In this episode, Gideon and Kathy delve into the sordid, gory story of Countess Erzsebet (the Hungarian variation of Elizabeth) Bathory,  AKA “The Blood Countess.” Born into an aristocratic family with lots of in-breeding in 1560 in the Kingdom of Hungary (an area that is part of Slovakia today), Bathory came to believe that blood was the tonic that could help her achieve eternal youth, and she ended up torturing and killing up to 650 young maidens, in hopes of preserving her smooth, alabaster skin. She used many methods of luring maidens to the castle, and even more methods of extracting the young women's blood - including torture devices like the Iron Maiden. She drank blood, bathed in blood, and even forced a few women to eat their own flesh. Apart from these horrific acts, Bathory was very adept at running and defending her massive estate, and even indulged in meaningful philanthropy. The story of Bathory was an inspiration of Bram Stoker when he wrote "Dracula" (in addition to the Romanian Vlad the Impaler). Bathory was also a model for many characters in literature and film, including the Evil Queen in Snow White. It may not be a surprise that Bathory is also a muse for several heavy metal bands from around the world.

Is Erzsebet Bathory the Baddest of all of our Bad Elizabeths so far? Does mental illness mitigate how bad she was, or was she simply misunderstood?

Later, Actress, director, writer, composer, and polyglot, Julie Delpy joins the discussion. You may know her from many things, notably for acting in Richard Linklater's beloved films “Before Sunrise," “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight”, she earned Oscar nominations for Best Screenplay for the latter two works. Gideon and Kathy talk to Julie about her 2009 film “The Countess,” which tells Bathory’s story. She also talks about her first encounter with a real life Bathory when she was young, shooting in actual castles where torture took place, and the challenges of acting and directing while wearing a very restrictive corset. Julie Delpy can currently be seen on the Netflix series, “Hostage,” and soon in director Ruben Ostlund’s latest black comedy, “The Entertainment System is Down” alongside actors Keanu Reeves, Kristen Dunst and Delpy's “Countess” co-star, Daniel Bruhl.

This is the last episode of "Bad Elizabeth" of 2025, thanks to all who help make this series a success including - and especially - the listeners! We are taking a short hiatus, and will have more episodes in the new year, featuring more questionable Elizabeths. Exciting things ahead, please continue to give us those five star reviews, and spread the word! We really appreciate it.

----------------------------------------

Hosted by Gideon Evans & Kathy Egan-Taylor

Producer & Engineer: Will Becton / Executive Producer: Amber Becton

Theme Song Composed by Alexis Cuadrado & Danny Gray

Recorded @ Jett Road Studios

----------------------------------------

Sources:

Bathory

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blood-countess-elizabeth-bathory-slovakia-serial-killer-new-theory/

Countess Elizabeth Bathory: The Life and Legacy of History's Most Prolific Female Serial Killer

Charles River Editors

https://a.co/d/3uSadXd

Infamous Lady: The True Story of Countess Erzsebet Bathory by Kimberly L Kraft

https://a.co/d/dHnLGdM

The Countess:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0496634/

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B005DD7GE2/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/december-29/bathorys-torturous-escapades-are-exposed

https://medium.com/never-stop-writing/countess-elizabeth-bathory-real-life-vampire-or-scapegoat-of-history-dd70322adb03

Hostage

https://www.netflix.com/search?q=hostage&jbv=81696688

Before Sunrise

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0091WD4ZQ/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r

Before Sunset

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B001N9BGGY/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r

Before Midnight

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00FJTWK0U/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r

----------------------------------------

Jett Road Studios - Website - YouTube - Instagram - Substack

Bad Elizabeth - Instagram - YouTube - Substack

----------------------------------------

Welcome to Battle Elizabeth.

I'm your host, Gideon Evans,

and I'm your host Kathy Egan Taylor.

The premise of this show is exactly what it sounds like.

Each episode we profile a different Elizabeth or derivation of that name

like Elizabeth

or Sveta

or Elizabeth,

who deserves to be called bad.

This episode is gonna be a bloodbath.

That's our producer and engineer will Beton of Jet Road Studios.

Hi guys.

Our episode today is about Countess Elizabeth Bori.

Good pronunciation.

Thank you.

Welcome to Bad Elizabeth.

I am Gideon Evans.

And I am Kathy Egan Taylor, and we are here with our engineer and producer.

Will Becton our favorite guy.

Oh Jesus.

I'm not your favorite guy.

Earlier today, you were

second favorite top three, and we are at Jet Road Studios,

studio City, California.

We've had Elizabeth on each episode of the show.

Varying degrees of badness.

I'd be curious to see what people think of this, Elizabeth, this death pain.

Is there a weird derivation of Elizabeth?

We haven't had yet.

The,

yeah,

that would be really weird and unfortunate.

Well, there's

like Elizabeth,

I mean, there's so yes.

Many.

They really milk that name.

Elsbeth.

Eliza's.

Mm-hmm.

And again, just to reiterate, we're not anti Elizabeth's.

There's plenty of great ones out there.

We have.

Looked at some, and we've had some as guests,

but we cherry pick these specific Elizabeths.

Yeah.

So today's story is the story of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth.

Oh my god.

Elizabeth Bath Bori.

But we're gonna call her Elizabeth Bathy because that's

Hungarian and we don't speak it.

No.

And actually Hungarian is a very tricky language.

It's a beautiful language.

You know what language?

Hungarian is similar to what?

It's similar to Finish.

It's from the same type of how weird language as Finnish.

So when Finnish people and Hungarian people meet, they can

sort of understand, understand each other another a little bit.

So this is a story of the blood.

Countess, Elizabeth Beery, she's a

Countess, and what is a Countess?

They're part of a royal kingdom, so to speak, right?

Considered a noble woman, right?

You got money and you got servants, and you got land and status.

You basically come with the castle.

Yeah.

You can marry into this

exactly.

And elevate, or you can

be born into it and

elevate your status.

It's when you try to marry outside of the family is when things get sticky.

Yeah.

But also when you marry within the family, the bloodlines are tricky

too, because you're intermarrying good things don't happen there.

Sure.

So she was born into an aristocratic family in 1560 in the Kingdom of Hungary.

Then it was called the Kingdom of Hungary.

It's now Slovakia.

