Eddie Redmayne breaks down his intense physical transformations in thriller series “The Day of the Jackal”

"What is really bizarre is at the end of the day when you are standing in your boxer shorts sort of half naked with this older face on you — that looks very disconcerting," the Oscar winner says.

Eddie Redmayne looks nothing like a killer — but perhaps that's why he makes a perfect assassin in his latest project, upcoming thriller series The Day of the Jackal.

The Oscar winner joined EW this summer over Zoom from New York, where he's been playing the Emcee in Broadway's Cabaret, to discuss the series adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's 1971 The Day of the Jackal novel, out on Peacock in November. Viewers are introduced to Redmayne's Jackal, a talented sniper with a mysterious past and a penchant for disguise. The first disguise is so elaborate, in fact, that fans might not even recognize Redmayne when they see him.

Related: Eddie Redmayne says Day of the Jackal scripts 'discombobulated' him: 'It threw me off course'

"I don't want to give anything away, but that you can perhaps con an audience into believing that you are from a different country and a different generation," Redmayne says, "was such a beautiful conceit in the script."

The series follows the Jackal across Europe as he attempts to pull off his most high-profile hit yet — all while evading British intelligence — hence, the many disguises.

Redmayne reunited with his Theory of Everything movement coach, Alexandra Reynolds, as well as Gladiator II military advisor Paul Bidiss — not to mention the prosthetics department, costume designer, and dialect coach — to nail down the Jackal's many personas. "The most important moment is bringing everyone together to make sure those things cohere," Redmayne says.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

The actor explains that one aspect of a disguise may completely change once he's fully in costume. For the transformation viewers will see in the premiere, he says, "I'd spent months trying to be really specific with the German language, but of course the second you are dressed in this prosthetic that completely transforms your age and perhaps his smoking habit, it was where you have to place the voice. So it was [speaking German] whilst also trying to then sort of drop a couple of octaves to try and make him sound like he'd been smoking 20 a day for 40 years."

"It was all a challenge, but again, that's the stuff I get off on," Redmayne adds.

The star praised the "extreme" artistry of prosthetics, but admitted that wearing them isn't all that glamorous. "Shooting in prosthetics in the summer in Hungary, but basically there's nowhere for the sweat to go under because it's glued onto your face. So they have to come and then prick the prosthetic with pins and then all of this disgusting sweat kind of oozes out. It was pretty gross, I'm not going to lie."

Related: What to expect from Yellowstone, 9-1-1, The Penguin and 74 other fall shows

But the most unnerving part of the transformations in Day of the Jackal came once the cameras stopped rolling.

"What is really bizarre is at the end of the day, when you are standing in your boxer shorts sort of half naked with this older face on you — that looks very disconcerting," he says.

Day of the Jackal premieres Nov. 14 on Peacock.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.