characters you’re listing as inspiration are not characters from other giant-monster movies.
No, exactly. Those are all great, but I’m not looking to repeat anything anyone’s done. It’s an Adam Wingard kaiju movie. We want to make that very clear. When I’m working with Adam and the way I feel about his films, you want to feel like you’re in an Adam Wingard movie. It will have an incredible soundtrack; it’s like a dance party. So the ’80s influence and having a dance-party vibe was really kind of forefront in our minds rather than being like, “Okay, you need to do it like this guy did in whichever Kong or Godzilla movie you want to insert.”
And then frequently the human characters in those movies are not the most memorable parts of those movies. It would make sense that you’d want to do a Kurt Russell — though he actually was in the Godzilla TV show, funny enough.
No one’s trying to compete with Godzilla or Kong, but if you are going to have people in there, why not make them a bit extraordinary and a bit weird or a bit funny. Those, for me, are the characters that I remember from my moviegoing upbringing. Like Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park. It sticks in the memory in the midst of total chaos.
Did you have any input in Trapper’s wardrobe? Nothing like doing kaiju dentistry and going to the center of the Earth wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
It was certainly a fun fitting. I think Adam had a pretty clear sense of who he wanted Trapper to be and look like. There is a character from G.I. Joe — it’s a deep cut — called Chuckles, I believe, who, when you look up Chuckles, does bear more than a passing resemblance to Trapper. He wanted to have the ’80s-action-figure feel to Trapper, and I think they nailed it.
Trapper seems pretty nonchalant when he’s giving Kong a root canal. Where has he practiced this before?
Do you think he’s taken out a Titan tooth before? I kind of think he has. He’s worked his way up the creatures. Say his parents did own a zoo. He probably started off treating some lambs or some bunny rabbits. Then he worked his way up to the alligators and the kangaroos, and things sort of escalated from there. I definitely wanted the feeling that you’re in great hands with Trapper. They drop him in, he’s got an awesome tune blaring. He’s not like, “Ooh, this is going to be tough” with a long drawn-out scene of somebody who is very nervous about this. No. Dr. Andrews knows exactly who to call when she sees that abscess in Kong’s mouth.