Dan Stevens came into our lives as a love interest for Mary Crawley on Downton Abbey, but when we let him be weird? That’s when the magic happens. Stevens seems to just be doing whatever he wants with his work these days, and it has left many of us obsessed with him.
If you watched Downton Abbey when the show first aired, you probably were devastated when Matthew Crawley died. It was, for many, our introduction to Stevens and was probably the most mundane character he’s played. Still, there is a deep love for Matthew because of the charm that Dan Stevens puts into every character that he plays.
However, we have a lot more fun when Dan Stevens gets to be weird, and that is pretty much the sweet spot for him! So let’s dive into some of his best out-there characters and why it is fun to watch him bring these chaotic beings to life.
Legion
David Haller was going through it. That’s what happens when your father is Charles Xavier, I guess, but the mix of realities in Legion left many of us shocked by the series. It also ushered in the “Dan Stevens loves a weird guy” era that has now cemented his career.
Playing with the superhero nature of David Haller as a character and even introducing Charles into the story in later seasons, Legion just let Stevens blend a normal approach to a character with the absurd and remains one of the best “superhero” shows out there.
Eurovision Song Contest
Dan Stevens sang while in Beauty and the Beast when he was given his version of “If I Can’t Love Her” called “Evermore.” But that was decidedly not a weird guy. Alexander in Eurovision Song Contest? That is the right vibe for Stevens.
A story about how Sigrit Ericksdóttir (Rachel McAdams) and Lars Erickssong (Will Ferrell) are trying to bring honor to their home country, Eurovision Song Contest features Stevens’ Alexander as a competitor who isn’t going to let the Eurovision championship go easily. Look, we all lost it when this movie came out because of Stevens’ energy!
For those who didn’t watch Legion, this probably seemed like a departure from Matthew Crawley or even his Charles Dickens in The Man Who Invented Christmas, but if you knew, you knew.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Now that it has been established that Stevens can and will play a strange guy, here comes Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Trapper is a pilot who apparently dated Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) when they were in college? And acts like a hippie but kind of dresses like Ace Ventura, the titular pet detective?
In a movie where a giant ape has to get a metal arm to take on another ape who wants to kill everyone, Trapper fits right in. If he could have, do I think that Trapper would have made everyone to sing a song together? Definitely. That’s his vibe.
Abigail
Frank is the leader of a group of people who have been hired to essentially be food for a little vampire. A former cop who now gets hired out to complete jobs, you’d think he’d be pretty straightforward, but then they cast Stevens, and Frank goes off the rails in the best way possible.
Frank wears an earring, makes raunchy jokes, and truly does not seem to give a single solitary f*ck about anything other than keeping himself alive. And even when you don’t want to like him, you do, maybe because Stevens still plays him like a human being even when he is doing unhinged things.
Would I want to meet Frank? No. Would I watch Stevens as Frank do whatever he wanted to? Yes, yes I would.
I am so excited for Cuckoo
Cuckoo is Stevens’ next project, starring opposite Hunter Schafer. Directed by Tilman Singer, what is known about Stevens’ character is that he is playing a wealthy estate owner named Herr König. Variety‘s review of the film calls König “a character so pristinely macabre that he could only have been written by a German with a finely honed instinct for how the rest of the world tends to caricature his countrymen.”
All of this to say that if you love weird Dan Stevens, you should embrace all his chaotic performances so we continue to get more of these characters! I would not call his character in The Guest “weird,” but if you do want more Dan Stevens, that is a MUST-SEE!
(featured image: Warner Bros./ Universal Pictures/ FX)
