Nosferatu's take on Count Orlok is a far cry from the vampire's classic big screen appearance. However, a drastic reinvention was expected with filmmaker Robert Eggers eager to put a new spin on the classic horror story.
When Nicholas Hoult's Thomas Hutter discovers the Count resting in his sarcophagus, Orlok is fully revealed; Bill Skarsgård dons a bushy mustache, has a skeletal face, and patches of decaying skin all over his body (yes, there's a full frontal nude scene).
Skarsgård, who transformed into Pennywise the Clown in the IT movies, embraced the prosthetics and makeup needed to bring Count Orlok to life on screen in the remake but admits they were a challenge at first.
"I was worried that I couldn't perform through it, that it would feel like giant prosthetic pieces, and I couldn't come alive through that," Skarsgård told Entertainment Weekly. "There was definitely a stage when they hadn't put everything on, where I was like, I look like the f---ing Grinch or a f---ing goblin. I did not like at all how it was translating."
"I, too, think about my career in every aspect of it if I hadn't done Pennywise," he continued. "I've approached characters very differently ever since I did the first It movie. In terms of the prosthetics, that is, in a lot of ways, a very superficial part of the job. It is something that's on top of the surface. In terms of creating something that is incredibly abstract and so far away from what I am as a person, Pennywise was the biggest [at the time]. I think Orlok is an even bigger leap."
Eggers added, "I knew what I wanted Orlok to look like. It happened to be that Bill doesn't really look like that. When [David White] did the sculpt, he put in a lot of care to not overly bulk up Bill's face but still give it the look that I wanted. Bill was like, 'Man, I didn't look like this guy when he was alive,' which was sort of my intention."
In a separate interview with Variety, the director addressed the divisive facial hair when he said, "So to try to make a more scary vampire than we’ve had in quite some time, I went back to the folklore. It’s something that I like anyway, but the early folk vampire was written about by people who believed that vampires existed."
"There was going to be some good stuff there, and the vampire of folklore is a putrid, walking undead corpse. And so the question then became, 'What does a dead Transylvanian nobleman look like?' That means this complex Hungarian costume with very long sleeves, strange high-heeled shoes and a furry hat. It also means a mustache."
"No matter what, there’s no way this guy can’t have a mustache. Try to find a Transylvanian person who’s of age who can grow a mustache that doesn’t have a mustache," he explained. "It’s part of the culture. If you don’t want to bother Googling, think of Vlad the Impaler. Even Bram Stoker had the sense to give Dracula a mustache in the book."
Nosferatu ends with Orlok's death and, after being exposed to sunlight, he perishes atop Ellen Hutter. Of that, Eggers said, "Well, if you look very closely at that shot, Orlok is still bleeding out of his eyes, ears and nose. There are some maggot holes in his back. We also rigged it so that he would be bleeding out of his anus, but it was very comical. When we started rolling, we had to literally put a cork in it."
A new take on F. W. Murnau's 1922 version and Werner Herzog's take in 1979, Nosferatu is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.
Written for the screen and directed by Robert Eggers, Nosferatu stars Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney and Willem Dafoe.
Nosferatu is now playing in theaters.