For the new upcoming short film Dracula’s Ex-Girlfriend, the unseen titular iconic vampire was based partly on the controversial figure Andrew Tate.
Dracula’s Ex-Girlfriend is a short that follows two former rivals who meet up for a quick bite at a restaurant, only for them to fall down the rabbit hole of revisiting a shared toxic lover. The person in question is none other than the legendary Dracula.
Dracula was ever a great, morally sound person in fiction. To that point, this particular one shares some references to Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed misogynist who has been accused of both sexual violence and physical abuse, including allegations of human trafficking and sex with a minor.
Dracula’s Ex-Girlfriend Included One Key Andrew Tate Connection
In an exclusive interview with The Direct's Russ Milheim, Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend actors Morgana Ignis (Fay) and Abigail Thorn (Belladonna) talked about their new short while also revealing that their Dracula shares an uneasy reference to Andrew Tate.
Thorn, who also wrote the movie, revealed that her character Belladonna actually "has Didi (Dracula's nickname) tattooed on her neck," which was "a deliberate reference to Andrew Tate:"
"One thing I definitely wanted to have in from the start is that Bell, who is [Dracula's] current girlfriend, doesn't call him Count Dracula by his full title every single time. It's just too silly. So I called him Didi, which is short for Vladimir and also sounds a little bit like Daddy, which is deliberate. And she has Didi tattooed on her neck, which is a deliberate reference to Andrew Tate, who got some of his alleged victims to tattoo his name on them. So it's just a little hint that this relationship she has with him is not entirely healthy."
As for what both of their connections to the Dracula character were ahead of this short, Thorn revealed that they were actually set to be "in a stage adaptation of Dracula in London," but Covid hit and got it shut down:
"I was in a stage adaptation of Dracula in London, which was all about 'Me Too' and how powerful men get away with stuff... I mean, we sold out, and then we got shut down by Covid lockdowns. We never got to perform it, which is why my two co-producers on that are thanked in the credits of 'Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend.'"
Ignis, believe it or not, was also set to perform Dracula, though theirs was "a newly written stage performance of Dracula" in "Sherman Oaks, California:"
"Mine was a newly written stage performance of Dracula very, sort of tied into the industrial complex and sort of societal and interesting explorations of hierarchies. And there are a lot of metaphors and things like that wrapped in that Dracula performance. But small black box theater in Sherman Oaks, California."
For those coming into Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend hoping for some fun explorations of vampire lore, this might not be the right spot.
When asked about the lore of the world Thorn crafted, they gleefully exclaimed how they "hate lore" and prefer to have "only meaning:"
"I'm so glad you asked because I hate lore. I hate lore. No lore, only meaning, right? That's something I always have in mind. It is like, No, I don't––the rules are vague and confusing. That's deliberate in order to force you to think about what it means as an emotional metaphor, right? There are moments in this [film] where certain characters have reflections and certain characters don't, and that is about their self-esteem."
"One of the characters doesn't have a reflection," they continued, explaining how "it's because her self-esteem has been so ground down:"
"One of the characters doesn't have a reflection, and it's because her self-esteem has been so ground down that she literally cannot even see herself anymore when she looks in the mirror. There's a line somebody says, like, I make my own blood, or like, you can't have you can't have blood. You have to take it from other people. Everybody drinks blood. Blood is not just a physical thing that happens to, you know, in people's veins; it's a life force. Like the blood is the life, to quote the original fucking novel, right? And so everybody, like, feeds on somebody else every, and this is a kind of, like, vampiric rationalization of abuse."
"It's not about the lore and the rules," Thorn elaborated, "The lore is deliberately ambiguous to force you to engage with it on the level of emotional metaphor:"
"And so I wanted to say that it's not about the lore and the rules. It's not like, Oh, it's a virus that's been--we never explained how somebody becomes a vampire in this world. And I think it's a consequence of being so emotionally ground down. And so I wanted to say, to hell with lore, to not bother about that. I'm not going to sit down and give you rules and explain what people's powers are. That is deliberate. The lore is deliberately ambiguous to force you to engage with it on the level of emotional metaphor."
Ignis jumped in to talk about how vampires themselves are a metaphor in their short film, notably in how a "larger than life figure" can come into your life, "give you power," and in turn, "possess you completely:"
"This literally larger-than-life figure comes into your world and decides, I'm going to give you immortality. I'm going to give you power, and in return, I possess you. I possess you completely. You become mine. We're entwined together for all eternity, which is very romantic in theory. And then you realize, oh, I have become this possession of this figure, and I no longer have a life of my own because I've given it up for all these other things. So, it is a toxic abuse cycle that, for my character, went on for 100 years."
Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend streams only on Nebula on Friday, September 13.
