‘Nosferatu’ star Bill Skarsgård unpacks dramatic Count Orlok transformation

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Nosferatu.

Count Orlok has arrived.

After months of preserving Bill Skarsgård’s practical effects transformation into the vampire of Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu under wraps, audiences got their first ever full-on look at the dreaded vampire when the film hit theaters on Christmas Day.

Orlok maintains a presence in the film from the beginning, but audiences only get a good look at him deeper into the story. Nicholas Hoult’s Thomas Hutter, the hapless estate agent trapped in Orlok’s castle, finds his client asleep in his sarcophagus, whereupon the cat is out of the bag and the monster comes fully into light.

In an interview with Weekly entertainment (conducted weeks before the film’s premiere).

“I never felt like the character until I had everything on. So full makeup and full costume,” he says. “I remember our second camera test that we did. There’s no sound, there’s no voice recording. It’s just the camera, a bunch of candles and me sitting in a chair. Especially when it’s on film, you can actually hear the camera roll , but you see the little red light, and then it’s time. We had done a lot of rehearsals before that, but it was the first time that I felt like the cameras were alive and I (could) start to become this thing.”

When Eggers acknowledged during that screen test, “Yeah, there he is,” Skarsgård felt relieved. “I sit and look the way I look and do the voice and the body, it’s so abstract and it feels fake and it feels contrived,” he says. “So you’re scared because it’s something you can’t really control. Either this will come alive or it won’t. I can’t force it. It has to be there.” And that was it.

The actor remembers how Eggers, who spent decades wanting to make his version of Nosferatucreated a digital drawing of Orlok that he shared with him while testing the film. “Which ended up being two years before we actually went into production,” notes Skarsgård. “It’s pretty close to how he actually looks in the movie.”

The appearance includes a skeletal face with protruding cheekbones, almost as if the flesh clings to the bone; patches of rotting skin all over the body; and a moustache. David White, the prosthetic makeup effects designer, sculpted a bust to realize Eggers’ vision.

The director talks about Orlok less as a vampire and more as an undead wizard – a lich, if you will. “I knew what I wanted Orlok to look like. It just so happened that Bill doesn’t really look like that,” he tells EW separately. “When David was doing the sculpt, he was very careful not to fill up Bill’s face too much, but still give it the look that I wanted. Bill said, ‘Man, I didn’t look like this guy when he was alive,’ what a seen was my intention.”

“I was worried that I couldn’t perform through it, that it would feel like giant pieces of prosthetics, and I couldn’t come alive through it,” says Skarsgård. “There was definitely a phase where they hadn’t put everything on where I looked like, I look like a f—ing Grinch or a f—ing elf. I didn’t like how it translated at all. Once all the pieces were in place and the team finished coloring, it started to come together. “I tend to just go in and record myself just on my phone,” he adds. “I do some scenes just for the camera and play with what kind of light works and how you change your expression depending on what angle you’re at.”

In addition to the prosthetics, Skarsgård worked with an opera coach to lower his vocal register to reach the serious depths of Orlok’s voice, full of rolled R’s and slow, careful speech that reflects the count’s Transylvanian accent. This came from his early conversations with Eggers about the role, where they went back and forth, workshopping ideas and sharing various video clips and movie references. The actor was then secluded from the cast much of the time during production as he focused on this work.

“I know Bill felt too lonely at times when he was shooting The. So I said, ‘You can be Bill on the weekend and hang out with people if you need to, but you’re contemporary and you have to play someone who died when they were 50 and is now an immortal being like can’t be anything but perfect. So you have to keep your distance on set.’ When he discussed the inner world of this dead wizard to me in detail, it was quite terrifying. And I’m really ready for anything, but I was affected by how deep he dived. So when he gets into character, it’s heavy and everyone can feel it. And the makeup design is quite evocative. So, yes, I think he was an intimidating presence — and needed it.”

Skarsgård gives a lot of credit to his experience playing Pennywise the Clown at age 26 for Andy Muschietti It: Chapter 1 (2017), which really put the actor, now 34, on the map as the guy who can channel monsters. “I also think about my career in all aspects of it if I hadn’t done Pennywise,” he says. “I’ve been dealing with grades very differently ever since I did the first one The film. In terms of the prostheses, it is in many ways a very superficial part of the job. It is something that is on top of the surface. In terms of creating something that’s incredibly abstract and so far removed from who I am as a person, Pennywise was the biggest (back then). I think Orlok is an even bigger leap.”