Bill Skarsgård’s Nosferatu vampire fit was inspired by The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger according to a new interview.
READ MORE: ‘The Northman’ review: you’ll be bowled over by this brutal Viking epic
The movie, which is set to release on December 25 in the US and January 3 in the UK, is a remake of the 1922 film of the same name, which in turn was based on Bram Stoker’s gothic horror novel Dracula. Directed by Robert Eggers, it stars the likes of Skarsgård alongside Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin.
The film’s costume designer Linda Muir has now opened up more about the inspirations behind Skarsgård’s outfit in the film, which she says drew from Jagger.
Speaking to IndieWire, the designer said she had fun creating the costume for Skarsgård’s Orlok saying his coat was “more of a cape, like Dracula”.
She continued: “And then he has underneath a beautiful dolman, which is like a tunic…And that is layered and layered and layered. It has patterned silk, and I tried to choose textiles that have a lot of gold threads because I knew [cinematographer] Jarin [Blaschke] would be using firelight and candlelight and this beautiful moonlight. So things that could twinkle and reflect back to us to give the shape of an outline.
“And then he has kind of Mick Jagger trousers,” she added, “which are mustard-coloured, kind of shiny gold thread, skin-tight trousers and a beautiful sash at his waist. And then he has the coolest footwear. He has leather. They’re like mules, so a slip-on. But for safety and comfort, they gave Bill another 4 inches or so in what is already a really beautiful, thin, tall outline.”
Skarsgård also had to wear a harness next to his body because of the heavy weight of his cloak, heat, and prosthetic makeup. “So we tried to make it so that we could release him as quickly as possible,” Muir continued. “We cooled him off between takes, in between setups, and not tire him out from walking around with this. It also had to look effortless, like he wouldn’t fall off, like it’s mesmerised onto his shoulders, and magical, too.”
The first reviews of the film arrived recently and it received much praise from critics.
Courtney Howard, a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, said that Nosferatu “goes harder than any other horror film this year,” and calls it a “gorgeous grotesquerie of dread-infused terrors and a divine dark delight.”
She described Skarsgård’s Count Orlok as “pure sinister nightmare fuel” and calls the movie Depp and Hoult’s “best work to date”.
Fellow film critic Carlos Aguilar added: “After a few months I can finally share I loved Nosferatu. It further crystallizes Eggers’ exploration of evil as an elemental force, as inherent to existence as desire, emerging from the same divinity as kindness. It’s so inextricable from us, fighting it demands great sacrifice.”
Nosferatu is set to be Eggers’ fourth feature film, following his 2015 debut The Witch, 2019’s The Lighthouse, and 2022’s The Northman. It’s been a long time in the making, too, with an Eggers-directed remake first announced back in 2015.
NME gave The Northman a five-star review, writing: “If there’s one criticism to be made, it’s that the more avant-garde moments sometimes turn tedious. Dafoe is best when he’s freaking out, but an early rite-of-passage sequence that ends in an orgy of burping and farting seems silly – even if it does soften up the viewer for a shocking plot twist.”
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