Nicholas Hoult now has a little piece of Bill Skarsgård‘s “Nosferatu” prosthetics in his house, thanks to a gift from writer/director Robert Eggers.
Hoult told Elle that he owns Skarsgård’s prosthetic penis from his Court Orlok character. In fact, Hoult has the prop framed.
“I have Court Orlok’s prosthetic penis framed at home,” Hoult said. “There’s a scene where Bill Skarsgård is slurping my blood, and Robert Eggers asked afterward, ‘How was that for you?’ And I said, ‘I could feel his prosthetic penis on my leg.’ And then, as a wrap gift, Rob got it framed, and he sent it to my house.”
However, the frame had been broken in transit, and Hoult had to take the penis to a local frame shop to get it fixed.
“[The shopkeeper] kind of didn’t even blink the first time,” Hoult said. “Then, when I went back to pick it up, I think he’d clocked like how weird it was that I was framing potentially this vampire penis, and he was like, ‘Is this some kind of collector’s piece?’ And I was like, ‘Hm, you could say that.’”
Read IndieWire’s interview with Hoult here.
Hoult’s co-star Skarsgård previously told Deadline that he was “uncomfortable” in the numerous prosthetics required to play the titular character.
“The prosthetics took forever. Everything was very uncomfortable. You were very hot and you were very itchy and sticky,” Skarsgård said.
Eggers added that Skarsgård was worried about looking “like a goblin” in the role.
“He’s putting the makeup on and he’s like, ‘Ugh, I look like a goblin. This is terrible.’ And then, once they put the hair on, even though the makeup wasn’t totally finished, I saw the first moment when he was like, ‘OK, this is cool. This is a person,’” Eggers said. “I started to see him in the mirror, playing around, trying to do something. That was the next step of enjoying who the character was and could be.”
And the prosthetic penis wasn’t the only present Eggers was giving out to his cast members: “Nosferatu” star Lily-Rose Depp told IndieWire that Eggers gave her the short story “Péhor” by French author Remy de Gourmont to prepare her to play Ellen Hutter, a woman who conjures Skårsgard’s Count Orlok to be her companion.
“Péhor” is part of “Histoires magiques,” a collection of short stories that center on a troubled young girl named Douceline as she finds herself becoming sensually devoted to religious figures. Douceline becomes sexually involved with undead creature Péhor, who awakens her to the pleasures of sin, which mirrors Eggers’ “Nosferatu” plot.
“Rob is incredibly well-researched, famously, and so he sent me a lot of references, a lot of movies that had inspired him for the role. He also gave me this text to read, which is called ‘Péhor’ [by Remy de Gourmont], and it’s kind of like a story about a young religious girl who has a sexual awakening love story with a demon,” Depp said. “So, of course, that was quite pertinent for me. I used that kind of like a Bible and found myself reading it again and again as we were shooting.”
