David Dastmalchian Wants to Play a Vampire After ‘Late Night With the Devil’

The Big Picture

• David Dastmalchian’s various talents enable him to embody disturbing characters like Jack Delroy.
• Research and inspiration aided in creating the complex character of Delroy in
  Late Night With the Devil.
• Dastmalchian aspires to create challenging, introspective horror stories that appeal to diverse audiences.

It’s hard to believe, talking to David Dastmalchian, that he’s starred in some of the most terrifying films of the last year. He seems too kind, too honest and open to be the kind of person responsible for scaring the wits out of people, whether as a quartermaster in The Last Voyage of the Demeter or an unsettling therapy patient in Stephen King’s The Boogeyman. While we chatted during the height of this year’s solar eclipse (at least where I was), it felt like we could’ve gone on forever, he in Canada (shooting Murderbot with Alexander Skarsgård) and I in New Orleans, talking about everything and nothing all at once.

But anyone who’s seen Late Night With the Devil, which premieres on Shudder this Friday, knows that Dastmalchian’s talents are many and varied, allowing him to step into the shoes of all kinds of disturbing (or disturbed) characters — including the tragic talk show host Jack Delroy, who attempts salvage the ratings on his show with one last ditch effort that turns out to be more than he bargained for. Delroy was inspired in part by clips of Australian talk show host Don Lane, who Dastmalchian describes as a kind of Fox Mulder character who wasn’t opposed to believing in the impossible, much like the actor himself.

Dastmalchian Wants to Believe in Something More — Which Makes Him Perfect for ‘Late Night With the Devil’

“I definitely have much more Mulder in me than I do Scully,” he tells me. “I definitely want to believe, and I’m always looking for some kind of evidence or proof, [and] I think that was beautiful about Don Lane. He would have people on and he’d say, “What’s wrong with wanting to believe? What is wrong with yearning to believe that there’s something outside of our understanding?” Just because our brains have brought us this far these thousands of years of evolution doesn’t mean we know everything yet…Don was the only person that I really noticed in that space who was as open-minded.”

That research was part of what aided Dastmalchian in creating Jack Delroy, who slides down a slippery slope as his world shifts from the comfortable, constructed world of late night television to something more sinister. “I wanted Jack to not just be a guy who’s exploiting or pushing for ratings,” he explains. “I wanted a real human in there who cared about his show, who cared about people, who was just, unfortunately, so under pressure that he started to make compromises to his own ethics.”

That reality is made all the more visceral by Late Night With the Devil’s found-footage approach to filmmaking, which I compared to something like Ghostwatch, that terrified audiences in the ‘90s when it was presented by the BBC as pure fact. The TV movie was, unsurprisingly, an inspiration for both Dastmalchian and the Cairnes Brothers who directed the movie: “Ghostwatch was always something we would go back to and think about when we were making the film as an inspiration. It’s been an honor to me that people, sometimes in positive reviews or in the posts that I get tagged in on social media, will [give it] comparisons to Ghostwatch. I’m like, “That’s a freaking classic, man. That’s awesome.”

Dastmalchian Had a Lot to Live Up to With His First Horror Lead

I’ve been waiting a year to drag people into Jack Delroy’s hellish world with me, having extolled the virtues of the possession flick after seeing it at last year’s Overlook Film Festival, which celebrates horror movies of all shapes and sizes. I have a fond memory of Dastmalchian, who appeared in person to promote the film, vamping about nothing in particular while theater workers fixed a broken projector — it was the first time I’d heard about his Count Crowley graphic novels, which he hopes to adapt for the screen one day. He and I both agree that genre fans can be the hardest to impress; in his words, “If you’re a hit at Overlook, you’re good.” Indeed, the festival gave the film a “groundswell” of support, as he puts it, and now, it’s making its way to Shudder, where it’ll premiere as part of the streamer’s Halfway to Halloween celebrations — something the star also took part in last year, when he featured on The Boulet Brothers’ Halfway to Halloween variety special.

Late Night With the Devil is Dastmalchian’s first real lead in the horror sphere, which comes with both all the perks and all of the downsides of being in the spotlight. For anyone, the idea of that would be stressful — especially given the kind of heavy-duty press tours stars undergo these days — and the star has his own way of dealing with all eyes being turned in his direction. For him, managing the stress is a matter of balance, of finding space between his private and public lives so that both he and the art can flourish:

“I have to manufacture some space in there in between what is my safety zone of privacy, the person that I can be behind the scenes who needs to just sometimes let down his guard and cry or be scared or deal with his anxiety or try to manage his depression…so, [it’s]
that
guy juxtaposed with the guy at film festivals celebrating movies, who’s a real version of me. It’s not like he’s some fake, put upon charlatan. That’s real David, but there’s also real David that exists in private, and I want to always try and find the bridge of authenticity between the two so that I can feel safe being myself.”

But Late Night With the Devil isn’t all that the actor has going on. He’s currently in Canada shooting Murderbot, a sci-fi thriller series, and is also set to appear in Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, another Stephen King adaptation to add to his list of credits. Beyond that, there’s still so much he wants to do, too. He says it’s a “crock” that he’s been in so many vampire films, but has yet to actually play one — which I agree with, given he’s got the perfect countenance for an undead nightstalker. “I’ve gotten to be in some really cool movies with a vampire, and yet I don’t get to be the vampire,” he says. “I keep wondering, like, “When is someone gonna cast me as a bloodsucker?” I feel like I was born to be a bloodsucker. It makes no sense.”

Indeed, he self-describes as a kind of vampire, having been diagnosed with the autoimmune disorder vitiligo that, much like Dracula or Lestat de Lioncourt, makes the sun his enemy. But that doesn’t stop him from striving to make good art, valuable art, that can appeal to (and maybe scare) people of all ages. “I want to tell stories that are super challenging and introspective with really complicated ideas for horror,” he says. “I also really want to tell stories that help us confront fears, that maybe could be appealing to audiences of all ages. I’ve always been a fan of things like The Monster Squad and Temple of Doom and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, so I think it would be really wonderful to create stories [like that].”

Dastmalchian Just Wants to Make Good Art

He doesn’t mind being labeled a “genre actor” either, as, to quote a Twitter meme that’s been going around, the kind of actor who makes you say “hell yeah” whenever they show up in a supporting role. “I think about a film like Boogie Nights,” he says, “Which is just chock-full of so many insanely incredible performances. You go from Julianne Moore to Mark Wahlberg to John C. Riley to Heather Graham to Burt Reynolds…and here comes Alfred Molina in one scene, one scene, and just devours the screen. And I go, “There you go, man. That’s your answer.”

For him, it’s the roles that make it for him, things that move him to grow as both an actor and as a person, surrounded by creatives and people he admires: “I just want to work, and I want to continue to rise to the challenge and overcome my fear of playing roles that I don’t think I’m capable of playing. I want to be working with people who are able to communicate their vision with clarity and with compassion and with innovation. Whatever that next role may be, as long as it’s something that pushes me outside of my comfort zone and challenges my work as an actor and gives me an opportunity to play the music that I love to play, I’m happy to take it on.”

Late Night With the Devil premieres on Shudder on April 19.