'Stranger Things' Season 4: Here's how Jamie Campbell Bower prepared for his role as terrifying Vecna
Jamie Campbell Bower, who wowed viewers with his portrayal of the terrifying Vecna in 'Stranger Things' Season 4, has confessed that he meditated in order to get into the skin of the character. The 33-year-old actor asserted that he used some peculiar methods for his role.
The actor, who co-starred alongside Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard, said, "I did a few things. I had a mood board that I started making quite early on in the process. So I always had that with me on set and where I was living, and it grew over time." Bower remarked that he had included pictures of the show's characters with whom he would be conversing. He started to meditate as part of his preparations.
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The London-born actor said to the BBC: "Meditation was also a big thing. Clearing out my own space, allowing this fury and resentment to come through, was very interesting for me. I spent quite a bit of time kind of on my own, walking around saying the same thing over and over again, staring into the eyes of whoever was next on the mood board."
In addition to psychologically concentrating on the role, he made sure that everything he looked at was related to his persona, even changing the wallpaper of his phone to a burning house. "For those of you who have seen the first volume of season four, obviously there's a story there with his father Victor," he says. The actor, who endured eight hours of makeup a day for the part, was determined to give the character his all because he was "only here once."
He explained how he would go about playing the part by saying, "I just made sure that everything I was ingesting was of relevance. I threw myself into it, if you don't commit yourself 100 percent to something, your chance of success, feeling fulfilled and a sense of achievement, is significantly reduced. I'm only here once, so why not?"
In a Vanity Fair YouTube video describing Vecna's makeup, makeup designer and visual effects artist Barrie Gower stated that the process used to end with a 15-minute session covering the actor in lubricant to give him a "glossy" appearance. Anyone who shook hands with him on site was rather surprised by it. As volume one of season four came to a close, viewers discovered that the Upside Down and Vecna were the results of a significant conflict between Millie Bobby Brown's Eleven and Campbell Bower's pre-Vecna character's psychokinetic abilities.