tilda swinton suspiria

Things We Saw Today: Tilda Swinton’s Other Role in Suspiria Has Been Revealed and It’s Bananas

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Tilda Swinton sure does love to transform herself for a role. She’s worn prosthetics and wigs and eerie contacts in plenty of movies. There were even stories out of Snowpiecer about her showing up on set with a pig’s nose (which was nixed by director Bong Joon-ho). But in the upcoming Suspiria, she may have outdone herself, transformation-wise.

Swinton plays Madame Blanc, the artistic director of the witch-infested dance school. But after the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival, there were rumors that she also played another major character: Dr. Josef Klemperer. The role was credited to first-time actor, 82-year-old Lutz Ebersdorf. After months of denials, Swinton has finally revealed to the New York Times that she does play Klemperer. Or, more accurately, as she puts it, she is playing Ebersdorf—a distinction she says is important, and one which no one has ever asked her to clarify.

Here are some great snippets of the full profile:

As for why she played Ebersdorf playing Klemperer, she cited a motto her grandmother lived by, and one I want to tattoo all over my body immediately: “Dull Not To.”

(image: Amazon Studios)

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Vivian Kane
Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.