Where she was born.

But there is still a Hungary

and there's still a Slovakia, isn't there?

Yeah.

Borders get scooched around in that area.

Yes.

They get

moved.

There's a war.

They move borders, they become something else.

They change back.

C

Slovakia became Czechoslovakia.

Exactly.

And then they split up again when the Soviet Union.

Yeah.

It's like when Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton for the second time.

Who gets the dogs?

Who

gets the

dogs?

It's exactly like that.

Exactly

like it.

It's the same thing.

So as a child, she suffered from epileptic seizures and she was

also purportedly prone to these uncontrollable rages and acts of cruelty.

She liked to torture animals, things like that.

And she liked to hit when she got into a fit of anger

and she was also exposed to a lot of unpleasant stuff, a lot

of unpleasantries like

death.

And

that was par for the course in those days.

It's 1560.

Yeah.

You're old if you're 20, you know?

Right.

There was a lot of intermarry in her family.

So the, basically the, the purpose of intermarrying was

to preserve the bloodline.

They didn't realize how dangerous it was to actually intermarry.

You actually destroy your immune system down the line.

Because I'm a doctor.

What?

And they also say when you have, uh, preserve everything in the

bloodline also tends to breed mental illness and insanity.

Yeah.

And she had that in her family.

Like Yes, apparently she had an uncle who would see ghosts

and fight them with a sword.

She had another uncle that would bite himself.

So.

That's kind of a glimpse into

it.

So what's wrong?

I got uncles like that.

You're spending the night at the batteries.

Exactly.

The woman that saw the ghost, he just drank too much.

I'm fighting

yourself.

Like that's not that big a deal.

The fighting ghosts is a little nutty.

Fighting yourself is just

like poor man smelling salt.

Exactly.

Well, you wanna prove that you're alive sometimes.

Exactly.

That's why I light life, you know, I'm matched to my, uh, you know.

So I won't finish that thought.

I almost good.

Almost

something.

Uh, let that dangle,

let all just have an uncomfortable silence for a second while we

ponder Gideon's confession.

But she did.

Speaking of matches, she would put paper between people's toes and like light it.

Let them on.

Fire.

Fire, yeah.

She liked those little things, was stuff like that.

So when Elizabeth was 14, she was promiscuous as a lot of mad girls were.

She had an illegitimate daughter with a young peasant boy.

Oh right.

So she's 14.

They basically hid that they took that child away.

It was raised by someone else.

It could have been

killed to, could have been killed.

They took her away.

So after she bore the illegitimate child, they sent her away to a, a convent

to live with the nuns, but it didn't stick because she gets outta there.

By 1575, she was married to a nobleman within her family,

SD, who was a military hero.

Almost like a barbarian sort.

He's barbarian,

he's like con in the barbarian.

Yes, he's definitely con in the barbarian.

Not

as charismatic.

Not as charismatic.

He's no sports nger.

But anyway, he was beloved in the Kingdom of Hungary 'cause the Ottoman Empire

had had swiped it and he got back a lot of land from the Ottoman Empire.

So, and, and I

actually took, uh, Ottoman Empire History class and it's so interesting

and I grew up in a household that had ottomans in it.

Right, so we, we know the rich history of the Ottoman Empire.

This guy, Soliman the Magnificent, was like the enemy of Hungary at the

time, and like he used like Napoleon, but nobody talks about him really.

He conquered all these lands and they conquered Buddha of Budapest.

So the Turks were really all over Hungary.

So it, it added to like the anxiety of the time.

I'm sure.

Of course,

of course.

Everything could be taken away.

And so they lived in a town of Kish, which is now Western Slovakia.

And so her husband, he was a little older, she was 15, he was usually off

at war, but when he came home, his hobby was like, he loved to bring designers

into design, iron, maidens and Judas Cradles, which were basically contraptions

where you take a living person and you impel them and you watch them die.

This Impalment machine.

So he would

commission them?

Yes, exactly.

What's that?

Star Brookstone.

Yeah.

Instead of

those nice vibrating chairs that roll your back, it looks like

a chair, but you put this spike through their middle and you impelled

them and you watch them die.

Yeah.

Like the last page of a sharper image.

Exactly.

Exactly.

In those days, and one thing we should mention was, so he was off fighting wars

a lot of the time and he was good at it.

But she had to manage the estates.

She was educated.

She was, even though she had a wild child,

she was, she was very smart.

And education didn't happen with women.

It barely happened with men.

She also liked wore men's clothes sometimes.

There was like something interesting going on.

Yeah.

She,

she kind of liked the patriarchy of the kingdom and she took that mm-hmm.

Sort of role on when he was away, she did bear him four children and

apparently she was a dotting mother.

And part of her job in managing the estate was keeping it safe.

It's like the Secretary of Defense or whatever.

Exactly.

She was pretty amazing.

She was not eating cake.

She spoke four languages.

Exactly.

We're gonna get into some crazy shit she did that wasn't very good.

But let's look

at the positive stuff.

But these

are positive things.

I think the Gutenberg, the printing press was in the 14 hundreds, so

they said that she had a press, which was also very dangerous.

So she had access to free thought and free thinking.

She studied science a lot of like.

As a child, that's how she learned things, was like by killing animals.

She buried a bird, for example.

Mm.

When she unburied it, she buried it alive, and then she found the

worms there, so she learned about decomposition and things like that.

So she was learning science as she was being destructive.

Also, she was known for having this very dark, dark hair and alabaster skin.

She was a beauty.

Her beauty was also very important to her.

All the while, while her husband's off at work, you know,

coming and going as he pleases.

She has four children.

She's educating herself, but she also kept a diary and her hobby was torture

and she kept a very detailed diary describing the daily torture she performed

physically bringing in maidens to abuse.

Yeah.

Wow.

So just like people in the court or peasants or, yeah.

So

basically peasants were considered non-human, so you

could do whatever you wanted to

then, and she had all these like people dotting on her and combing her hair.

And I know one of 'em like pulled the hair too hard and then she

poked her with needles or something.

So there

was one thing that she had a lady had waiting or something.

Yeah, she was brushing her hair.

Somehow someone else's blood landed on her alabaster skin, which

she later claims cleared it up.

Ah, wow.

From any sort of discoloration.

So she thought.

