After the recent box office and critical mishap of The Crow reboot, Bill Skarsgard is all set to appear in masterful horror filmmaker Robert Eggers in Nosferatu. The actor who plays the iconic gothic character Count Orlock, recently revealed that the role was too intense for him and he was terrified preparing and portraying the role.
Bill Skarsgard Was ‘Terrifed’ Of His Nosferatu Role
Bill Skarsgard. Image Credit: Lionsgate Films
Bill Skarsgard has several interesting movies to his credit and the actor has been doing remarkably well in his part. Also, taking challenging roles has never been out of his comfort zone. He played the terrifying villain Pennywise in Andres Muschietti’s It franchise and nailed it, at least as per fans and critics. But playing Count Orlock in Nosferatu really took a toll on him. Recently Skarsgard and the director of the film Robert Eggers had a conversation for AnOther Magazine where the 43-year-old explained the experience he had while playing the character. “I have to say, I’ve never been more terrified of a role and probably won’t be again,” Skarsgard told Eggers.
“The whole journey was so intense,” the actor continued. “Once you start channelling something that’s not you, you feel like a vessel. And you can go entire movies where that doesn’t happen at all or it happens in moments, but that’s always what you’re striving towards,” he added.
“In that moment, the doors are open and it’s flowing through me. I’ve never prepared this hard for anything before either. But once we started shooting, Orlok was very formed and he started to flow. I could connect and dial up to wherever Orlok was and he would come through. It was an intense ride.”
Eggers revealed that he is “so grateful” for everything the actor put into it, “which was all of yourself and finally none of yourself.”
Bill Skarsgard Shared How He Landed His Nosferatu Role
Bill Skarsgard. Image Credit: Lionsgate Films
The collaboration of Eggers and Skarsgard was supposed to happen in the director’s 2022 Viking epic The Northman and the actor was quite excited about the project, “even though that was your baby with Alex.” The director starred Alexander Skarsgard in the lead role, Bill’s elder brother and son of legendary actor Stellan Skarsgard. However, due to Covid, the project was delayed for eight months and he ended up in a “massive scheduling conflict and that fell through too.” The actor added, “I was like, I’ve tasted Eggers, I’ve tasted what a collaboration with him would be like.”
After The Northman, his agents and [the producer] James Farrell said, “All right, it sounds like Eggers is going to do Nosferatu next.” the actor responded by saying, “OK, well, do I still have the Hutter role, what’s going on?” He was told that the director was “looking at other things, other people.” the Boy Kills World actor admitted writing a “very earnest, embarrassing email to you saying, “‘Please, please, please, I’ll do whatever — I need to work with you.’”
“I heard you ended up casting Nick Hoult as Hutter. At that point I was like, I’m done, it’s over. I’ll have to forget about Rob, forget about this potential collaboration. Just move on. Best of luck to him.”
When Eggers finally reached out to the actor about the Count Orlok role, he was in “complete shock” admitting that he was “utterly terrified … but also excited.” Initially, he felt, “It didn’t make any sense to me at all.”
“But we spoke on the phone a lot and you shared your thoughts about the character, the look of the character. You shared files of your own concept art and a backstory. So I put myself on tape for it. It was so abstract – we had ten days where I would just record things and send you voice memos and little things I was exploring. And you would gently steer me off certain things, towards different things.”
Skarsgard added that the movie was a “beautiful exploration of the character that was so generous of you.” And after a Zoom read-over, he got the role. “It’s very different from the run-of-the-mill self-tapes or casting calls … And then you wanted me.”
Nosferatu is slated for the December 25 release.
