Willem Dafoe Talks The Green Goblin

By Reggie's Take on February 20, 2019

Willem Dafoe one of Hollywood’s unmistakable actors recently sat down for the folks over at GQ to talk about some of his most iconic characters including his role in 2002’s Spider-Man.

After Joel Schumacher made a mockery of comic book films with Batman and Robin in 1997 the first X-Men movie in 2000 opened a door for the genre, but when Sony released Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man in 2002 starring Tobey Maguire it pulled the hinges right out.

In a video interview for GQ, Willem Dafoe sat down and talked about some of his most iconic characters one of them being of course his role as Norman Osborn the CEO of Oscorp aka the Green Goblin. Dafoe talked about how he loved playing a double role in the movie, but found the character of Norman Osborn the more interesting of the two.

“Sam Raimi did a miracle thing, he made kind of a personal film out of a fairly big-sized, partly effect movie. It was early in the game of movies made from comic books, that sort of thing, so there was no template.

I loved in Spider-Man particularly playing the double role. Everybody thinks about the Green Goblin and that was fun, but the more interesting role was probably the father, Norman Osborn. Because you could play these scenes where it would switch from comedy to drama in a line.

I think of the scene where they have like a Thanksgiving dinner. There’s a couple of things that still make me laugh, because they’re so double-edged and they go back forth between being really heavy and really kind of silly and the movie is filled with that.”

Of course who can’t forget the scene where Dafoe argues with himself in the mirror. Director Sam Raimi handed Dafoe a copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to read before shooting the scene.

“It was fun, and we basically did it in one take. I think, in the final thing, for whatever reason, they cut it. But we always shot it in one take, and it became a beautiful game, because I had to switch those things, and also for the camera to be in the mirror the correct way, and I had to dance with the camera a lot on that scene.”

Dafoe found the scenes as the Goblin and being hung from wires fun even comparing it to like playing cops and robbers.

If you would like to hear Dafoe in his own words about Spider-Man and other iconic characters from such films as Platoon, The Last Temptation of Christ, Mississippi Burning and many more you can head over to GQ’s YouTube page.