Oh, blood is a good thing.

Oh, and one other crazy thing that she did to torture people.

She tied a servant to a pole once and covered them with honey.

That's right.

So that insects would like be drawn feed off of her to her anyway.

Yeah.

But the thing with the hair and the blood was an important, that was a

big sort of, that's turn.

Yes.

That was a, a

formative thing.

Yes.

It was a formative moment.

It planted the seed in her.

So he died Nasti at uh, 48.

At 48 in 1604.

So she was widowed and she also was left behind with like the

biggest fortune at the time.

She had a massive fortune.

Now she has the fortune to control herself and she wants to make

sure none of that's leaving.

And she also didn't wanna remarry.

Everyone thought that you should remarri.

No, she doesn't wanna do that, but she instead she said, I'm going to focus

on educating young women and teaching them to read, which was scandalous.

She did do that, her do that with her, with like people that were down

and out, which was kind of amazing.

And this is the time during the Reformation.

So this is when people were, if you were practicing Catholicism

in a cave, you were murdered.

So it was very dangerous to be have any free thought, and she

was doing that in her kingdom.

How do you explain like somebody that, I know people are complicated,

but how do you torture people and want to help them at the same time?

I mean, I guess both are control

a little bit.

True.

Good point.

Well, she, yeah, she thinks she owns the people and she can do good or bad by them.

I, I, I think she's the judge and the jury, anything she does is right.

She's teaching young women how to read and she has peasant women coming in and

then she starts experimenting with peasant women about, Hey, there, blood, virgin

blood is like the fountain of youth.

She comes to think that like blood is actually blood's a good thing, a tonic

for her skin and for keeping her youth and

keeping her youth.

And she enjoys the torture part.

It's fun.

So she's doing this on, on peasant women, servant women,

indentured servants, whatnot.

But then she starts bringing in noble women.

And at the time, and this was something I learned that noble

women, it was, gosh, so to speak, it was, uh, day class A to breastfeed.

Ah, uh, so.

They would have wet nurses, nurse their children.

So noble women would come to the kingdom, to the castle in the hopes

of being their, their children being breastfed by these peasant women.

Oh, wow.

But now Elizabeth started taking them in and torturing them in.

And so this is where the problems start to come in.

And

I think.

The peasants, she was bringing them in promising they could become servants.

So she had these ideas of how to lure people.

This whole story is fascinating.

And they say that the evil Queen, snow White, the brothers Grim, and

Hans Christian Anderson always based their evil queens on this character.

Oh,

interesting.

You

know, so it's this thing of the eternal youth and going after the young beauties.

Well,

that is such a topic too, like even up till today,

what was the jump from the supposed discovery of blood?

Being like restorative on her skin.

Was there a leadup or a plunge in terms of her harvesting blood or whatever?

I think

her leadup was, I mean, she like experimented with animals as a

little girl and then, and then abusing people later on for sport.

It was fun.

She had that turning point where she was with the maid and there was

blood that came out of ripped hair or something landed on her skin.

She enjoyed the torture.

A byproduct of the torture was blood.

Blood equals youth.

So

it's kind of like little shop of horror.

Exactly.

Everything got outta control.

And the other thing too, at that point, you know, the very fact that she has

iron maidens and Judas chairs in her house, like torture is a form of sport.

That to me is very interesting.

It's like pro wrestling.

And she has an assistant too named Lia?

Yes.

Who's like a witch and a mystical person.

And yes, Christianity is a big thing in Hungary, but then there are

these kind of mystic type people.

And I think Dia was kind of an influence on her.

I think Dia was also sort of like her.

She was an independent woman.

Yeah.

And she was sort of supporting, uh, Elizabeth in the kingdom,

like I'm your right hand.

Did they have an affair?

I don't know if they did.

I, I know that Elizabeth was definitely interested in, in men.

She

did have, and women.

Yeah.

She liked it all,

but I think the blood stuff gave her psychological and sexual gratification.

Exactly.

So the Iron Maiden is so interesting to me because it's in the shape of a woman.

So basically the arm made is shaped like a woman.

You stand into it, they close it in on you, and it's full of spikes.

She kind of became obsessed with blood.

Is there a blood eile, a voile?

She was sort of like a vampire.

Well, that's

how the whole myth of vampires coming from Eastern Europe and Transylvania,

all that, it all started here.

She's been called the Vampire of Hungary and, and that very,

I think what it was that.

Torture Begot blood, which was a byproduct.

Yeah.

And then she started to bathe in it.

Yeah, she bathed in it.

She drank it.

She thought it was like restorative.

Restorative.

So she basically had to keep people coming in.

It's like almost like her gasoline.

Yeah.

She'd like beat them to death.

She could turn on a dime.

Like she could be nice.

One second.

And yeah, she had no problem torturing or hitting or causing pain.

The interesting thing about her, I guess because of the Countess

thing, I wasn't expecting her to be the one doing the dirty work.

So hands on.

Yeah, exactly.

You'd think she'd outsource that delegate.

I think

she derived such pleasure from the work.

Totally.

That of course she wasn't gonna outsource it.

Like what's the thrill of it?

And as I said it, it was a time where like torture was sport.

It's like what people knew

and she was so proud of it.

She also like kept a diary.

She'd be like, this one is quiet, but a little rebellious.

Yes.

Wow.

And this one was kind of nice.

And she'd bite them, she'd mutilate them, she'd burn their flesh.

So those bad shit going on, they estimated that there could have

been as many as 600 to 650 victims.

Wow.

Which is probably our biggest death count.

In this whole series.

So was this a mixture of

peasants, noble Peas and noble?

I think what she was starting to do was run out of peasants.

Oh God.

Because then the peasants family was getting back.

We like don't send 'em to the castle.

They don't come home.

So then she was started procuring noble women and that's when the

King Mc, king Mathias got involved.

'cause he heard rumors of now she's going, uh, after Noble

Women, you gotta go investigate.

And she thought she was invincible.

She thought, think she no lost sight of the fact that like.

She could get caught.

Well, she thought her place and her money was gonna always protect her,

and to some degree it did.

But one thing that happened while this investigation was going on, she

started to become a little careless.

Apparently.

She like had students come and help her bury the bodies.

It's probably not a good idea if you're being, well, because you have witnesses.

