Willem Dafoe Is Personally Choosing Someone to Appear in His Next Film. The Only Requirement Is That You Make Something.

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Jul 24

**Laphroaig Graphic Via The Cinema Group**

Laphroaig's 'No Notes' competition closes August 2. There's no audition tape, no representation requirement, and no format restriction — just an original piece of work and a whisky that refuses to be described.

There's a moment in 'The Taste', the short film Willem Dafoe made with Laphroaig, where the entire premise becomes clear: this is an actor who has spent forty years finding language for impossible interior states, handed a glass of Islay single malt and asked to explain what it tastes like. He cannot do it. That's the joke and also the point. The film follows Willem as he searches to define Laphroaig's taste, taking on what the brand describes as one of his most ambitious artistic challenges yet: putting his finger on exactly what it is that makes Laphroaig taste so, well, Laphroaig.

That failure — productive, funny, genuinely well-shot — has now become an invitation. Laphroaig has opened the next chapter of the campaign to the public, and the terms are unusually generous. The 'No Notes' competition asks anyone to submit their own interpretation of the 'Willem By Willem' limited edition, in any creative form they choose. One winner, personally selected by Dafoe, receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to appear in an upcoming Laphroaig film alongside him, with travel and accommodation provided if required to attend the filming location.

What makes this worth paying attention to, beyond the obvious appeal of the prize, is how few gates there are. Brand competitions that promise on-camera opportunity usually arrive wrapped in qualifiers — regional restrictions, agency representation, a submission portal that functions as a filter. This one asks for an email or an Instagram tag. The judging criteria are three words long. And the deadline is close enough that the work has to be made now, which tends to produce better entries than a six-month runway ever does.

The Brief Is the Whole Idea

The instruction is direct: turn your interpretation of 'Willem By Willem' into any form of creative expression — a poem, a performance, a sketch, a film, or anything that captures what you taste.

Read that list again. It's not a video contest with a poetry option bolted on. The formats are genuinely equal, which means the competition is being judged on the quality of the idea rather than the production value of the execution — a distinction that matters enormously if you're a filmmaker without a crew, or a writer who has never touched a camera, or someone whose best instinct is a single drawing.

The three steps Laphroaig lays out are equally spare. Taste it — experience it your way. Interpret it — create something original, inspired by your own take on the whisky. Share it — however you choose.

Entries will be judged on creativity, originality, and your interpretation of the brief, with one winner selected by Willem Dafoe. That last clause is doing real work. This isn't a panel or an agency committee or a public vote. Dafoe is choosing, which means the winning entry is the one that interests him — and anyone who has followed his filmography from 'The Last Temptation of Christ' through 'The Lighthouse' to 'Poor Things' has a reasonable sense of what tends to hold his attention. Strange is not a liability here. Strange is arguably the strategy.

How to Enter

Submissions can be sent by email to NoNotes@laphroaig.com or shared publicly by tagging @Laphroaig on Instagram. Full details and the complete brief live at HERE.

Submissions close on August 2, 2026. That is a hard date, and it's roughly ten days out from this posting.

All entries must meet the entry requirements and Terms & Conditions, which are available HER E. Laphroaig will process personal data provided through submissions for campaign administration and related communications, in accordance with the Suntory Global Spirits Privacy Notice.

Why the Whisky Has No Tasting Notes

The competition's name isn't decorative. 'Willem' By Willem is a limited-edition whisky selected by Dafoe himself, released deliberately open to interpretation — no official tasting notes, no prescribed vocabulary, nothing telling you what you're supposed to find in the glass. That absence is the creative prompt. You cannot repeat the brand's language back to it, because the brand declined to provide any.

It's a smarter piece of campaign architecture than it first appears. Most spirits marketing hands you a lexicon and asks you to adopt it. This one removes the lexicon and asks what you'd say instead. The Limited Edition exists as the object at the center of that question.

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The partnership itself has been running with more ambition than most celebrity brand alignments bother with. Laphroaig frames Dafoe as sharing the whisky's unmatched intensity — an iconic actor with a free spirit and an uncompromising dedication to his craft, a true visionary who tackles every challenge with grit, passion, and the courage of his convictions. The campaign has produced a short film, a signature cocktail called The Other Island, an on-set Spotify playlist, and a stunt in which the historic London pub The Barley Mow was taken over and renamed 'The Barley Dafoe' in his honor, baffling Mayfair pedestrians in the process.

There's also the running bit that gives the campaign its name. Laphroaig is inviting Friends of Laphroaig worldwide to swap the F in their name for a PH — on a social profile or through whatever creative route they prefer — in tribute to Willem DaPHoe. It is deeply silly. It is also the correct register for a campaign whose central premise is that a very serious actor cannot describe a drink.

The Real Opportunity

Strip away the branding and what's on offer here is a piece of screen time selected by one of the most respected working actors alive, awarded on the basis of a single original idea. No showreel. No credits. No representation.

For anyone who makes things — filmmakers, poets, illustrators, performers, editors who've never been in front of a camera — that's a rare structure. The ceiling on entries like this is usually set by production budget. Here it's set by imagination, and the deadline is close enough that overthinking is the primary risk.

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