Bill Skarsgård finds his ‘Nosferatu’ vampire voice in opera

On By Littum

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There is so much about vampire Count Orlok in “Nosferatu” that is not Bill Skarsgård: facial prosthetics, creepy undead makeup, creepy long fingers. But that deep rumbling roar? All Skarsgård, all the time.

It should be him, argues the Swedish actor. So much so that when the idea of ​​modulating Skarsgård’s voice down (for maximum creepiness) was brought up, he was “vehemently against” it and ready to fight if necessary.

“I thought, ‘Please don’t. You can amplify it, and you can make it echoic, and you can project it more.’ But I wanted that part of the performance to be me,” says Skarsgård, 34.

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He is a favorite among the horror community for his diabolical showdown with Pennywise in the hit “It” films. But playing Orlok in director Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” (in theaters now), an undead Romanian vampire possessed by young German woman Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), marked a more all-encompassing experience than being an evil clown, says Skarsgård. “There were just a lot more factors that went into it with voice work and voice warm-ups and having everything prepared and being able to activate the character.”

Orlok cuts a formidable figure, made all the more disturbing by his constant hissing, rolling R’s and guttural dialogue. But to get the pitch just right, Skarsgård worked with an Icelandic opera singer Ásgerður Júníusdóttir on lowering his own voice an octave for all of Orlok.

“A lot of it was just the technicality of rooting the voice as deep as you can in your body and using your whole body to make the voice resonate,” says Skarsgård, who took tips from the opera star like “place the voice out of your forehead.”

Skarsgård perfected Orlok’s tone in his living room. “I was so relaxed and it was like the most alive my voice has ever been,” he says. And then he used the tools he learned to get it right when the cameras rolled: Skarsgård built a 20-minute routine for himself in which he would warm up his voice — but not too warm, “because I needed that grit to it” – and then did vocal exercises between takes as well as “a lot of Mongolian throat singing just to have it active and deeply placed.”

As if that wasn’t involved enough, an extra level of difficulty was added in the moments when Orlok speaks Dacian, an extinct language, in scenes where the vampire communicates with Ellen via their psychic connection. And with it all, Skarsgård was able to make Orlok’s personality pop.

In a scene where Ellen’s estate agent Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) has come to Orlok’s Transylvanian castle to sign papers on the vampire’s new German property, Thomas cuts his finger with a knife while cutting bread. Skarsgård wanted to play with the voice a bit when Orlok sees the blood: He sent Eggers a voice memo he recorded titled “Tiger growl.” Which speaks for itself.

So when Orlok’s signature hiss turns into a low, hungry growl, “you feel that he’s excited. He’s so excited,” Skarsgård said. “I wanted something that would increase the tension there. I was really happy with how it played out.”