Nosferatu makes it clear that Count Orlok has been unᴅᴇᴀᴅ for a really long time, but it’s unclear about exactly how many years he’s been cursed to be a vampire. Robert Eggers’ reimagining of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 symphony of horror is faithful to the original movie in many ways — for one, it shares its shadowy, expressionistic visual style — but his Nosferatu remake also makes a few key changes to its 102-year-old predecessor. Namely, the remake gives the vampiric villain, Count Orlok, a radical makeover.

Count Orlok’s original design is so iconic that it was parodied in What We Do in the Shadows and a clip from Nosferatu showed up in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. Even people who haven’t seen Murnau’s movie have seen his vampire. If Eggers had just copied Max Schreck’s look from the original movie, he wouldn’t have been able to catch audiences by surprise. Instead, Eggers and his team came up with a whole new look for Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlok — and, with it, a whole new backstory.

Count Orlok Became A Vampire Around 1590

Nosferatu’s Costume Designer Based The Look On A Transylvanian Count Circa 1590

Eggers is renowned for his commitment to historical accuracy. The notion of historical accuracy is a fallacy — even the most well-researched historical movie will still just be an interpretation based on various historians’ theories — but Eggers has a steadfast dedication to getting his movies as close to accurate as possible, and that extends to the costume design. In a recent interview with Vogue, Nosferatu’s costume designer Linda Muir (a frequent collaborator of Eggers’) opened up about the challenges of creating a period-accurate wardrobe for the movie.

When the subject of Skarsgård’s Count Orlok came up, Muir said that she and Eggers conceived their version of Orlok to be “a representation of a Transylvanian count from around 1590.” She drew influence from contemporary paintings of the Esterházy family that featured fur clothing and a lot of gold. Orlok only wears one costume throughout the movie (sometimes with a big cloak), so a lot of care and attention was given to that one costume.

Count Orlok Has Been A Vampire For Over 200 Years In Nosferatu

At Least 248 Years, But He Could Even Be 300 Years Old

If Count Orlok has been around since 1590 and Nosferatu takes place in 1838, then that means he’s spent at least 248 years as a vampire. But the character may be even older than that. In the same interview, Muir hinted that Orlok may even be 300 years old. She said that, during the fittings, she gave Skarsgård plenty of time to get a feel for the costume — “absorbing it, living it” — because he was supposed to have been wearing those clothes for 300 years.

Source: Vogue