IN CONVERSATION WITH FELIX KAMMERER

interview TIMOTEJ LETONJA
words NATALIE GAL

Felix Kammerer comes from Vienna’s theatre scene and has been making his mark in film over the past few years. On screen, you can truly feel how deeply he connects with his characters, approaching them with a simple yet profoundly human understanding of their psychology. In this interview, part of our Frankenstein series, we talked to him about the character he created together with director Guillermo del Toro, how it felt to work with such an incredible cast and the original material.

This interview contains spoilers for the 2025 film Frankenstein.

images courtesy of NETFLIX

Your character, William Frankenstein (brother of Victor, who is played by Oscar Isaac), is seen as the “golden child” of the family and separated from his brother. How did you explore and develop that sibling relationship, and what did you find most interesting about the dynamic between them?

It was quite fun because it's something I can't relate to privately because I'm an only child who doesn't have any siblings. But going on that ride with Oscar and with Guillermo together, it was quite interesting because Oscar has siblings and Guillermo has siblings and to hear them talk about their family and to also bring my part in without knowing better. It was a journey to create these characters, Oscar on his side and me on mine. We brought those characters alive while interacting with each other. Sometimes it felt like they needed each other to really exist. You need William for Victor and you need Victor for William. Otherwise it wouldn't really work.

Victor is responsible for your character’s death and actually he's the monster in my prospect of watching the film. What is your point of view on this conclusion and the dynamic you had with Victor in the film, him being responsible for William’s death?

The film needs someone to tell Victor the truth and many people know the truth about Victor and him being quite detached from reality. He needs his brother to tell him that, remind him what journey he's on. But I think that this thought had come much earlier in the course of the film, his brother wouldn't tell him until it's basically too late in the end. Who better from the brother, of course? Maybe he wouldn't accept it from anyone else. Maybe it needs his brother to tell him that otherwise he just wouldn't believe it. 

You’ve mentioned that your character was already quite present and well-formed on the page when you received the script. Do you generally prefer working with a fully written, defined character, or do you enjoy shaping and building them according to your own interpretation?

Sometimes it's really interesting to develop something from scratch, which was basically the case for this film because in the original William is actually not existent. It's a five year old boy who has been mentioned two times. But Guillermo came up with his amazing background that was fun working with it, especially because Guillermo already had so many precise character parts that he wanted in William. 

But very often it's even helpful to start with nothing and then just sit in front of a blank page and just go on the hunt for the character yourself. Keep searching until you find a little hint and then you go on from there. It's like a scavenger hunt. That is very interesting sometimes, but with this work having someone by your side like Guillermo who leads you towards those certain checkpoints is really a pleasure.

image courtesy of NETFLIX

How is it like working with Guillermo for the first time on this project? 

I was so excited to start this work, but I was a bit anxious because sometimes you meet your heroes and you're disappointed that your expectations are not met. Sometimes people with a lot of experience, a lot of fame, seem to be out of touch or a bit arrogant and you can't really connect. Guillermo is such a dreamy, deep feeling person that I would connect with his romantic values, but then you start talking to him and he tells you about books and philosophers and you can tell that he really read all of that material and he knows everything about basically everything. He can talk to you about any topic all the time and that is a combination that's very rarely found. 

When preparing for this role, how did you approach getting to know the setting and the world of this film? Did you revisit Mary Shelley's novel or historic materials from that era or did you take a more instinctive character-driven approach focused on William's personal psychology? 

In this case it was more from the guts because there was no material from the novel and I could have taken some material from Mary Shelley's life –  which I also thought about, because William was the name of her child – but then it gets so sophisticated and so thought through that doesn't come alive so easily. So it felt more genuine to just work through it with Guillermo. 

He is not only an incredible director but also has such an incredible cast. How is it like working with all these incredible co-stars on the film and how was the dynamic collaborating on making this film?

Just a treat. It was really an absolute treat to work with all the cast members – with Oscar Isaacs, Mia Goth and Jacob Elordi – who I spent quite some time on set with. With Christoph Waltz we went out for dinner quite often and could connect very well. It is rare to find someone who knows culture and language from the place where you come from, that being Vienna. Suddenly you sit in Toronto with an amazing actor who happens to just know the exact places where you grew up, which is fun. 

If you could describe this film to people who hadn't seen it, in three words, what would be those three words? 

Three words. Guillermo del Toro.