This KC movie star faces off against ‘Oppenheimer.’ His foe next weekend: Dracula

In sixth grade, David Dastmalchian donned a black cloak and red pendant to go trick-or-treating as his favorite cinematic vampire. This kicked off a Halloween tradition of putting on a neighborhood haunted house in his Overland Park basement, where he always served as its Dracula-inspired host.

The homage persisted at Shawnee Mission South High School.

“I was ‘gothy,’” the actor remembers. “I totally dressed in a non-ironic, serious, sexy way like Dracula.”

At a high school fundraiser, he wore a Dracula costume and actually arrived in a hearse. His school also presented a stage version of “Dracula,” where he helped build the sets.

“My girlfriend at the time played Lucy. She had the fangs, the makeup, the blood. I was like, ‘This is the coolest thing ever,’” he says. “But … I wanted to play Dracula.’”

Dastmalchian hasn’t quite achieved that goal. Although next weekend he gets pretty close. The prolific performer stars in the new movie “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” which takes inspiration from a chapter in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” It follows a merchant ship in 1897 as it attempts to complete a journey from Romania to England while a malevolent stowaway is picking off the crew.

Corey Hawkins (who stars in the upcoming “The Color Purple” remake) stars as a doctor sniffing out trouble aboard the ship. Dastmalchian portrays Wojchek, the Demeter’s first mate. Theyshot the film two summers ago in Germany and Malta at some very familiar locations for genre fans.

“I always look to scientific reality and data, but there is a part of me that can’t help acknowledge the almost metaphysical properties of things that reflect ‘haunted spaces,’” he says.

They filmed at the old Babelsberg movie studio near Berlin, where, “I got to be in the walls wherein seminal film was created; on the ground where F. W. Murnau walked and Marlene Dietrich brought characters to life, where the sets of ‘Metropolis’ were painted and constructed, where Max Schreck was creeping around those stages in ‘Nosferatu.’”

Now 100 years later, Dastmalchian says he can’t believe he “got to tell another story in the annals of the Dracula mythos.”

Dastmalchian is speaking from his Los Angeles home office over Zoom (a week prior to the current Screen Actors Guild strike) before embarking on a whirlwind month that takes him to premieres in London and New York, then on to the San Diego Comic-Con.

The actor is dressed in a black Crematia Mortem T-shirt in honor of the host of Kansas City’s “Creature Feature,” which aired on KSHB-41 during the 1980s. A glow-in-the-dark plastic Dracula model sits atop his desk. A spinner rack displays comic books he’s written and those highlighting numerous Marvel and DC characters he’s played. On the wall are posters from his career, including “Suicide Squad,” “Ant-Man” and “All Creatures Here Below” (a drama he wrote and shot in KC in 2016).

“I really fought hard to be a part of this movie,” he says of “Demeter,” where he enjoys far more screen time than Dracula himself.

His fight continued after being cast. Norwegian director André Øvredal insisted the actors learn how to navigate a ship, so the filmmaker blocked out a significant amount of time to train them as sailors.

“These are obviously more contemporary ships than the Demeter, but the operational mechanisms of the rigging and such is still pretty old-school,” he says. “It was so important for us to get our bodies in that place and think about what these guys are doing 24 hours a day, seven days a week to keep moving on the sea.”

Interestingly, this wasn’t Dastmalchian’s first professional stint on a boat. Decades ago after he moved to Chicago to study acting, he needed money to pay for housing and food expenses. So he took a break from school and went to Alaska to work as a professional fisherman.

“I lived on a boat for a year, and this latest experience took me right back there,” he says.

Dastmalchian is not the lone Kansas City connection to this high-budget horror picture.

Mitch Brian, a teaching professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Media Art and Design Department, came onboard as one of its screenwriters decades ago. Back then he was collaborating with German director Robert Schwentke when they were sent Bragi F. Schut’s original 2002 draft (with its current title).

“We read the script and went in to pitch a rewrite for Robert to direct,” Brian says. “We felt that its all-male cast needed a female character and came up with the female stowaway, as well as some ways to deepen the mythology of Dracula, including a variation on the vampire’s ‘familiar,’ and added a more international crew of characters.”

But when Schwentke went on to direct the Jodie Foster thriller “Flightplan,” that was the end of the pair’s involvement. From there it went through multiple directors and screenwriters — Brian believes at least a dozen writers over 20 years.

Although Brian sought a co-story credit, it was denied by the Writers Guild of America arbitration process. (Only three writers can be credited, and given novelist Stoker and original writer Bragi’s contributions, that only left room for one more — in this case, Zak Olkewicz of “Bullet Train” fame.)

Regardless, the screenwriter says he is looking forward to seeing the finished product after such a long gestation period. He admits to having a “deep love” of Stoker’s work, having written an unproduced miniseries as well as a play titled “Dracula: A Song of Love & Death” that had its world premiere in Kansas City in 2018.

Brian adds, “I was thrilled to hear that David (Dastmalchian) was involved. Can’t wait to see what he brings to the movie.”

In addition to “Demeter,” Dastmalchian is also appearing now in the Oscar front-runner “Oppenheimer.” It offered him the chance to reteam with director Christopher Nolan for the first time since his big-screen debut as one of the Joker’s lackeys in “The Dark Knight.” He plays lawyer William L. Borden, whose accusation that physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was a Soviet agent led to a 1954 security hearing.

“It’s wonderful being back in Christopher Nolan’s creative process, getting to bring a character to life who I really love in a film that, in my opinion, changes cinema,” Dastmalchian says.

Despite his far-flung schedule, Dastmalchian returned to Kansas City in June for the annual Big Slick Celebrity Weekend that gathers celebrities to benefit Children’s Mercy Hospital. He played softball at Kauffman Stadium and appeared on the T-Mobile Center stage with the likes of Paul Rudd, Jason Sudeikis and the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.

What was his most memorable moment at this year’s event?

“I was at the hospital with (Big Slick co-host) Rob Riggle and (CNN’s) Jake Tapper, and the three of us were going into the rooms of kids who are in different states of treatment for different conditions — which kids just shouldn’t ever have to experience,” he says.

“Jake was drawing sketches and Rob was just cracking us up. You keep your smile on the whole time, no matter how hard it is to be in that space and see someone suffering that much. You’re there to bring them joy.”

Tragedy and loss also played a role while Dastmalchian was shooting “The Last Voyage of the Demeter.” His father, Hossein, died in Overland Park — a “difficult loss,” Dastmalchian says.

“As I was watching the time go by, and how quickly life seems to happen — even in all of its beauty — I would have these kind of esoteric, existential conversations with my wife, Eve, about what if I had the chance to get bit and we could be immortal. The price being, of course, what it would cost to be a vampire,” Dastmalchian recalls.

“But it was really an interesting time for me to be making a movie about the most quintessential vampire of all time while I was in the midst of all that.”

Jon Niccum is a filmmaker, freelance writer and author. His new book, “Power Up: Leadership, Character and Conflict Beyond the Superhero Multiverse,” comes out in October.