Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu remake is a major hit globally, but the movie could have looked quite different if the director’s original plans had come to life. About ten years ago, when Eggers first set out to direct the horror classic, Bill Skarsgård wasn’t the first choice for Count Orlok.

In an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Skarsgård shared that actors like Mads Mikkelsen and Willem Dafoe were initially considered for the vampire role. At the time, Skarsgård was in the running for a different part—Thomas Hutter, which eventually went to Nicholas Hoult.

Skarsgård recalled meeting Eggers in New York almost a decade ago. Eggers had just completed The Witch and planned to make Nosferatu his next project:

I met him [Robert Eggers] in New York almost ten years ago, and he was doing Nosferatu. That would be his follow-up movie after The Witch. I read the script,...