David Dastmalchian reveals the shocking history he shares with 'The Last Voyage of The Demeter'
Horror fans know David Dastmalchian, and we know he loves horror. The American actor has built his reputation by bringing a haunted quality to characters like the Polka-Dot Man in The Suicide Squad or an eerie suspect in the missing-child thriller Prisoners. He's been a celebrity presenter at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, a guest judge on the Boulet Brothers' Dragula, and created his own comic book series, Count Crowley: Reluctant Midnight Monster. This year alone, he's bringing his riveting screen presence to three intriguing horror films: the festival favorite Late Night With the Devil, the Stephen King stunner The Boogeyman, and now the vampire-centered nautical adventure, The Last Voyage of the Demeter. The Last Voyage of the Demeter is set on a ship sailing from Carpathia to England, carrying a series of curious crates from an infamous count. What was an epistolary chapter in Bram Stoker's classic Dracula is brought to vivid life in director André Øvredal's gory and grim adaptatio
Horror fans know David Dastmalchian, and we know he loves horror.
The American actor has built his reputation by bringing a haunted quality to characters like the Polka-Dot Man in The Suicide Squad or an eerie suspect in the missing-child thriller Prisoners. He's been a celebrity presenter at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, a guest judge on the Boulet Brothers' Dragula, and created his own comic book series, Count Crowley: Reluctant Midnight Monster. This year alone, he's bringing his riveting screen presence to three intriguing horror films: the festival favorite Late Night With the Devil, the Stephen King stunner The Boogeyman, and now the vampire-centered nautical adventure, The Last Voyage of the Demeter.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is set on a ship sailing from Carpathia to England, carrying a series of curious crates from an infamous count. What was an epistolary chapter in Bram Stoker's classic Dracula is brought to vivid life in director André Øvredal's gory and grim adaptation. Dastmalchian plays a hardened first mate called Wojchek who — no matter how the nightmarish events that unfold — holds fast to his post and his devotion to the Demeter, his ship, his home, and his greatest love.
What fans may not know is that the character he plays in this Dracula-inspired tale hits close to home for the performer. Though he grew up far from the Demeter's treacherous waters, Dastmalchian connected to this sailor's journey, having earned his sea legs as an aspiring actor. In an interview with Mashable, Dastmalchian reminisced about this time in his life.
David Dastmalchian found his future in comics, then on the water.
"I grew up in Kansas," the actor began over a Zoom interview, conducted before the SAG/AFTRA strike. "And the path for me to get financial assistance to go to college was through athletics. I was decent enough at football that I was getting opportunities to possibly play college football. Through the encouragement of teachers, I auditioned for a theater conservatory acting program in Chicago at DePaul [University], the theater school. And I not only got accepted to the program, I was given a scholarship. So, I moved to Chicago and all of a sudden, my life changed.
"There, I was immersed in the works of classic improvisational techniques of Spolin [Viola Spolin, the mother of improvisational theater], to great drama, Shakespeare to Miller, et cetera," Dastmalchian shared, before noting that the scholarship — while life-changing — didn't cover all costs. "I didn't have the extra money to pay for, like, food and housing. So I went to the school at one point, and I said, 'I need a break, I have to go work for a minute. And then I'll be back to finish my degree.'"
Rather than looking to the want ads for work, he looked to comic books. "I had always read in the backs of comic books these ads that would say, 'Make $1,000 a week: Be a fisherman in Alaska. Work in a cannery in Alaska,'" he explained. And that was that. "I took a Greyhound bus to Seattle, Washington, which is where I had heard all of the fishing companies were, and I just started going to the docks, and going up to the guys of the boats and saying, 'How do I get a job here?'"
Like the characters in The Last Voyage of Demeter, Dastmalchian has met rejection at the docks.
In The Last Voyage of the Demeter, a similar scene plays out, where an English doctor (Corey Hawkins) desperate to get back home, scours for a job at the docks. Like Dastmalchian, rejection was more plentiful than opportunity.
"Just like being an actor, you get told no, and then no, no, no," Dastmalchian said. "And then eventually, somebody says, 'Come on.' I mean, I slept in a park and in a homeless shelter until I got on a boat. And then when I did, I stayed there for a long time. And I loved it. And I was able to make enough money to help me get back to school. It changed my life, gave me a perspective on the world that I never could have gotten in any other experience."
That's the stuff that Halloween dreams are made [of].
Shooting The Last Voyage of Demeter, this love of being on a boat returned to him. Dastmalchian shared how he connected to Wojchek in that love of the Demeter itself. "I was always finding little things [on the ship, during the shoot] to be, like, repairing or paying attention to in the wood and, like, the space and what it meant to me."
This connection is felt in the film when another crew member suggests that to save humanity from this rampaging, blood-sucking vampire, they may need to sink the Demeter. In this tense dilemma, the typically steely Wojchek reveals an electrifying tenderness. "We all have that thing," Dastmalchian mused. "If it's not a boat — it doesn't have to be a physical place or a physical thing. It could be a person." Whatever the shape or source, it's something that feels like home. "So saying to me, 'We're going to scuttle the Demeter to defeat this monster' would be like saying to me, 'We're going to take away acting to save your mental health,' or something like that, where I know I have to save my mental health. But you're destroying my life to save my life. It's a beautifully tragic kind of motif."
David Dastmalchian finds joy in horror.
As a kid, the future movie star would stay up late to tune into Creature Feature, a Kansas City late-night show hosted by Crematia Mortem (aka The Ghostess with the Mostess). There, he was introduced not only to the Universal Monsters but also to William Castle and Hammer's versions of horror.
"There's something about that foggy entrance into the House on Haunted Hill," Dastmalchian recalled, "into the spooky, cavernous dwellings of old mad scientists, laboratories, and graveyards populated by, you know, ne'er-do-wells, old haunted castles. That's the stuff that Halloween dreams are made [of]. That is the stuff that gets me going, man. That's what I love and live for."
Now he's not only an appreciator of horror's past but a voice in its future. Between The Last Voyage of the Demeter, The Boogeyman, and Late Night with the Devil, Dastmalchian is riding high, reveling in getting to be a crucial part of three daring horror movies.
"That's crazy," he reflected on this trifecta. "And they're so different. I am a child of the genre. And it's so important to me [to be a part of it], and I love it so much. So the fact that I get to be in the 1970s[-set] exorcism drama, and then a contemporary adaptation of a Stephen King short story, and now an adaptation cinematically bringing to life one of the coolest chapters of Bram Stoker's Dracula, it's like, don't pinch me if I'm sleeping, because I don't want to wake up!"
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