Yeah, you have witnesses and then she would like leave bodies,

like under beds and stuff.

That does seem a little careless.

And she blamed the smells of the bodies rotting

on pets.

I mean, none of this really sounds discreet like Not enough.

No.

The

other thing too, while he was alive, her husband, the count like joined

in with these torture sessions, ah, she moved on to not bathing in their

blood and drinking their blood, but she also liked to eat the flesh also.

Apparently at one point forced one girl to.

Cook and eat her own flesh.

Oh,

I don't know how it's done,

man,

but I know it's bad.

And because peasants and services, they were less than human.

They didn't matter.

But it's when they got, when she started luring female nobles to the castle

with the promise of wet nurses and education and that type of stuff, and

then they came and they were tortured.

That's when the king came in.

He sent his count and his minions in to check it out.

They're like, yes, she's doing some bad shit.

We're taking her to trial, to

trial.

And to some degree, because she was a Countess and high class,

they didn't want a scandal.

So it was a little tricky for them,

like a malpractice suit at a hospital.

We have to admit we're wrong, but we don't wanna let to get it too big.

Yeah.

She goes to trial.

Four of her servants were convicted of murder and they were brutally executed.

She instead was sentenced to live her life out in a room in a

castle that only had slits for air and food, and she died in 1614.

It was like house arrest.

Exactly.

And they didn't kill her.

No.

But she had no sunlight and no communication.

But

still, like you'd think after killing 600 people, like

she was tried for 80 counts of murder.

Yeah.

But she said, according to her diary, that she killed up to 650 people and the people

per associates, they were beheaded and burned at the stakes.

So they purposely made the desk really brutal.

They

drove the point home.

Yeah.

So her diary was pretty thorough.

It sounds like.

It sounds like she was pretty graphic.

Meticulous.

Graphic.

Yeah.

And it's once she kept all her life, she was always a writer, so that's good.

She ended up dying in jail.

But they call her the first female serial killer and the first vampire.

Oh, I think she sounds like a monster, quite frankly.

Especially if they documentation of her torturing animals at a young age.

Well, so many serial killers start.

On

animals

killing animals.

Exactly.

When their kids, like Jeffrey Dahmer, put heads of dogs on sticks and stuff,

and he also took them to the candy factory.

He worked, he put, he liked to bring heads with them in canisters.

Oh, to and from the, uh, the factory.

No one questioned it.

It's fine.

So anyway, I do think she's a monster, and so her legacy is in pop culture.

As I mentioned before, they said that Hans Christian Anderson's the

snow queen, which was published in 1844, was based on her story.

Hmm.

The brother's Grim.

1812, the fairytale, the mirror queen.

You know, it's that mirror.

Mirror on the wall.

Who's the Farris of the mall?

I mean, that's where this comes from.

Yeah.

She wants the blood aversion.

She doesn't want anyone more beautiful or more youthful

than she is Right in the movie.

Hostile too.

Which I have not seen.

One of the main characters a named for her, and apparently

that movie is so gruesome.

It was banned from theaters,

really.

Fright.

Night two I hear is also inspired by her

Fright.

Night one was great, but then Roddy McDowell was not in the

sequel, so Oh, he's a great actor.

He was great.

And there's a Swedish band called Bere.

Hard metal and venom.

The metal band has a song about Beery,

and then of course there's a movie called The Countess, which was written and

directed by the actress Julie Delpy, who also played El Beth Beery in the movie,

and she's gonna be joining us later on.

So there wasn't any vampire mythology prior to her.

When was Vlad the Impaler?

The Impaler?

Probably earlier than that, but he was the impaler.

Not so much of this was drinking the blood.

And I think she had roots in Transylvania too.

Like they were part of the same world in a strange way.

Well, I think the fact that she liked to bathe in blood and she liked to

drink it, that makes you a vampire.

Yeah.

And it makes you bad probably.

It seems incredible to me that she could kill 650 people in her lifetime.

Yeah,

that seems like a lot.

I believe that it might have been 600.

I don't know.

You could probably kill a hundred people a year.

No,

you gotta bring in the victims.

Yeah.

And then you gotta get rid of 'em.

I think it's the procurement of them became difficult.

Right.

And that's when the King Mathias got involved of like, I hear

she's bringing other people, like there's something going on here.

I'm sure there was staffing issues throughout their kingdom or whatever.

Nobody.

Picking the, uh, the potatoes, what's, what happened?

You, you realize I'm gonna be a maid servant to her.

Awesome.

I'm going to braid her hair.

I'm going to bathe her.

Oh, I have to kill virgins.

Not for me.

When I've worked for Sasha Baron over the years, sometimes we bring people in and we

don't tell them what the job was, right?

And then they would say, they're like, I'm not doing this.

And I said, I don't blame you.

I understand.

So guys, yes.

Is she bad?

I think so.

One thing I do think we should look at, I mean there was, in breeding, there was

clearly a lot of mental illness going on.

As bad as killing 650 people is if you're mentally ill, you know, that

could mitigate the badness a little bit.

But if you're building tortured devices.

That does show some like premeditation.

Did she know what she was doing was bad?

I,

but it's kind of like it's the world that she grew up in.

Yeah.

It's like if you grew up in motorcycle gangs, that's that's what you know.

You know.

That's a good

point.

Look at what that world was, and it did seem like kind of a crazy world

and there was not a lot of fun.

No, there was no Netflix.

If there had been a Sephora.

Well, I think this brings up another point.

What's that movie with Demi Moore?

Oh, the substance.

Yeah, the substance.

I mean, this is an interesting topic.

I didn't watch the substance for that very reason.

I, I just think it's such a hard topic.

It's upsetting.

It's

very upsetting.

And it was funny, I was out to dinner a couple weeks ago with my husband and, and

these women were talking about plastic surgery, which is not often covered.

Mm-hmm.

I said, if you go here and you leave the country to get it, it's only $14,000.

Yeah.

So this scramble for eternal youth and beauty is very much there.

Like men are allowed to get old and saggy.

Women

aren't.

And do you blame society for that?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I just think it's sort of a, a thing that feeds into itself.

It doesn't get better.

Yeah.

Though Jane Fonda looks great.

