Jamie Campbell Bower talks about Stranger Things 5: Vecna’s new look

Spoiler Alert: This story describes plot developments in Season 5, Volume 1 of Stranger Things, currently streaming on Netflix.

Vecna ​​is back in Stranger Things 5, and she’s scarier than ever.

Season 4 of the Netflix series introduced Jamie Campbell Bower as the evil villain of the Duffer Brothers’ Netflix series. Bauer is easy on the eyes as Vecna’s human incarnation, Henry Creel, but in full form Vecna ​​is a frightening monster with a veiny, gray flesh, decrepit face, and piercing eyes, befitting the Prince of the Upside Down.

Due to Vecna’s temporary defeat at the end of Season 4 (after Nancy, Robin, and Steve shoot up Vecna’s body and set it on fire), she returns in Season 5 in an even more gruesome form. When he makes his full body debut in the season’s fourth episode, he appears larger and has a more skeletal and frightening visual, made up of a tangle of veins, bones, muscles, and ligaments.

Naturally, Vecna’s new look required a new level of special effects, both digital and practical. “This season was definitely a combination of practical and CG,” Bower told Variety. “On a practical level, the face is all prosthetic, the shoulder is prosthetic, the hand is prosthetic, but everything else is a morph suit.”

Transforming Bauer into the monster was a collaboration between the actors and the makeup, special effects, costumes, and concept art teams. Bower praised the ingenuity of head of prosthetic makeup Barry Gower, costume designer Amy Parris, and concept artist Michael Maher in bringing Vecna ​​to life.

Bower recalled speaking with Gower to confirm that he was no longer in costume during filming. “Vecna ​​still has that presence that she had when I first stepped on set. I want to make sure I’m still big.” Gower added that he added shoulder pads to the costume and added “two large blocks on the sides of the suit,” so Bauer’s arms “naturally sit a little further away from the body,” allowing Vecna ​​to maintain an organically threatening gate. Meanwhile, Paris made sure that Bower’s shoes had a three-inch rise so that Vecna ​​towered over the other characters.

Playing Vecna ​​was a different experience this time around, as new prosthetics and techniques were needed to reduce the layer of latex covering the actor. Bower recalled that while Season 4 required “an inch and a half of foam latex to go through,” Season 5 required only “a millimeter.” This results in more fluidity and a smaller performance membrane.

Still, some characteristics remain the same, especially Vecna’s sinister voice, which Bower also provides. Bower developed the voice for Season 4 based on Doug Bradley’s performance as Pinhead in the Hellraiser films. “Doug is great as Pinhead, and the first three movies (‘Hellraiser’) are great,” he said. “I used to send the Duffers a GIF of ‘Hellraiser III’ where he would say ‘I’m the way’ before the window broke. That was often at the end of the email.”

Bower also strove to maintain relationships with his co-stars, especially since he was sharing scenes with so many young actors playing the victims of Vecna’s terror. “We don’t want people to feel scared all the time, but of course sometimes that’s necessary for the field,” Bower says.

He credits the abundance of scenes he shared with Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven in Season 4 with being able to hone this balance. “Millie is very receptive, and that’s what makes her such a great actor. It’s like what she’s going through is always real. So in that, as we were working, there were definitely moments where she was in complete terror. Of course, that was necessary and wanted for the scene. That’s important, but also, as her friend and as someone who loves her, I don’t want her to feel that way, and there were certain moments where we were doing that, and she said, ‘Oh, no, I know it’s you now, I can smell your cigarettes, so I’m relieved.’ ”

These check-ins are paramount to continuing to film a positive experience, and despite Vecna ​​being the series’ antagonist, Bower feels close to his co-stars and the Stranger Things crew. “We’re all a really good family, and I think this is one of the best things I’ve ever done,” he reflects. “Matt and Ross are incredibly smart intellectually, incredibly intelligent emotionally, incredibly passionate and hard-working people, so we all feel like, ‘Yeah, let’s do this together. We’re in this. Let’s bring our A-game.'” And in that, we become a great team and, like I said, a family. ”