'Nightmare Alley' Cast Say There Was Nothing Artificial About the Carnival Set | Rotten Tomatoes

Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro's films are known for their magical stories and fantastical settings, so his latest is a bit of a departure, even if it's no less bewitching. Based on the 1946 novel of the same name, 'Nightmare Alley' stars Bradley Cooper as a carnival worker-turned-high-profile mentalist and con man whose life begins to unravel after he meets a manipulative psychologist. It's a more grounded tale than we've previously gotten from del Toro, but equally as dark and mysterious as anything he's done before. Ahead of the film's release, RT correspondent Nikki Novak spoke about the new film with del Toro, who revealed that he rediscovers who he is as a director on every new project and explained how he had to relinquish control in order to capture his “heavyweight actors“ at their best. Then, Novak also spoke with cast members Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, and David Strathairn about what it was like to work on the carnival set (“It was real.