Stranger Things season 4 spoilers ahead!
Sadie Sink may have very well been one of several actors who were terrified of Jamie Campbell Bower on set of Stranger Things season 4 – and it made their interactions with Vecna all the more powerful on screen.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sink revealed that were two key components when it came to Vecna's believability. First, she says, were the prosthetics (done by Barrie Gower who also provided the zombie effects for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) and practical effects used in lieu of stunt people in green screen suits.
"Having Jamie actually there was very helpful because he was genuinely just horrifying," she told THR. "It’s just not normal what you’re looking at, so you’re kind of tricking your mind in a way, and it makes stepping into Max’s shoes that much easier."
The biggest part, however, was Bower's method acting.
"You can put anyone in that costume and they can be scary, but with Jamie, he was so in it all the time, not only when the cameras were rolling," Sink explained. "He liked to kind of stay in character a lot, and there would be times and longer setups and stuff where he would filter in and out of it, but for a lot of the Mind Lair stuff, there was not a lot of talking going on between us.
"It was mostly just him as Vecna, standing in the corner and like growling or something like that, and he was just very, very, in it. And he would kind of talk in that voice a lot. So, to have someone as committed as Jamie in a role like that, just made it really believable. I think that was probably the key."
Bower told The Hollywood Reporter that he "went as far as he possibly could" to capture Vecna's darkness.
"I had this vial of black widow [spiders] that I would sit and stare at for hours. And I had this book that I would write and draw in, quite like the younger version of Henry in the show. I spent hours looking at my fingers and just actualizing and visualizing them being longer," he explained. "Punching things also came later on to get this fear out. I was hitting things in my house. It was really weird, but it was great because that fire came up within me. And away from people, I would mutter things under my breath."
And he isn't exaggerating about the spiders either: the official Twitter account for the Stranger Things writers room shared a photo of the actor holding a glass vial with the caption, "Went looking for Jamie. Found him staring silently at a spider. Just another day on the ST4 set."
Stranger Things season 4 Volume 2 is set to arrive on July 1 – check out our Stranger Things season 4 release schedule for more information.
