Summary

• Bill Skarsgård is returning to the horror genre to play Count Orlok in Robert Eggers' Nosferatu. This isn't his first time playing a vampire.
• Skarsgård previously played a vampire in the TV series Hemlock Grove, which received mixed reviews and was canceled after three seasons.
• The role of Count Orlok in Nosferatu offers Skarsgård the opportunity to redeem his vampire legacy and attract more attention in the genre.

Bill Skarsgård is coming back to the horror genre in Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, where he will play the title vampire, but this isn’t the first time he has played this classic monster. The horror genre continues riding the wave of remakes, and it also seems to be having a new wave of vampire movies, particularly stories based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Among them is another remake of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, directed by Robert Eggers and starring Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok.

Nosferatu is being described as a “gothic tale of obsession” between a young woman named Ellen Huttler (Lily-Rose Depp) and Count Orlok, a vampire infatuated with her. Also part of the cast of Eggers’ Nosferatu are Nicholas Hoult as Thomas Hutter, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Friedrich Harding, Emma Corrin as Anna Harding, and Willem Dafoe as Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz. Nosferatu is Skarsgård’s return to horror after It: Chapter Two, but this isn’t the first time he has played a vampire, though his previous performance has been mostly forgotten.

Bill Skarsgård Played A Vampire In Netflix's Hemlock Grove

A bit over a decade before Eggers’ Nosferatu, Bill Skarsgård played a vampire in Netflix’s TV series Hemlock Grove. Based on the 2012 novel of the same name by Brian McGreevy, Hemlock Grove took viewers to the title town in Pennsylvania to meet the Godfrey family, the town’s wealthiest and most powerful family, led by Olivia Godfrey (Famke Janssen). Olivia took control of the Godfrey empire following her husband’s suicide, and their son, Roman (Skarsgård), was meant to inherit everything. Roman had a sister, Shelley (Nicole Boivin and Madeleine Martin), who was Hemlock Grove’s version of a Frankenstein “monster”.

The biggest secret of the Godfrey family was that Olivia was an “upir”, which is a demonic being from Slavic and Turkic folklore and a type of vampire. Roman inherited this “condition”, which fully manifested at the end of Hemlock Grove season 1, and he continued struggling with his "upir" nature throughout seasons 2 and 3, with the help of his friend Peter Rumancek (Landon Liboiron), a werewolf. While the first season of Hemlock Grove kept the audience’s attention thanks to its characters focusing on solving a mystery, the following seasons were an inconsistent mess.

While Skargård and Liboiron’s performances were praised, Hemlock Grove’s story, pacing, and themes were heavily criticized, leading to its cancelation after three seasons. Hemlock Grove’s finale was as chaotic and messy as the rest of its final season, with Roman being killed by Peter in his werewolf form after some unforgivable crimes he had committed. Hemlock Grove’s poor quality cast a shadow over the great performances of its main cast, leading Skarsgård’s first role as a vampire to be ignored.

Despite being one of Netflix's first original productions, Hemlock Grove was removed from Netflix's cata 2022.

How Nosferatu (2024) Can Fix Bill Skarsgård's Vampire Legacy

Nosferatu and Count Orlok have a much more consistent mythology and story than Roman Godfrey and Hemlock Grove ever did. Hemlock Grove was also one of Skarsgård’s first mainstream projects, and now that he has earned a place in the horror genre thanks to his role as Pennywise in Andy Muschietti’s It duology, his role as Count Orlok in Nosferatu will attract a lot more attention than Hemlock Grove. Count Orlok is also a more traditional vampire than Roman Godfrey, making him a less confusing character than Roman, thus making up for all the mistakes of Roman Godfrey and Hemlock Grove, fixing Bill Skarsgård’s vampire legacy in the process.