Full of warmth, charm and expression, Aimee Lou Wood feels like a natural fit for Lucy in Audible’s Dracula. Whether you know her from The White Lotus, Sex Education or her own series, Film Club, you’ll be familiar with her ability to make a character feel like someone you know and love. As Lucy, that same quality gives the story its emotional weight.
Wood is no stranger to audiobooks, having previously narratedWuthering Heights solo. This time however, being part of an ensemble felt closer to her work on screen and stage – having a scene partner to respond to, and move through the story together. It helps when those scene partners include Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ella Purnell and Jonathan Bailey.
It’s one of several projects keeping Wood busy. Between promoting The Idiots, preparing to play Pattie Boyd in the upcoming Beatles biopics and taking on the title role in a new adaptation of Jane Eyre, there’s plenty going on in her world. Below, we speak with Wood about her “original love” of writing, the adaptation she’d love to tackle next and how she found her way into Lucy’s world in Dracula.
Before this project, what was your relationship with Dracula or perhaps Bram Stoker?
I had always been aware of Dracula but I remember watching students in the year above at school do scene studies of the story and realising there were psychological dimensions to it that I hadn’t known before then.
Lucy is an emotionally layered character – how did you manage to capture her essence with just your voice?
The voice holds so much information about a person. As a woman, I’m aware I often pitch mine up when I’m nervous and want to sound less wise or assertive in an attempt to stay palatable and safe. Lucy experiences a very deep transformation from someone who moves through life with a level of unworldliness and excitement, to someone who is subsumed in doubt and confusion, to someone who has completely surrendered to the darkness. Letting her voice start in this fizzy, optimistic - but perhaps more superficial- place and then allowing it be lowered by the weight of her experience was a helpful key. She is so exhausted and worn down by her descent to the underworld that she loses the ability to maintain this more performative, sweet vocal quality and it drops into the truth.
This isn’t your first audiobook. Did working in a group setting make it easier to explore the emotional range of the story compared with a solo narration like Wuthering Heights?
I absolutely loved reading Wuthering Heights and the challenge of flipping between narrators and characters. It was all consuming in a way I enjoyed deeply. Having just one character allowed me to experience something closer to what I am used to on screen or stage, where I have to go through the arc and into the depths of one specific person and be affected by and respond to my scene partners. So, this felt more familiar in that sense.
I have seen that you’re into astrology – what star sign would Lucy be?
Our moon sign is where we have come from, our sun sign (classic star sign) is where we are going, and the rising sign is the vehicle we use to get there. I think Lucy is coming from a place of appreciating beauty, sensory pleasures and romance - so I would say a Libra Moon. She ends up in a place where she is not afraid of intensity and macabre - so a Scorpio Sun - and how she gets there, her rising is a Gemini. The twin duality - feeling these two very different opposing forces.
I saw that for The idiots, you and your co-star did Tarot readings as a bonding experience on the first day. Is this something you would do on you next set?
Absolutely. I use Archetype cards, animal cards, tarot cards and alchemy cards to help guide me. These offer are more inner landscape - an inner quest - that lives simultaneously with the story on the page.
With Film Club, you moved into writing a world of your own. For you, what is it about writing that you love?
Writing was my original love. It’s my inner child’s passion. I grew into acting. When I write I feel a connection to creation in a way that reminds me of who I am on a foundational level. I love writing streams of consciousness that reveal truths to me that I didn’t even logically know I was seeking. It’s the most effective way to pay witness to myself, my dreams, my unconscious.
Has a writer influenced the way you write your dialogue?
Caroline Aherne, Chekhov, Michaela Coel, Ayoade Bamgboye - loads probably!
Is there a book you’d love to adapt yourself?
Yes there are but I don’t want to say in case someone nabs them!
If we could borrow three things from your shelves – a book, a poem, and a film – which would give us the clearest sense of you?
The Wild Unknown Archetypes Guidebook by Kim Krans, The Thing Is by Ellen Bass, and Broadcast News.
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