Once again employing the blended style of live-action and stop-motion he defines as “meta-scope,” writer-director Eddie Alcazar returned to Sundance Film Festival this year with the premiere of his sci-fi thriller, Divinity. Starring Stephen Dorff, the black and white film is set in an uncanny world where humans have become hooked on a serum called Divinity, a creation set in motion by the ambitious scientist, Sterling Pierce (Scott Bakula), who devoted his life to unlocking the secrets of immortality. Dorff, who plays Sterling's son Jaxxon, has forged a career in Hollywood since the mid-80s, appearing in genres across the board, from blockbusters like 1998's Blade (pre-MCU era), to the lesser-known gems like Entropy.

In Divinity, the serum, now controlled and manufactured by Sterling's son, Jaxxon Pierce, is in high demand on this desolate planet, though Divinity does not stop the mind from aging, only the body. Because of its side effects, there are some who would like to see the unbelievable elixir done away with, no matter the lengths they must go. In addition to Dorff and Bakula, Divinity’s cast includes Bella Thorne, Moises Arias, Karrueche Tran, and Jason Genao.

Before premiering Divinity at Sundance, Dorff stopped by the Collider Studio in Park City and spoke with Collider’s Steve Weintraub. During the interview, Dorff shares how he first met Eddie Alcazar, and reveals that the writer-director wrote a character for Dorff he then built Divinity around. He discusses the bizarre project, describing it as a “sci-fi meets noir, meets a mental breakdown through an IV,” and tells us about some of the challenges the role presented him, likening the film to Citizen Kane and A Clockwork Orange. Dorff also shares of few of his previous roles, from Diff’rent Strokes, to Roseanne, and talks about reuniting with John Goodman for The Righteous Gemstones. You can watch the interview in the player above, or read the full transcript below.

COLLIDER: I have a ton of questions for you, we're gonna talk about Divinity in a second, but you have been one of the few that has been working for a long time as an actor, but when I was looking at the always-accurate IMDB, I noticed that when you were a kid, you did an episode of Diff’rent Strokes and I have to know, do you even remember being on that?

STEPHEN DORFF: Yeah, it was weird, when I was a kid and I was in school, this agent– you know, I started doing commercials, auditioning, and then I started getting auditions for all these TV shows that I grew up watching, you know, like Diff’rent Strokes, Gary Coleman, I was like, “What?” So I auditioned for it, got it, and then I'm on the set, but he's not in it because Gary Coleman was sick at that time dealing with something. So the red-headed kid was the star kid, and so I was a Cub Scout in that.

I love that. I like that I got to work with Michael J. Fox, do an episode of Family Ties when I was young, Married with Children, Roseanne. And I just finished working with [John] Goodman on [The Righteous Gemstones] with Danny McBride, and we've been working on that new season, and [to] Goodman, I said, “Do you remember I was Becky's boyfriend and you sat me down on the couch and told me what time to bring her home?” And he's like, “I remember, Stephen,” and we talked about it, and then we watched the scene. It was on YouTube and John made me watch it, it was so funny.

Yeah, I liked doing all those early things because, you know, I was an LA kid, I grew up in the valley. It was a very surreal upbringing because I ended up on the sets of all these fake families that I grew up watching when I'd be sick from school or my favorite TV shows. I never got on the Love Boat though. That was one I would have loved to have been on

You might have been a little young.

DORFF: Maybe.

Obviously, if you grew up in LA, you're living at home with family, but when did you feel like you could be an actor and pay your rent? Like, “This is what I could do for a living.”

DORFF: Yeah, I was pretty lucky and fortunate that I had a family that didn't, at first, want me to be an actor. My mom wanted me to do better in school, which I was having a hard time at these private schools I was going to in LA, and my mom used that to say, “Okay if you do better in school, you can then go on your auditions,” you know?

And then from there, they saved my money. So as I got these gigs, or if I didn't get the gig, it didn't really bother me and my mom was like, “Wow, he has tough skin.” But a lot of the kids I was going up against, their families were very involved, and, “You better get this job,” you know? And it was intense, it was a bit unhealthy, I thought, as a kid to have that pressure. It's already kind of nerve-wracking to go in and read for a bunch of strangers, you know?

So for me, I was very lucky that all I had to do was do good in school, and then they got me to my auditions, and my mom and dad saved my money. So when I was 16, I bought my first car, my mom didn't have to buy it for me, I bought a BMW and thought I was, you know, hot shit, you know? I made that money and that was cool. So I've been making money a long time. Yeah, it's been cool.

So you're in today at Sundance because you have a film in Sundance called Divinity?

