Bill Skarsgård apparently went into a super dark place during his performance as Count Orlok in director Robert Eggers’ upcoming vampire film Nosferatu.
He’s played some deranged and evil characters in the past with Pennywise The Clown from It, but playing Count Orlok was so evil, that he never wants to play a character like that again.
During a recent interview with Empire, Skarsgård said: “When we were done with it, I was like, ‘I never want to play something this evil again. I never want to put on prosthetics again’,”
He went on to say that it “was a relief,” when he was finished playing the character and says: “It really affected me. Orlok is an occult sorcerer, and it did a number on me in terms of just trying to inhabit that space.”
The actor went on to talk about the process he went through to transform into Count Orlok, specifically with the voice, saying that he worked with an opera singer to lower his voice a whole octave.
“The voice was the thing I worked the hardest at. For a month-and-a-half leading up to the shoot, I didn’t do much else than just record myself. And on set, I would keep doing these exercises. It sounds kind of like Mongolian throat-singing. It’s [insane].”
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.
When previously talking about the movie, 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.”
The film is described by critics as being gory, creepy, haunting, grotesque, stunning, gorgeous, and captivating, and one critic says that it “goes harder than any other horror film this year.”
The movie also stars Nicolas Hoult, Emma Corrin (Deadpool 3), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kraven the Hunter), Simon McBurney (The Conjuring 2) and Ralph Ineson (The Witch).
The movie will be released in theaters on December 25, 2024.