I remember when we worked on this Michael Moore show and there was a

segment that our former colleague, Jeff O'Connor did with Louis Thru about women

in the Amazon who sold Avon products.

And it was really interesting segment because these women had so little, they

were, they, they didn't running water,

electricity, but they had lippy.

Exactly.

You could always play on vanity is always gonna be a huge marketplace.

Kind of like branding and presenting yourself.

I think the thing that's scary and, and it could be comparable to Elizabeth Rie, is

that she was actually bathing the blood.

And when you see when people get hooked on the plastic surgery train, it gets worse.

It is addictive.

What are your thoughts about the idea that like Instagram makes women

feel terrible if you're looking at all these beautiful people?

I think,

I think the thing that's dangerous, particularly with teenage girls.

Yeah.

Like so everyone's living on social media and I have.

Friend who has a teenage daughter.

So he was trying to explain to her, and she goes to school here and now he goes,

well, those pictures are art directed.

Yeah.

You know this, I can't take a selfie.

I don't like taking pictures.

It's awful.

Yeah.

You know?

And why do you need my fucking picture?

Why?

Right.

I think that social media, Instagram is very dangerous because, you know, they

don't realize that to look like they do.

There's a team of 10 people doing that.

Right.

One thing I think is interesting, I mean, it definitely sounds

like she was sadistic.

Yes.

I also wonder if she thought like, she seems like a bit of a, like

an amateur scientist or something.

Well, Jeffrey Dahmer

had that too, where he would like drill holes in people's heads.

That's how a lot of people and medical scientists, people worked on cadavers.

They were fascinated with the body, especially those days in those days.

And also like she could get living people to experiment on.

But as a little girl, she did like to kill animals and watch how they

decomposed and that type of stuff.

She

probably thought of herself that way.

That's very interesting.

I do think there are things that happen sometimes where you're in a marriage or

whatever and then somebody dies and then you can't bounce things off someone else.

You suddenly lose perspective on like the crazy things you do.

Like sometimes it is helpful for someone to be like, eh, you may not wanna

like kill that child, or whatever.

You know what I mean?

Gideon, you don't need another beer before you go to bed.

Yes, exactly.

Having him there was kind of like, they were thrilled by each other, but they also

had each other and they loved each other.

And there was someone else.

He could probably bounce things off her too.

Should I cut his dick off, right?

Nah,

no.

But I do agree.

Uh, you know, like that she suddenly was unhinged and

alone in this and alone.

Nobody was saying no to her.

That's a bad thing.

You don't want.

Yes.

People around her, I think.

I think

from the Countess, the film, yes.

That's how she was depicted as a child, is that she got what she

wanted and that's how she behaved.

You don't say no to her and she was an ill tempered, you know?

But Curious girl.

Speaking of the Countess, and we're gonna talk to Julie Delpy in a second.

I mean, I know that when people play villains or villains in history.

You know, you have to play them genuinely and authentically, and

you don't play them as a villain.

Is there any way to view her in any other way, do you think?

I'm curious what Julie will say.

I'm curious too.

I mean, I, I think this is obviously a story that's very important to her.

And she wrote, directed in, starred in it, so she knows it inside out.

So, and I think she brought some empathy to the film and

brought a context to it some

way.

I'm curious to, maybe we should bring on Julie and see what she thinks exactly.

I bet she has a soft spot in her and why she so strongly

about this story.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Now we are happy to welcome French American actor, writer, director,

and musician, Julie Delpy.

She earned Academy Award nominations for her writing on the films.

Before sunset and before midnight.

Lucky for us, her 2009 film, the Countess tells the story of the

very subject of this episode.

Elizabeth Horry.

Now we are happy to welcome to Bad Elizabeth, an actor, writer,

director, and composer, Julie Delpy.

She earned Academy Award nominations on the films before

Sunset and before midnight.

She's worked on too many other things to list killing Zoe Detective.

Two Days in New York, two days in Paris, on the Verge, and more

recently hostage on Netflix.

French president, but we wanna talk about a beautiful film she directed,

wrote and starred a few years.

Count.

We have been discussing, so thank you for joining us, Julie.

Thank you for having me.

Should we say Lizabeth or Elizabeth?

What do you prefer?

I think it's

Erbe.

Erbe.

Okay.

Erbe.

But it's Elizabeth.

Yes.

Battery.

We could do whatever.

We could go back and forth too.

We can do the Hungarian, the Romanian, the, you know,

it's such an amazing story.

Is it something that you always knew about?

And what drew you to that story?

I think I always heard about it as the original story that inspired

Bram Stalker to write Dracula.

She was one of them.

I mean, there was Vlad d Impeller, but she was also very inspiring to

him because, well, she had issues, mood issues, rage, stuff like

that, because she was a Habsburg.

There was a lot of inbreeding, so

yes.

You know, genetics was not a big thing at the time.

They didn't know, they didn't know.

Marrying your cousin and sister was not a good thing.

So basically she suffered from a lot of ailment and probably

hallucinations and stuff, and, and she.

Had the reputation of killing young girls, bathing in their blood.

Also, she had competitors and she had a man called Zo that wanted her

downfall because he wanted to take over a state, and he was her cousin.

So he was very instrumental into a reputation and her downfall.

So I kind of tell all those stories intertwine within the film

and there's so much fantastical stuff with all the blood that you

could have chosen to make something very like over the top cartoony.

Yeah.

But you chose to make her a human being.

I

love when there's.

A gothic aspect, dark murder, but there's also a love story.

I just wanted it to be a love story in a way, because I, I wanted to show that she

was full of flaws and maybe a murderous, or maybe not, maybe it's all made up.

It's unclear in the film because I wanted to make it.

Is it really, really happening or is it the story being told?

I wanted to have a element of romance because I thought it made it more

intriguing and interesting and complex.

And the gothic part of it makes it so beautiful to look at.

I mean, you must have had a lot of fun with the costumes

and the, the sets and scenery.

Yeah, because we didn't have a lot of money to make the film.

I said, okay, the, the sets are gonna be one thing.

And we did go to one of the castle that.

Was hers actually, that was in East Germany.

Now it's in Germany near Dresden.

So one of the castle was actually one of her castle, but

Oh wow.

I

insisted that the clothes were absolutely amazing because I was like, you know,

the film will be focused on the actors.

