“For me, as a woman of colour from a working class background, all of these ideas resonate with me,” she tells ELLE Australia.

The story of Dracula is already well known to the masses—but you haven’t known it like this. New vampire horror film, The Invitation has taken Dracula’s narrative and transformed it into a masterclass of drama, jump-scares and a confronting reflection of society itself.

Leading the film is Game Of Thrones star, Nathalie Emmanuel, who plays Evie, an American woman who is introduced to her long lost relatives in the UK at a family wedding, only to find that their host, Walter (Thomas Doherty), is not everything he seems—he’s a vampire.

“I got shut in a coffin,” Emmanuel tells ELLE over a Zoom interview ahead of the films release. There’s a sense of revulsion in the way she says it as she recalls the moment her character was shut into the wooden box after realising what her relatives are.

“Whether you think that is real or not, getting shut in a box is horrible. Don’t do it! Don’t do it when you’re alive!” She pleads with a laugh.

Emmanuel’s character and her background is central to one of the key themes from the film. After losing her mother, Evie is excited to connect with previously unknown relatives—a rich British family of great privilege who invite her to the estate for a wedding.

When she gets there, it becomes clear how unfairly separated she is from this world of privileged, white upper-class aristocracy.
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“[I’ve had people] touch my hair like it’s a bomb about to go off.”

The Game of Thrones alum, who currently stars in The Invitation, spent her 20s fighting hair discrimination on set. Now 33, she’s made a big change — but there’s “joy, defiance, and empowerment” in her new, cropped look.

In my teens and 20s, I was already acting and started being in the public eye. Suddenly I had to present myself a certain way and had the expectations of the world on me. I felt a bit overwhelmed. My mum was always like, “It’s not about your appearance. You are beautiful. You
don’t need anything. You’re talented, you’re smart, kind, funny.” I could only be me at the end of the day.

But I was on a TV show in England called Hollyoaks, which was a teen show. A lot of students watched it and a lot of the women [in the cast] were very beautiful, glamorous. I definitely tried to become that.

There was a lot of pressure to conform, to have straight hair and do the aesthetic that was very Western/white. Every time I would straighten my hair, people would be like, “Oh, my God, I love your hair! You should do this all the time.” I’d always be like, “Hmm, or not.” I’ve always had quite a strong sense of myself, [but] you do just want to fit in at that age. You tend to be much more vulnerable to influence.

I remember when I first went to America and met other Black and mixed-race women [and they said], “Oh yeah, you need to get a weave. You need to have straight hair.” And I was like, “Really?” I just actively didn’t want to do that. That’s everybody’s choice for themselves. But for me it never felt right. I’ve had my hair damaged on set because someone wasn’t treating it right and literally had to cut off loads of it. That was just really heartbreaking.
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Nathalie Emmanuel doesn’t know much about cracking safes (“Like, literally not at all,” she confesses), but it’s the central skill in her new film, Army of Thieves, now streaming on Netflix.

A prequel to Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, the heist flick follows Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) before his zombie encounters, when he was recruited by a band of crooks to unlock a set of legendary and nearly impossible safes created by the fictitious designer Hans Vagner and, of course, steal the money inside them. Their schemes take them from Paris to Prague to St. Moritz, all while evading the clutches of Interpol.

While the premise was “a whole new thing” to Emmanuel, who plays jewelry thief Gwendoline and love interest to Ludwig (then known as Sebastian), she was drawn to the script and the mythology behind the storied locks. Their extremely detailed clues are found in Richard Wagner’s operas and Norse epics. “These stories are timeless and the kind of epicness of them are so amazing and so enticing,” Emmanuel gushes.

The actress has a penchant for epic stories. She’s starred in Game of Thrones and the Fast & Furious franchise and, for the romantics, the Four Weddings and a Funeral reboot. With Army of Thieves, she enters the Zack Snyder cinematic universe for yet another large-scale project with a major fanbase. She’s also set to star in a modern adaptation of Dracula, called The Bride, which she’s filming now in Budapest. Could a superhero movie be next? “I’m happy just to do it one time,” she says.

The funny thing about making Army of Thieves was that it was filmed months before Army of the Dead even came out. Emmanuel didn’t get to watch it for context. But Schweighöfer, who both starred and directed, fed her the highlights during production. They were also shooting during the COVID surge last fall, before vaccinations were widely distributed and people still refrained from large public gatherings. The cast was encouraged to avoid crowds and there was a strict mask mandate on set, but that also meant the actors couldn’t really bond outside of filming.
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