A handsome actor as Orlok is "helpful psychologically" for the audience, per Robert Eggers

Apparently, Bill Skarsgård’s first reaction to his Count Orlok costume was to “freak out” and ask “What the fuck?” If you’ve seen Nosferatu, you’ll probably understand. Skarsgård is buried under so many layers of prosthetics and accented voice-work that his undead Transylvanian Count doesn’t resemble him even a little bit. In fact, if you didn’t see his name on the poster, you may not guess that it was the It actor under there at all. 

Even so, the fact that most audience members do know there’s a charismatic man under all that ancient corpse getup is intentional, according to director Robert Eggers. “I also cast a young, handsome, charming actor, rather than digging up Christopher Lee’s corpse and trying using it as a meat puppet,” he recently told The New York Times. In theory, he explained, he would normally be against relying on audiences’ external knowledge of an actor’s persona because “what’s onscreen is the only thing that should matter.” In this case, however, he thinks awareness of the fact that Orlok is objectively attractive somewhere under all those rats and pus is “probably helpful psychologically to the audience.”

Sure, the Count may not be sexy in the traditional sense. “There’s not going to be a poster of Orlok pinned next to, you know, Edward Cullen and Justin Bieber,” Eggers suggested. (Uhh… you never know.) Still, he wanted to make sure the character was infused with a certain grisly sensuality that also appeared in traditional vampiric mythology. “These early folk vampires, when they were disinterred, sometimes had erections,” he explained. “This was part of the decomposition process, but it was interpreted by the community participating in this excavation ritual as, OK, this guy’s out to [expletive]. And there are more examples of eroticism in early Balkan folk vampire lore.”

At the same time, he also confirmed that there were “real maggots” on Skarsgård at one point in the film, so… um… human sexuality and attraction are complicated. Let’s just leave it at that.