So I had this guy, RIF guru, who I worked with a few times.

That I love, and he went really, really far to make this.

He actually used silk from costumes from the 19th century

Wow.

That he remodeled into the costume for the film.

So actually the costume, once I wore them should, the scene were pretty much.

Done.

You know, because it was silk from 200 years ago, or 150 years ago,

it didn't look like brand new silk.

It looked like it was lived in, and the quality of the silk also he

told me was very different a hundred years ago, but not that different

a hundred years ago than it was.

400 years ago, you know, it was the same system.

And he went to Romania to find, uh, original costumes and stuff like that.

So it was really, he did an insane, beautiful job.

When you put that costume on, how restrictive are they as a woman?

How did you feel in it?

It's just so restrictive that, you know, if I was on that time of

the month, I could barely fit in.

I know how miserable that would've been.

Water retention was like, you know, or if I ate right before,

I couldn't really fit in.

So I had to pretty much not eat during the day, and it was hard

because I had to direct as well.

So it's true that I might not do this again anytime soon to direct and act.

Period piece that is in corset.

You know, directing in corset is not recommended.

And I did wanna ask you about directing and acting.

Is the director, Julie Delpy.

A tough director to work for when you're an actor?

Like are you kind to Julie as the director?

I'm pretty kind.

It was, uh, quite an intense shoot.

It was physically exhausting because of the costume, but also, you

know, shooting in those locations.

We were shooting in film.

Oh, wow.

And I have a tendency to shoot quite a lot for a film of this budget.

It's 7 million.

It's really not a lot of money for a film like that.

Right.

For example, we had a battle scene.

And I had 10 extras.

Wow.

You know, it's like, how do you do a battle scene?

So you sort of use your imagination and it works out okay.

You know, sometimes you have to make compromise.

So the intensity was not from me, but it was from the condition of

working on a. Pretty small budget movie for the kind of scope of film,

and a big line in the budget must have been the fake blood.

We had also the, the mechanism of the Iron Maiden and the torture chamber

and all that stuff, but we went to shoot in real locations that were,

you know, basically torture chamber.

Or prisons from 300 years ago.

I mean, the main bedroom was a studio because we had so many scenes

in that bedroom, but everything else was pretty much on location.

It was a French and German co-production, wasn't it?

Yes.

So

what language did you

all speak in?

The DP was German and he spoke German to his crew.

There was also Belgium.

Team.

Yeah,

the set designer was Belgium and he had his Belgium team.

I think the sound men were Belgium as well.

I just think it's so interesting like you're directing, writing, starring and

composing it, and then you have this whole

crew of people speaking different languages on location, different language.

You were wearing many hats, you know?

It is a challenge.

Yeah.

I found out.

At the beginning of the shoot, also that my mom had lung cancer.

So it was a very difficult, uh, shoot for me emotionally.

But you know, once a film is green lit, you know, you have

to make the film no matter what.

So you don't really have a choice.

And I wanted to make that film.

You know what I discovered a few years later, my neighbor who was

taking care of me, because my parents were on stage a lot, so she

was this really nice old couple.

The husband was French and the wife was.

She had an accent, but I never thought of asking where she was from.

And I eventually, when she passed away at 110 Wow.

We found out that she was Hungarian and actually her, her name was battery.

Oh my goodness.

She

was a descendant of battery, so it was meant to happen.

Yeah.

And what's crazy is that she really raised me and I think she told me that story.

Wow.

When

I was a little girl and I was staying at their place, and I remember.

Years later, I was like, oh, I remember seeing that castle on their wall and

it's the castle we ended up shooting at.

That's wild.

Oh my God.

And it was

really strange.

Like I was like, wow, that's amazing that this story was with me for so many years.

You know, basically from childhood she planted a seed,

almost like fate.

And Hungarian is such an interesting language too.

Yeah.

It's not actually a, a Slavic language.

It's something else.

So interesting.

Yeah.

I mean, she spoke Hungarian, the original battery spoke Hungarian and German

because it was the Otro Hungarian empire, so it was half German, half Hungarian.

Her Uncle, Bai's uncle actually became the king of Poland at one point.

Yes.

Which gave her agency.

What's interesting in the man that I put in the film from doing my own

research is that Zo Ivan and his father, Georgi Zo, they became a

very, very permanent businessman.

They became the Zo Fogger family in Germany that had huge, uh, mining.

And he was an interesting man because he was obsessed with Machiel.

Mm.

Some people claimed that he created the concept of capitalism.

Oh, because he adapted the ideas of machiel with war.

To business.

Oh, interesting.

You wrote this movie and it was something that you were always

interested in writing and directing.

How long did it take you to write this film or,

well, you know what's crazy with this film is that I woke up one morning and I was

like, okay, now I've gotta write this.

I had been thinking about it.

I wrote it in, uh, five days.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Of course I did a thousand rewrite afterwards.

Yeah.

But the first draft, which was basically a hundred page, I wrote about 20 page a

day in five days, and then I composed the music, all the main themes the day after.

Wow.

Basically.

So I had a script and a music written for the film in about a week.

That's incredible.

And it's weird because when I wrote it, it felt very organic for me to write this.

It just came to me as if that story had been told to me before and it probably

had been in childhood, you know?

And it was, and um, Kathy had sent me an article from the Irish

Independent where you were interviewed and you said you had a DHD.

Yeah.

And my son does as well.

And how does that affect your writing?

Does it hurt or help or?

You know, I think sometimes it can be hyper good because then I'm

extremely productive and focused.

And then sometimes I will go like, like a bee.

Uh, I'll be like all over the place and you know, and it's almost a

nightmare and it's torturing me.

But when I get into something, it's almost.

I'm on a high speed road, you know, and I'm very, very, very focused.

And I say high speed, but without drugs, right?

And I think that's pretty common with a DHD is that you can be all over the

place and then suddenly something just like becomes boom, one thing that you

can't stop doing for, and you know, even not sleeping and stuff and spending.

48 hours working and stuff like that.

It's happened to me before.

Now I'm a little bit more, you know, I wake up, I start writing at eight, I end

at four or five, and then I have a life.

Before I had a kid, when I would go into spur of writing, I used to have no life.

So now I'm, you know, I have to have a life.

Exactly.

You know?

