“I often find myself in the upside down and I embrace it,” says the soft-spoken Jamie Campbell Bower, very different from his menacing on-screen persona of Vecna, the big bad of Stranger Things 4, as we catch up on a post-midnight Zoom call. The 33-year old British actor, artist and musician has inadvertently found himself playing the antagonist on screen and is often called the ‘go to villain’ by pop culture franchises. “I will take that,” he laughs.
From playing the powerful Volturi vampire Caius in The Twilight Saga to the young Grindelwald in Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, a part he reprised in the second spinoff film, Fantastic Beats: The Crimes Of Grindelwald, Jamie’s characters have stood out for their shades of malevolence. But Jamie is bewildered by the Vecna fandom.
Vecna in Stranger Things | Photo Credit: Netflix
“There are parts of it that still baffle me, there is something called the ‘Vecna thirst’ that perplexes and concerns me in equal measure. But, I am most humbled by the reach and how people have loved the show, it’s amazing and I feel blessed to be part of it,” says Jamie. As Jamie’s Vecna manipulates the minds of the Hawkins residents in the fourth season of Netflix’s science fiction horror drama — feasting on their inner turmoil and cracking their bones open in his vendetta against humanity — the actor admits it was nothing short of a challenge to immerse himself in Vecna’s universe. From buying posters of horror films, dolls from Nightmare on Elm Street and Hellraiser to spending hours watching horror films and re-reading the script, he did everything he could to get into the character of Vecna.
Jamie says he even kept a vial of black widow spiders to understand Vecna, who looks like a spider with many tentacles. Vecna likes spiders too and he ties up his victims before killing them. The actor says he created a mind map to understand the many shades of the character, which he describes as resentful “sub human being; a kind of a mortal hubris combined with pure malice.” “I realised that I had to play three different characters, three different versions of myself. The process of getting the job was an interesting one. I was given two sets of sides from Primal Fear and Hell Raiser and then dummy sides from the show. There was this burst of creativity where I put up pictures from the show, the world itself and the characters from pop culture. I knew this was a person who had sat in deep resentment for a long time, which is a very toxic place to be and had also had this human experience. It was basically drawing these lines together — of his human experiences and his need to change the world — which he finds terrifying. I relished the opportunity to bring him to life,” says Jamie.
Jamie Campbell Bower as Peter Ballard in Stranger Things | Photo Credit: Tina Rowden/Netflix
He adds that as an artist, he finds creative expression in exploring the dark side. “All of us are in the pursuit of finding truth and beauty in equal measure, but darkness offers me a lot of truth and stillness. It’s okay to tap into the dark, it’s nothing to be afraid of really.”
Keeping busy off-screen
More to come
The actor, however, was tight-lipped about the next volume of Stranger Things. Who does he think would be Vecna’s biggest adversary? “It would have to be Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown). Brenner too, but he is no longer with us and, of course, his parents. The first season for me held a special place, it felt like bunch of creative people had come together and made something that they loved. With this show, it always felt like a beautiful idea with these gorgeous references and stunning visuals and the universe just expanding as the seasons progress,” he says. . Jamie will next be seen in The True Haunting, opposite Erin Moriarty (The Boys) based on Edwin F Becker’s 2011 novel chronicling paranormal experience of Ed And Marsha Becker, to be directed by Gary Fleder (Runaway Jury, Homefront).
