Jamie Campbell Bower has detailed how he prepared for the villainous role of Vecna in Stranger Things season four.
The actor, who spent up to eight hours in a makeup chair for the role, explained some of his rituals to help get in character as the killer.
Speaking to People, Campbell Bower said: “I would take photographs of each victim. I’d print them off, my next victim, and I would cross their eyes out and put them up on my wall. And I’d stare at them.”
He added: “Resentment is a massive driving force for Vecna. He already has this belief system that the world is a lie and that it’s unjust. And so preparing was about bringing that up and digging that up more, [which meant] a lot of heavy, dark meditation, low-frequency sounds, a lot of saying the same kind of thing over and over again.
“I would clear my mind and then have these phrases that I would just put in over and over and over again. Walking around late at night. Isolation on my own was always a good thing.”
To tap into the “fury side of things”, the actor said music was a major factor. “I used it to either reignite that or just kind of stay in a zone, and I would sit in sort of pitch black,” he added.
Campbell Bower is expected to return as Vecna in the fifth and final season of Stranger Things, although it’s unclear in what capacity.
Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, show creators the Duffer Brothers confirmed the final season will take place entirely in Hawkins – ditching California and Russia from season four.
“We wanna go back to a lot of the things we did in season one,” Matt Duffer said. “A lot of the original groupings and pairings that we had in season one – there’s something nice about coming full circle.”
In a four-star review of season four, NME wrote: “While there are some gripes to be had with the penultimate season of the show, it still packs in all the terrifying thrills you’d expect, deftly blending horror and sci-fi to maximum effect while still allowing for some laughs among the bleakness. It’s a finely-tuned formula that’s given us yet another sublime season.”
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