Which is good.

Which is good.

No, it's important.

It's very important.

No one to, to turn off.

The legend of BA three is that she basically lived off the blood of virgins.

It was going to give her eternal youth and stuff like that, and the

rumors that she pulled some peasant woman's hair and the blood fell

onto her hand and it rejuvenated, which is like beauty treatments.

We were looking into like the vampire facial.

Well, now it's pretty close to it.

I know.

I know and they're also studying mice and they're injecting young blood into

the brain of mice and it Oh my God,

exactly.

Maybe should stumble into something.

I think the thing is with the vampire facial, they extract

your blood and then they, yeah.

Pull out the plasma and then

they inject it back into your face.

So wait, it's not the Kardashian's blood?

'cause that would

No, no, no.

That's half silicone.

I think that doesn't sound like a good idea.

I dunno why, but no, it's your own blood I think.

Yes.

But that seems a little bit intense.

I mean, you think that what she did was so crazy.

It was crazy, and she killed a lot of people.

Allegedly.

Allegedly.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But the blood thing is probably not that crazy,

I have to say.

You know, interestingly enough, I'm not obsessed with eternal

youth, and actually I am obsessed with eternal youth as a concept.

Something that fascinates me.

I actually saw Del Toro film, uh, Frankenstein, which

is absolutely beautiful.

This is good.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Oh, it's amazing.

Cool.

It's, oh, by the way, he told me he put a reference to the Countess in it.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

The idea of pursuing eternity is something that's interesting to me.

I wouldn't do it for myself because I'm not into the visual of beauty

youth and all that, you know?

I don't really care so much about that.

Transcending death is an interesting subject matter.

Even though as I'm getting older, I'm more at peace with the concept of it.

You know, I think when I was younger I was a little more scared or a little

more intrigued by the concept of eternity

not to live in pain too.

It's funny 'cause I just read this thing about Dick Van Dyke.

It's 99, and he said It'll be a joke if I die before my hundredth birthday.

But he's also saying like, I've done my time here.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah.

You know, I'm okay with it.

My grandma died at a hundred.

She was done.

She was bored.

She said it one morning, she woke up.

She's like, I'm bored.

She died two days later, you know?

Yeah.

I had a grandmother who was 106.

Wow.

She kept saying, God must be mad at me.

I know.

It's like a big question, so I apologize for asking it in advance,

but what are the differences between kind of how the society's view beauty

and women in France versus America?

It's definitely pretty intense.

In America for women.

I think it's a little more laid back in France, you know?

I think also the fact that I'm in la in Hollywood, if you wear the same dress

twice, people look at you like I make a point to actually wear the same clothes.

I've been wearing the same dress.

It's convenient, practical, it looks fine, and I don't care.

That's actually a good ruse.

They used to do in the forties with paparazzi to throw

them off just to wear the same thing all the time.

Oh really?

It's not as attractive if you're wearing the same thing.

That's really smart.

So that's actually, you're being quite clever that way, but I totally understand.

Just wear what you're comfortable and if it looks pretty, that's fine.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't care.

I mean, I, I can't be too worried.

You know, I'm a director, I'm a writer, I'm also an actress, but I

cannot spend my life worrying about.

Looks, you know, because otherwise I would not write, I would not write music.

I would not write screenplays.

I would just do that.

I have no judgment.

People do whatever it feels right for them, but for myself, I can't bother.

You know, I guess pulling from many interviews that we've read

with you is, you said you've had trouble with the word feminist.

Do you wanna elaborate on that or any thoughts on that?

No, I don't have a trouble with that word at all, because it's an important word.

I am a feminist.

Because I work, I'm completely independent.

I've never been dependent on anyone financially.

I moved the day of my 18th birthday.

I was completely financially independent from anyone for the rest of my life.

So I would say that's feminism.

I'm not like feminist, like, oh, I can do this, I can do that.

Like there's a lot of stuff that I'm happy my husband is doing.

I'm not, you know, I don't wanna show off that I'm a tough woman because

that I don't believe is feminism.

I think it's nothing.

I think it's.

Silly in a way.

You know what?

I'm a feminist, but I do love men.

And I love working with men, and I get along with men.

I'm more an equalist, uh, that's not a, you know,

yeah.

A humanist.

I know what you mean.

A

humanist like, yeah.

I just like equality.

I just, like every human is the same and should be treated the same.

And, but I am a feminist too, you know?

Is there a feminist lesson in the Countess?

Yeah.

Well.

Some people tell me, oh, if the world was ruled by women,

it would be a better world.

I say, not every woman is

right.

I

mean, if we want equality, we have to accept that some women,

yeah, are not the greatest people.

I mean, you know, it's not because you're a woman that you have a passport saying.

I'm a better human being.

You know, some women are wonderful and some men are wonderful, and some women

are terrible, and some men are terrible.

No one is perfect.

You know, we're all full of flaws and contradictions and, uh,

good and bad and all that shit.

It's just, oh, I'm sorry.

I'm swearing loud.

No, no.

We swear

all the time.

We use the word shitty a lot, apparently.

It's good.

Shitty is a good word, and it must be so much fun to play like a villainous.

I love playing villains.

I mean, I have to say it's a lot of fun.

You know, for many years in my life, I played the romance.

I did write it too.

So it was interesting to explore romance as a young woman, as

a middle aged woman and stuff.

But playing people with more complexity.

I mean, you know.

I would love to play like a, a female version of like, you know, of like, you

know, the Shining or something, you know?

Oh, that'd be

great.

That

could be extremely fun.

You know what I mean?

So

that could be fun.

And I think I would be good at that because I, I remember I

shared my apartment in New York with a very sweet, young guy.

Very kind.

We were just really friends and stuff.

And I remember he was, I, I love to scare him.

And he was terrified.

Did you pop out of closets?

How did you scare him?

No, because I'm very good at playing crazy and scary.

Oh, okay.

You have to do the Shining.

You have to write that script.

So I guess getting back to the ery is, would you consider her

like we, she used the term bad.

Yeah.

Do you think she was bad?

I think if she did what she did, yes.

She was bad, but I think she was also mad.

She was suffering from mental illness that, which at the time was not considered

mental illness because it didn't exist.

Apparently the inbreeding was triggering terrible hallucinations and sort of fits.

