Academy Award-winning writer and director Neil Jordan’s most recent project, Greta, is an elegant twist on the Bluebeard fairytale which positions Isabelle Huppert as the macabre figure at the center collecting young women. Jordan, who has gained acclaim for psychological thrillers such as The Crying Game and horror stories like Interview with the Vampire, discussed his interest in a different kind of villain as well as the new elements he helped inject into Ray Wright’s original screenplay.

Screen Rant: You said Greta would normally be a man and a woman. So what inspired you to change it to a maternal one between two women?

Screen Rant: Like taking “stop growing up” literally.

Neil Jordan: Oh, it was the script. I didn’t write the script, it was written by a writer called Ray Wright who lives in Hollywood. And it was a thriller, a generic thriller, but there [were] several fascinating things about it. I suppose one was the handbag. And the main thing was the fact that the monster figure, the Bluebeard which would normally be played by a man – either a demented kind of misshapen person in sweaty strainers with mommy issues or a suave, sophisticated person like Jeremy Irons or [Christoph Waltz] or someone like that – was played by a woman. And I thought, ‘Okay, this is really interesting.’

Because it does two things: on the one hand, it takes the sexual dimension out of this obsessive relationship and replaces it with the idea of motherhood, you know, and loneliness. And on the other hand, everything to do with this villainess now can be so much more sophisticated. [She has] an elegance, a kind of intelligence, can speak French, can play the piano, can make a nice cup of tea, make these strange little cookies. And to me, I thought a movie that was about motherhood gone so demented that it would actually confine its ersatz daughter and do everything humanly possible to keep this figure within its environment was interesting.

Screen Rant: Another aspect that I found really interesting was the role that law enforcement played – or rather failed to play – in the story. Was that a conscious choice, a message that you guys wanted to get out

Neil Jordan: Yeah.

Screen Rant: Finally, you said you wanted to “terrify people with beautiful music,” and I think you definitely accomplished that.

Neil Jordan: Well, I had to take some advice. I’m from Ireland, and the Irish police are notoriously inefficient. But I had to take advice on what the New York laws would be. I researched it as far as I could, how you could stop somebody standing outside your restaurant or your workplace staring at you. Is that a crime? I’m not sure. Is, like, bombing somebody with phone messages – ‘Why haven’t you called me? Why haven’t you called me?’ – is that a crime? I don’t think so, not yet. Maybe someday it will be. Is leaving handbags on a subway with your address, is that a crime? Perhaps not. It’s definitely a crime confining people to a secret room and shoving them in boxes – [those] should be definitely crimes. But everything that led to that seemed not entirely criminal.

More: Chloë Grace Moretz Interview for Greta

Neil Jordan: I tried to, yeah. It was all through the character of – building up the character that [Isabelle Huppert] plays. Because she presents herself as French, which is very alluring and seductive in itself, but she’s actually from some dark wood in Hungary. Now the great thing is Hungary [has] this great musical tradition, from Franz Liszt onwards. Chopin, of course, is Polish, I think. But she had this musical background and this European sophistication, and I always wanted to take a piece of classical music that was so well known, almost saccharine in its kind of romanticism, and make it increasingly creepy. Make it something that could be used as a weapon almost with the [right] character, which is what we did.

  • Greta Release Date: 2019-03-01