Robert Eggers on the Creative Case for Repeat Collaborators
Robert Eggers has often returned to the same collaborators since his 2015 feature debut, The Witch. He believes those lasting relationships inspire creative freedom: over time, he says, the collaborators' taste becomes intermingled and becomes one.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a returning collaborator, and the lead in Werwulf was written with him in mind: there is no one who can play the role, and the things he does with his body are incredibly athletic. Sjón, who previously worked with Eggers on The Northman, is credited as “actually creative” and able to bring more ideas to the table than the director can.
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The interesting claim is that repeat collaboration produces creative freedom, not just comfort. Eggers describes taste becoming intermingled and one; that sounds less like a hiring policy than a shared instrument that gets tuned over years.
The risk is that a shared instrument can get stuck playing the same tune. Eggers himself jokes that he is “kind of doing the same stuff… every time. For better or for worse,” and Bogutskaya assured him it was for the better.