Yahoo Lifestyle How ‘Nosferatu’ Made Count Orlok’s Arthritic Fingers, Prosthetic Penis and ‘Red as Hell’ Blood Pools
Bill Skarsgård’s transformation into the hideous-looking vampire Count Orlok for Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” was an arduous process — with the end goal of making the Swedish actor completely unrecognizable.
“I was not so interested in Bill’s features, aside from his eyes,” Eggers says of Skarsgård. “The things that make [Orlock] not just an intimidating, masculine human being, is the fact that he’s also decaying and dead. Even the design of the teeth needed to be something that could be fucked up.”
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Oscar nominated makeup effects designer David White created over 62 prosthetic pieces that required a team of six to apply. Skarsgård was covered from head to toe, including elements for his tongue and eyes. Only the soles of his feet were untouched.
The film reimagines F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic starring Max Schreck, whom Eggers wanted to reference when it came to Orlock’s look. One such detail was in Orlok’s hands and fingers. “I wanted to extend Bill’s fingers ever so slightly, and I [asked] David about creating something to push the envelope,” says Eggers.
In coming up with a concept for the hands and fingers, White had one that was quickly scrapped. “I was playing with the idea of soft mechanics to extend them, but they’re really long and they weren’t as dexterous,” he says. The idea was too cumbersome for something that had to be very sharp. Orlok also needed to hold things, open boxes and write letters.
White used a dense material so Skarsgård could feel things. It took a while to get to the final design, but in the end, the nails were a quarter of an inch longer on the tips. They were custom-made to be “gnarly and weathered,” White says. “‘Arthritic’ was a word we looked at, as well as having them slightly unusual in their angle.
“They’re not quite right, as if they’ve been used for so many years.”
In a nod to Schreck’s silhouette, Eggers also wanted Orlok to be hunchbacked. White built a one-piece prosthetic with a thick foam insert. “That took away the weight, otherwise, it would be 46 pounds of silicon,” White says. Breaking down the application, he adds, “The back goes on first, the front overlaps the back, but the rest is all in little sections across the arms and the legs. It’s between 18 to 25 different pieces of muscle which overlap. They were pre-painted and ready to go.”
Orlok’s full reveal comes when Ellen’s (Lily-Rose Depp) husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) heads to the crypt and finds the sarcophagus. Orlok is in a state of decay with intricate veining and coloring.
White made it darker on the underside because he’s been lying down, but his front is lighter and waxier.
Florin Lăzărescu, the film’s Romanian folklore consultant, was the inspiration for the blood-pooling color. Says Eggers, “He reminded me that the vampire is often described as being red-faced in Romanian folklore, which was a concept that was very intimidating to do. What David came up with was beautiful, and he did paint jobs where this guy was red as hell.”
White was tasked with creating full body prosthetics, including a penis. “It was a necessary piece to make,” he laughs. Eggers adds, “I was allowed one penis [for] this movie. He rises out of the coffin naked. That in itself is a bit of a phallic act, as is most of everything that Orlok does in the movie.”
Every detail of a decayed Orlok was considered, including a dead eye made possible with special contact lenses. “I even made a sock of a tongue that Bill could use in certain scenes, which was all gnarly and scored and black and horrible, you know. So poor Bill, he took it well,” White says.
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