DORFF: Yes.

No one will have seen the film yet who's watching this, so how have you been describing the film? Because I've seen the trailer. I haven't seen the film yet and the trailer looks really cool and different, and not what people are expecting.

DORFF: Yeah, I mean, jeez, it's a very strange situation. I've made some interesting films before in unorthodox ways and different, off-the-beaten-path. But Eddie was a director that I met through a friend of mine named Danny. He sent me a short, I watched it. It was then in Canne, it was called The Vandal. It was kind of, I thought mind-blowing for a 10-minute short, or however long it was. I was like, “Who is this guy?”

We talked on the phone a lot. He said, “I want to build a movie around you, what do you think of this kind of character?” I said, “Well, what do you want to do?” And nothing was really happening at the time because of COVID, but sure enough, I went off and started working, the world opened up, Eddie gave me like a 30-page document of the script, but it talked to me about this character.

Frankly, it's a movie set in the future. It's…god, it's made like Citizen Kane in a very dark, very special stock reversal, black and white, 16 mil, same film stock that Pi was made on, Darren Aronofsky's film. And it was very hard, and there's prosthetics. To me, the film and tone always felt like a home invasion movie set in the future in a glass house in the middle of Joshua Tree, with nobody around, is the main premise of the film. It's a very restraint, tortuous performance without having, necessarily, big monologues.

It was a very painful performance for me. It was hard, and I like that, and I liked the belief in Eddie, and now we're here in the Official Selection and I think he's about to make some noise. I think the film, from what I've seen, is really different and really strong. I guess sci-fi meets noir, meets a mental breakdown through an IV that's going into me, and ultimately I change into a creature. So, the movies like A Clockwork Orange meets The Elephant Man to me.

In the footage I saw, one of the things I love is when I'm seeing something that I'm not expecting. Just looking at this in the footage, I was like, “Oh this is taking a swing,” you know?

DORFF: Yeah, I mean, a very weird performance for me. Eddie wanted me to talk – I tend to have a deep voice, I guess, and he wanted me to talk in a very high register, which was really difficult. I can do accents, I can hear things and repeat them, mimic them, but it was very weird to do all my dialogue up in here [voice raises a pitch] and talk to you the whole time like this, but without sounding strange, and keeping it really original, and normal and natural, you know?

So, for me, it was like, “What the hell am I doing here?” You know? And it took time for me to, I think, trust it. And then once the makeup was grooving and everything, then we went on our journey. But me and the rest of the cast, we haven't seen the film yet, the finished film. But Mark Mangini, who was doing the sound design– I did a lot of my looping with him, and he did Dune and all these big films. Eddie's really brought together an incredible group of technicians to work on a very daring, experimental film. I like that.

You've done so much work over the years. If someone has never seen anything you've done before, what is the first thing, or the second thing, you'd like them watching, and why?

DORFF: I don't know, maybe start at the beginning. I love The Power of One, my first big entry into film. Obviously, I did The Gate before, so people like [Quentin] Tarantino and all those guys, and Eddie even, and Mike Marino, the best makeup man, and all my friends that are, you know, horror buffs will say, “The Gate was your first movie!” And I'll be like, “I know, but I was 16– I was 17.” The Power of One was really my first movie, in my mind, as knowing what I was doing as an actor, traveling, getting out of LA, not being a chubby little kid screaming, which is easy to do, was always easy for me to do.

So for me, I guess start at the beginning and then maybe, I don't know, go from The Power of One and then watch Somewhere, and then go watch True Detective, and then go watch, I don't know, check out Blade, if you haven't seen it. Or go see I Shot Andy Warhol or Entropy, find the movies that nobody knows.

Entropy I actually want to give a thumbs-up to. Phil Joanou directed. It's really, really good.

DORFF: Yeah, Phil!

So I believe you just worked with Tony Kaye.

DORFF: I did, I've worked with Tony before. Another interesting man, an artist, I think.

He’s a unique person.

DORFF: Yeah, I did a film for my friend. I supported my friend, Vito Schnabel, who's a big art dealer, and I know his dad who's obviously Julian, a great filmmaker, and painter. And I worked with Vito on this film that he had been writing and working on for a while, and Tony ended up directing it and Vito's in it, and he's got a great group of actors in there. So yeah, I played with them for a few days. Tony was crazy as ever. He’s a sweetheart, though.

Special thanks to our 2023 partners at Sundance including presenting partner Saratoga Spring Water and supporting partners Marbl Toronto, EMFACE, Sommsation, Hendrick’s Gin, Stella Artois, mou, and the all-electric vehicle, Fisker Ocean.