Guillermo del Toro is one of my favorite filmmakers, especially when he’s working with monsters. There’s something in the way he styles them that really resonates with me, as if I can tell that he loves the same things about them as I do. So, when I learned he was finally making Frankenstein, his white whale, it immediately became my most anticipated movie of its year.

The initial casting had me even more intrigued: Oscar Isaac as Dr. Victor Frankenstein, and Andrew Garfield as his creation. As an actor, Garfield is uniquely emotionally open, and I could imagine the pathos with which he would embody the monster. Del Toro’s deeply human vision for this story was already becoming clear.

It reminded me of something from Danny Boyle’s 2011 stage adaptation of Frankenstein – the two stars, Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller, each played both roles, swapping on different nights. As casting choices, Isaac and Garfield could’ve done the same.

Then, a last-minute change. As a result of the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Andrew Garfield suddenly had scheduling conflicts and had to drop out just weeks before filming. Jacob Elordi would replace him.

I was immediately nervous. A key departure so abrupt can be disruptive for any production, and I so wanted Frankenstein to work out well. Elordi also strikes me as a very different performer, and while I could see how he fit the monster, I lost that sense of duality with Isaac’s Victor. But after a new profile on the movie, I’m starting to think this ultimately worked out in del Toro’s favor.

Jacob Elordi Replacing Andrew Garfield So Late Might Actually Have Helped Frankenstein

Elordi Got To Live Part Of The Monster’s Experience

On July 28, Vanity Fair ran a sweeping preview piece on Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and at first, I saw my initial worries reflected back at me. The director and makeup designer Mike Hill spent nine months designing the monster with Garfield in mind. To refit their work for Elordi, who is several inches taller, they had only nine weeks.

But I quickly saw things differently. Del Toro and Hill both point out that the 6’5″ Elordi is uniquely physically suited to play Frankenstein’s monster, and it’s hard to disagree with them there. But Hill, who reportedly describes the new star as a movie-saving miracle, put it in terms that helped me understand what we’re in for:

The thing about Jacob is, he just has everything rolled into one… What attracted me to him was his gangliness and his wrists. It was this looseness. Then he has these real somber moments where he watches you really deftly, and his eyelids are low, with the long lashes like Karloff. I was like, ‘I don’t know who else you could get with a physicality like this.’ His demeanor is innocent, but it’s encompᴀssed in a six-foot-five frame. He could really do a lot of damage if this man really wanted to be a bad guy.

So, if Garfield might’ve exuded emotion in this role, Elordi’s sullen soulfulness will pull us inward. In his most dramatic roles, Oscar Isaac has much the same quality. Perhaps there is more duality to this new pairing than I initially recognized.

But what stands out to me as potentially the greatest gift of this Frankenstein recasting is that Elordi’s timeline, to a certain extent, put him in the shoes of the monster. The creature is created and develops rapidly, knowing the world before he’s ready to understand it. With so little time to adjust to his new part, Elordi reports feeling much the same:

“Because I came in so late, everything happened on top of each other at the same time. I was shooting as I was seeing, as I was understanding.”

I’m not someone who believes actors need such conditions to give great performances. But there is something special that can come from life imitating art in this way. I will always wonder what Andrew Garfield’s monster might’ve been like, but this sequence of events might’ve made Jacob Elordi the perfect person for Frankenstein‘s most critical role.