‘Stranger Things’: Jamie Campbell Bower opens up about her secret role for the first time

SPOILERS beware!

*This article contains spoilers for volume 1 of the fourth season of ‘Stranger Things’.

‘Stranger Things’ promised us answers in the fourth season, and boy has it given us. In the first seven episodes, which make up volume 1, we follow the protagonists in three different scenarios. In California we witness the new life of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) without her powers, but she is willing to find a way to get them back and return to being the “superhero” her friends trust.

That trip leads him to meet again with Martin Brenner, Matthew Modine’s character, who once again subjects Ce to several experiments to awaken his special abilities. Many of these experiments have to do with recreating memories of his past and that is where Jamie Campbell Bower enters the scene.who plays one of the caretakers of the Hawkins lab, who became a friend and main ally of Ce.

But in the seventh chapter the whole cake is revealed: this seemingly calm young man is actually the son of Victor Creel and the real murderer of his family. He was taken in by Brenner and became his first experimental subject, Uno. He had to control him with a device because he was too powerful, but tried to recreate his abilities on other children, such as Eleven. One was to blame for the lab massacre. Eleven stood up to him and managed to defeat him, opening a breach to the Upside Down World and locking him there, completely deformed. Vecna ​​was born.

Jamie Campbell Bower has told Variety and ew details about his participation in the series. He says that they did not tell him what character he was casting for, they simply sent him materials from ‘Hellraiser’ and ‘The Two Faces of Truth’ to give him an idea of ​​where the shots would go and he prepared a whole dossier with information of the series and how the plots of the characters could evolve: “I went crazy for two days. I put a picture of Will Byers in the middle of my apartment and the rest of the characters around it and made a Claire Danes-esque idea map in ‘Homeland’ about what kind of person I imagined her to be“. He was afraid the Duffers would think he was crazy, but what he managed to do was impress them. He had landed the role, which Netflix sold as Peter Ballard, “a kind man who works as an assistant in a psychiatric hospital. Tired of the brutality he witnesses daily, will he finally take sides?”. The actor admits that “He has no idea where Peter Ballard’s name came from” and apologize for the red herrings.

Once on set, Jamie Campbell Bower became quite the method actor: “I didn’t talk to people outside of the ‘Stranger Things’ world for at least four days before shooting anything. I found myself doing some pretty wild things. If someone had seen me walking the streets of Atlanta at 2am talking to myself, they would understand. I was looking for a lot of anger, especially for Vecna“. To prepare for Henry’s side, she filled her house with post-its on which she wrote messages like “be nice to her”. Of the two versions of his character, it was Henry who scared him the most: “A lot of manipulation is going on there”. In Vecna’s case, he believes that the primary feeling is resentment, and he had a hard time getting into that mindset because he doesn’t consider himself a spiteful person.

Seven and a half hours of makeup

Becoming the villain of the series took him about seven and a half hours in makeup, where he didn’t talk to anyone either (he listened to music to get into the role), and he asked for 30 minutes alone before he started shooting. The actor claims there isn’t much CGI involved in Vecna’s look, even the voice is her own.without artificial distortion. Bower assures that he spent hours studying his hand to master the movement of the claws: “I imagined that my fingers extended”. It took her an hour to remove her prosthetics and makeup.

Although he does not want (and cannot) advance anything about the last two episodes of the season, which premiere on Netflix on July 1, he does confirm that “it gets bigger and delves into both the story and the emotions of all the characters. It’s an explosive climax, I’d say“and anticipate that “As viewers we discover a lot”. Will Vecna ​​continue in the fifth and final season? “I’ve had conversations about the road of the series in the fifth season. I’m not going to give spoilers or say anything at all, but I know a little bit” admits the actor.

Volume 1 of the fourth season of ‘Stranger Things’ is now available on Netflix. Volume 2 will be released on July 1.