Exclusive: Audible’s New Dracula Is Sexy, Scary, and Sinister

3 min readNearly 130 years ago, Bram Stoker cooked up one of the most iconic villains in all of English literature: Dracula. The scary and seductive story of the famous vampire has been told countless times, but more than a century later, he’s never lost his aura. Not even cartoons, breakfast cereals, and getting whacked by Wesley Snipes in Blade: Trinity can ruin Dracula’s rep.Now, Audible has a new adaptation of Dracula that reminds us in no uncertain terms that he who “vants to suck your blood” isn’t a joke, but a bone-chilling menace. Esquire has your first look—or rather, first listen—at the new audio-only experience from director Mary Lambert.On October 1, Audible will release Bram Stoker’s Dracula as its next major Audible Original. It stars Jonathan Bailey as the legendary Dracula who stalks young Mina Harker—played by Fallout’s Ella Purnell—after ensnaring her fiancé, Jonathan (Louis Partridge, in faraway Transylvania. Also in the new rendition are Aimee Lou Wood as Lucy, Lesley Manville as Mrs. Westenra, David Jonsson (Marvel’s new Black Panther) as Dr. Seward, and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Professor Van Helsing, with Ilan Eshkeri providing an original cinematic score.Notably, this version for Audible casts Mina as the main character as she tries to save her loved ones while avoiding the intoxicating influence of Bailey’s Count Dracula. “We focused on the psychological struggle between Mina and Dracula and allowed her journaling and letter writing and research to always reflect that,” says Mary Lambert.Below, Esquire has an exclusive excerpt of Audible’s Dracula. It features the scene where Jonathan meets the mysterious and lustful vampire sisters in Dracula’s castle.“The three sisters embody the essence of sexual desire and illustrate its power to draw down spiritual power from the universe,” says Lambert. She adds that the actresses who played them—Lucy Speed as Brigid, Sharan Phull as Salome, and Nadia Albina as Miriam—were “outstanding” as they performed a “supernatual sex scene” with improvisation.“The scene had to be overwhelmingly sexual and it’s an uncomfortable one. Harker loves his wife but he is powerless against the supernatural powers of the sisters. So we played it that way.”Lambert, who also helmed the 1989 film version of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, makes her audiobook directing debut with Dracula. In an email exchange with Esquire, she says the transition from a visual medium to audio has been a challenge. “I’m a very visual person,” she writes. Thankfully, she has plenty of experience directing music videos for Madonna and Janet Jackson. “So I have experience with interpreting narrative material with sound and music.”In addition to Pet Sematary, Lambert also directed the sequel Pet Sematary Too and other horror movies like The In Crowd (2000) and The Attic (2007). While Dracula marks her audiobook debut, it is also her return to the horror genre after her more recent work in TV and direct-to-streaming Christmas movies.AudibleJonathan Bailey stars as Dracula in the new Audible Original adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.AudibleMaggie Gyllenhaal co-stars as Professor Van Helsing in a new interpretation that sees the dark monster hunter as a woman.“I love fantasy and horror and the supernatural,” she says. “Belief in a world beyond the immediately visible one, however unpleasant that other world may be, is absolutely necessary for the expression of otherwise inexpressible fears and desires. I need a metaphor, a story, to help me understand the horrors of the daily news.”Dracula is more than a century old, but Lambert says the tale is a timeless one. “Look at the way that vampires inhabit our media ... it all goes back to Bram Stoker. He invented the modern vampire,” she says. “And we need this character. We embrace Dracula because we need to believe in a world beyond the visible one. Horror lives in your imagination.”