The penultimate season of Netflix’s original Stranger Things has finally wrapped up with the introduction of the prime antagonist from The Upside Down, Vecna. Pitted against Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), the humanoid has not only been puppeteering monsters like The Mind Flayer, Demogorgons, and Demo dogs in the once peaceful town of Hawkins, Indiana, but also cruelly preying on the town’s teenagers, with their darkest fears as his weapon. Jamie Campbell Bower’s performance as Vecna is so powerful and terrifying that even in real life, on-set, the actor actually made his co-stars afraid of him. In fact, per Netflix Life, Millie Bobby Brown cried the first time she saw Bower as Vecna.
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With such a vicious and intense Stranger Things character, fans naturally wonder how Vecna came to life, specifically how Bower got into character. From Bower’s own process as an actor to the achievements of special effects make-up, here’s a look at how the actor became Vecna.
Getting the Character Right
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Neither was Bower’s transformation into Vecna, nor his journey of landing the Stranger Things role in the first place, an easy one. Speaking candidly with Variety, Bower described knowing little about the character in the beginning and, in fact, receiving scripts from Primal Fear and Hellraiser as his audition material. Naturally, none of them dropped the hints about the mysterious character Bower was auditioning to play, so the actor went to great lengths to draw the mind-map for it. He recalls compiling a folder containing the inspiration and references for his unknown role, which he later shared with the Duffer brothers.
Once he won the part, Bower reveals he had to dig deep within himself to find the required resentment and anger for Vecna. Going a bit Method, he wandered around Atlanta at two in the morning, talking to himself, and even sat in a dark room between takes in order to get into Vecna’s headspace. What’s more, he even printed out pictures of Vecna’s victims, and crossed out their eyes.
The Elaborate Prosthetics
Getting into the character’s shoes alone was not enough. To ensure that the audience felt the intensity of the manipulative big bad a lot went into getting Vecna’s appearance right. The costume, weighing approximately nine pounds, was prepared using a 3D body scan. It had a whopping 18 parts that the effects team put together head-to-toe each day for the complete look. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Bower talked about the lengthy process of applying the prosthetics. He mentions that it took eight hours or more to put the latex costume on, along with the makeup. And once the 12-hour day wrapped, it took another two hours to remove the suit. Worst of all, Bower says, were the bathroom breaks, which ended with either chipped-off fingers or nails that needed a quick touch-up.
Finding the Perfect Voice
The final detail was giving the sinister vocals to Vecna. In an interview on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Bower revealed his journey of find the perfect, ghastly voice for Stranger Things’s new villain. He recalls doing read-throughs of a bunch of reference work from Hellraiser, particularly actor Doug Bradley (Pinhead). It took him about a month of practice before he found the right voice for Vecna.
When each element required for the character was pieced together for the show, Vecna turned out as scary as he needed to be and as convincing as he should be, largely thanks to Bower’s talent and commitment to the part. It goes without saying that the special effects and make-up teams helped shape Vecna’s appearance. With another streaming record broken by Stranger Things, it’s safe to say that it all paid off.