Rage.

She was suffering from a lot of health and mental issues.

Also, it was a time where people of that kind of stature

were allowed to kill people.

If you decided that a, a maid had stolen something, she was dead the next day.

I mean, it was not something unusual, you know?

And she could be a feminist, but she could also be a monster.

It's funny, when I was studying writing, I remember this teacher said

to us that in um, uh, Shakespeare, you know, you have the ultimate character,

which is Hamlet, who is multifaceted.

He's good, he's bad, he's sane, he's mad.

So he has all the facet, he's almost everything.

Right.

And then you have Ophelia, she's like one thing,

right?

So I don't wanna say she's good or bad, she's all of it.

Being a woman has been, um, a complicated thing.

You know, I say that at the end of the Countess, I say, if I had been

a man I had, I would've been a hero.

You know, we always joke that if you are tough on set, you're a bitch.

And if you're, you know, if you're a man, you know what you want.

You know, it's, I mean, it's a bit exaggerated, but you know,

it's still a little bit like that.

It's changed.

It's changed and it comes back and it's, you know.

Equality is not a linear thing.

It's, yeah.

And congrats on hostage.

That was, uh, I think the most watched show on Netflix for a while.

It was very, very successful.

And I didn't expect, I mean, I, I did enjoy shooting it, but you know,

sometimes things are successful and you're like, oh, great.

So what's next for you?

Um, what's coming up?

Well, I did shoot something this spring, a film.

Actually I shot in Hungary, but it's not Hungarian.

It's called the, the entertainment system is down.

Oh, is that the one on the plane?

Yes.

That's a triangle of sadness guy.

Yes.

I love that director.

That's gonna be great.

I had a few scenes with Canna Reeves.

Oh my God.

Kind of really fun.

It's a comedy, I mean.

Dark comedy, his style,

can't wait to see it.

And we hope our audience, if you're interested in this topic

of Elizabeth Bori, will watch Julie Del's film The Countess.

But that's interesting that you decided to do, uh, the Bad Elizabeth.

It's very specific.

Yeah, very.

And at first I was like, how can that be?

And then I listened to the podcast of.

Another bad Elizabeth.

Oh good.

And that was interesting.

So the fun thing too is just sort of exploring these things and trying to

put yourself in the context of time.

Especially like Elizabeth the first was so fascinating to me.

You know, they were bad, but not just bad.

Like I think that's interesting to me.

They were women of their time too.

And powerful women.

Exactly.

You know, powerful women always.

Sort of a bad reputation, and particularly a lot of the business women we see

today, like who've made it to the top.

Like my mother, when she worked, they said, you're a bad mother because

you work and you have children.

You know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In Germany, they call it heaven, muta,

Muta,

the black bird.

We could talk to you for hours about many things.

This is fantastic.

Thank you.

We've learned so much and so interesting to hear about the making of the film.

Oh yeah.

It was an adventure, but was very intense.

Thank you so much,

and we always look forward to seeing you.

Anything you do, it's always delightful.

So

thank you G. Thank you, gi.

We'd like to thank our guest, Julie Delpy, for sharing her experience writing,

directing, and acting in the Countess.

We were glad to learn that no virgins were harmed during the making of that movie.

Or this podcast.

If you want more information on Elizabeth Bori, you can find that in the show notes.

You've just heard the last Battle, Elizabeth of 2025.

We hope you liked it.

Thanks again to Julie Delpy for talking to us about Zabe Bry.

We think she's amazing.

Julie Delpy, that is not Bal three.

How cool would a remake of The Shining Bee with Julie Delphi

as the Jack Torrance character?

That needs to happen.

Can I play Danny Torrance to her?

Jack?

That would be weird.

Red Rum.

Red Rum.

Yeah.

We just wanted to take a moment to thank you, the listeners.

It was an incredible year.

It's really been gratifying to see this show with like such a specific

premise, speak to so many people, so we have a lot to be thankful for.

We'd also like to extend our gratitude to the writers at The Guardian, the

Irish Independent, and the information, the Apple Podcasts and Spotify for

promoting us on their platforms.

We'd also like to thank Ariel Nien Blott from the Earbuds Collective for all the

great work she does in the podcast space.

We are so grateful for the glowing reviews, of course, but we're

also thankful for the listeners who point out when we completely

screw up facts, it does happen.

I have to say though, the one star review we got on Apple that says, we want

people to hate everyone named Elizabeth.

I'm not thrilled with that one.

We keep saying we don't hate all Elizabeth, but I guess CNO bad is

in the title, so blah, blah, blah.

Anyw who we're beyond grateful to have so much support, it's hard

to express how much it matters to an indie podcast like ours.

I

also wanna, uh, give a shout out to Amber Becton, of course.

Lovely.

Amber

Amber's wonderful and all the

amazing guests we've had.

And originally we planned on making eight episodes for season one of Battle

Elizabeth, but due to the show success.

We will be recording more episodes in the new year.

So after a brief hiatus, we will be bringing you brand new episodes featuring

questionable Elizabeth's as we are nowhere near scraping the bottom of that barrel.

Ho ho.

Yeah, it's a deep barrel.

All right.

Which reminds me.

We've been having a lot of fun with the battle.

Elizabeth Substack.

We do a lot of research for these episodes, believe it or not, and it

often feels like we've only scratched the surface with certain topics.

Substack has been a perfect place for us to do even deeper dives on Elizabeth

Finch, Liz Taylor, and Lizzie Borden.

You know Elizabeth, and we're gonna be active on Substack

during the hiatus, so reach out.

Check us out at Battle Elizabeth Pod on Substack.

Thanks again for an amazing 2025 and we look forward to

seeing you in the new year.

Thank you for listening to Battle Elizabeth.

Please rate and review the show on places like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

We are Battle Elizabeth Pod on Instagram and Substack.

Feel free to email us at Battle elizabeth pod@gmail.com.

If you have any questions or comments.

Battle Elizabeth is recorded at Jet Road Studios.

It is hosted by me, Gideon Evans,

and me, Kathy Egan Taylor.

It is produced and engineered by Will Becton, and our executive

producer is Amber Becton.

Our theme music was composed by Alexis Cordato and Danny Gray.

Thanks again for listening.

We'll see you next time.