Bill Skarsgård's Initial Reaction to Count Orlock's Design in NOSFERATU - "What the F**k?"
The marketing team behind Robert Eggers remake of Nosferatu have been keeping Bill Skarsgård’s version of Count Orlock in the shadows. They want to keep the reveal for the audiences when they see the movie.
They are trying to build up the hype, and now the film’s stars, Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult, are adding to the hype by talking about how Skarsgård’s look as Count Orlock completely freaked them out.
While speaking to Deadline, Depp talked about her first impressions of Count Orlock, saying: “I remember thinking, ‘This is genuinely scary as hell, to be just next to him in a room, so I can’t imagine how it’s going to read on screen.’
“He was genuinely petrifying-looking, and then, once we started actually shooting the movie, it was otherworldly, because, like everything in a Robert Eggers movie, the detail—the way they made his skin look and feel, the costume, the whole thing—feels so real, and it feels like a total nightmare.
“That’s what I think is so unsettling about it: it’s not just like looking at a monster; it’s like there’s something very human about him, which I think makes it all the more terrifying.”
As for Hoult’s reaction, he said: “For that first interaction, we’re so far apart, he’s just a silhouette. And through that first scene that we do, when we walk into the castle, you don’t really see him.
“It’s kind of that thing where you’re like, ‘Oh, I know I feel uneasy,’ but [my character] Tom is too polite. He’s not the person that’s going to be like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up.’ It’s all kind of a weird fever dream, what’s happening, but it’s like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to continue this. This is what I need to do.’”
The director then talked about Skarsgård’s reaction when he was first presented with the look of the creature, saying:
“Bill sees the sculpt of the bust and he freaks out, and he’s like, ‘That doesn’t look anything like me, this guy didn’t look like me when he was even alive. What the f*ck?’ He wasn’t mean, but he was alarmed. And I was like, ‘Well, that’s the point, that you’re totally transforming into somebody else.’
“And then, he’s putting the makeup on and he’s like, ‘Ugh, I look like a goblin. This is terrible.’ And then, once they put the hair on, even though the makeup wasn’t totally finished, I saw the first moment when he was like, ‘OK, this is cool. This is a person.’ I started to see him in the mirror, playing around, trying to do something.”
“That was the next step of enjoying who the character was and could be. I think it was the second full makeup and costume test, Bill entered, took his mark, and it was like, ‘Orlok’s there. He’s there.’
Nosferatu tells the dark and twisted tale of obsession between a haunted young woman (Lily-Rose Depp) in 19th-century Germany and the ancient Transylvanian vampire who stalks her, bringing untold horror with him.
Eggers said: “It’s a scary film. It’s a horror movie. It’s a Gothic horror movie. And I do think that there hasn’t been an old-school Gothic movie that’s actually scary in a while. And I think that the majority of audiences will find this one to be the case.”
Nosferatu hits theaters December 25.