Bill Skarsgard says audiences may not be ready to see him in Nosferatu. The actor said this week his role in Robert Eggers‘ upcoming remake of the silent vampire film “took its toll.”
“It was like conjuring pure evil. It took a while for me to shake off the demon that had been conjured inside of me,” Skarsgard told Esquire.
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror was a 1922 silent film directed by F. W. Murnau, which was an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula that later became a cult classic. Eggers’ remake of the pic is set for release this Christmas. Alongside Skarsgard, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney and Willem Dafoe also star.
Skarsgard will play Count Orlok, the vampire antagonist. His costume and makeup have remained secret, but Skarsgard says he’s not sure audiences will recognize him. “He’s gross,” he said of the character. “But it is very sexualized. It’s playing with a sexual fetish about the power of the monster and what that appeal has to you. Hopefully you’ll get a little bit attracted by it and disgusted by your attraction at the same time.”
Eggers told the outlet he was routinely impressed with Skarsgard’s dedication to the character’s evil. “I remember early on, [Skarsgard] trying to talk to me about what it meant to be a dead sorcerer — and I’m into some pretty heavy occult shit, but he was on a different level,” he said. “I was like, ‘This sounds accurate, but I don’t know how to converse about this with any fluidity.’”
Skarsgard’s dedication to horror goes beyond Eggers’ most recent film. He played the terrifying clown in It and the villain in John Wick, and will soon appear in The Crow this summer. The actor said he’s long dreamed of working with Eggers, though. “You get a crush on someone — you can’t stop thinking about that person. I’ve only had it a few times, but that was so true with Robert,” he said. “It was like, ‘Whatever this guy does, I just want to be a part of anything that this guy is making.’”