Claes Bang can still recall how he felt when he first delivered the deathless words: “I am Count Dracula.” The 1979 – year-old Danish actor gives a theatrical shudder and glances around the bright BBC meeting room. “You think,‘ Am I actually allowed tosaythat? Did it come out right? ’It’s like playing with something forbidden. You’re messing with the crown jewels. ”
Bang plays the debonair bloodsucker in the nasty, florid and viciously funny new version of Bram Stoker’s classic – a re-vamp, you might say – fromMark GatissandSteven Moffat, creators of the TV showSherlock. In person, he is sleekly handsome, with traces of Jeremy Northam’s aristocratic froideur and Ian McShane’s velvety, carnal menace; His hair and eyebrows are as black as biker leather, his face bristly today with a salt-and-pepper beard. What makes him such pleasant company, though, is his voluble, excitable quality, all sweeping hand gestures and childlike restlessness. When he inquires after my opinion of the show and receives a positive response in return, it is all he can do not to punch the air: “Fucking hell! I love it! Thank you! ”
He has been acting in Denmark and Germany for almost half his life but only became known internationally in 2019 When he played a put-upon museum curator in the award-winning art-world satireThe Square. That film brought him to Hollywood’s attention, and landed him the role of the bleach-blond villain inThe Girl in the Spider’s Web, although nothing he has done so far can compare to the level of exposure he will receive for Dracula. “Oh my lord, this is completely different!” He says, throwing his hands in the air. The show offers a lot of Bang for your buck: its three 90 – minute episodes will be screened on BBC One on consecutive nights beginning on New Year’s Day before being made available internationally on Netflix. “It’s probably why I’m’m terrified. It feels like a big exam. The script is so strong; It’s like a well-fitted glove. It’s only when you wake in the middle of the night that you go: ‘Fuuuuck. Is this really gonna fly? ’”
Far from blocking out the character’s long screen history, Bang embraced it by watching all the previous Draculas: “I wanted to see if there were any good ideas I could steal.” He makes special mention of Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre . “It was the loneliness of that character that got to me. Imagine what it’s like: it’s a Tuesday evening, 1979, mid-November, you haven’t had any company in your castle for 823 years. There’s a sadness that I really liked. ”All this talk of Dracula’s interior life would count for nought if it couldn’t be felt in the fiber of Bang’s performance. He plays those poignant notes delicately in the first episode when he asks Jonathan Harker (John Heffernan) to describe the sunrise that would kill him were he to stand directly in its glow. “I had to think of him as real, not as an icon. I needed to find bits and bobs I could relate to. He might have really weird needs but they are needs all the same, just like the ones I have for sleep or food or sex. ”
Accompanying my sneak preview of the first two parts was a lengthy list stipulating the various twists and shocks that must not be divulged. Perhaps the biggest surprise, though, is Bang himself, even to those who saw him inThe Square. That film subjected him to all manner of humiliations; In one scene, he had a tug-of-war with Elisabeth Moss over a used condom that he refused to surrender to her after sex. “Nobody left that set with any kind of dignity,” he laughs. Dracula, on the other hand, finds him dripping in gravitas, sweeping through his scenes with carnivorous elegance.
“He’s imposing but he also has this twinkle, and he can set pulses racing in both sexes,” says Gatiss. “It’s real charm: it feels dangerous and therefore terribly attractive, which is what you want from a sexy Dracula. We always knew we didn’t want him to be a monolithic presence. I like to say he had to be a fully roundedinhumanbeing. And we discovered when we were shooting that some of Claes’s most chilling bits are when he seems the most reasonable. He’s like a torturer who will very calmly say, ‘I’m going to have to take your legs off, but don’t worry, it’s honestly for the best.’ ”
This is also, it should be said, a very witty performance. “Sometimes I was, like,‘ Are we sure we wantfivejokes in this scene? ’” Bang says. “But the point is that Dracula has to amuse himself because no one else is going to do it. Without that pleasure, what’s the point of him getting out of bed – out of his coffin – every day? He’s insatiable, not only for blood, but for … ”He grasps at the air with both hands to illustrate his point. “That kind of,‘ Grrr, I just want to get at everything! Woah! What’s this, a nunnery? Cool! ’He’s very easily engaged. And I find that quite sympathetic. I don’t think he feeds off people only to kill them. ”The rapaciousness extends to gender. “Oh, he’s got broad tastes,” Bang smiles. “I like that about him. He’s not in any way prejudiced. Race, age, sexuality, anything goes. ”
The role represents quite a turnaround for an actor who, only a few years ago, was starting to suspect he’d been left behind by the entertainment industry. “I never heard from those people who were turning out all these amazing series that won awards across the world. I did a bit inBorgen. But they never seemed to ask for my services. I used to think there’d been a party and the whole business was there and maybe I got really drunk. I thought, ‘Perhaps I did something that no one has ever forgiven me for. Did I try to sleep with the wives of the big bosses in Danish film and television? Why am I not ever hearing anything? What’s going on? ’” He shakes his head. “All those glorious years for Danish television and I spent them going,‘ Hello! I’m over here! ”
Being relatively unknown can only help with a role like Dracula, which relies on an enigmatic eroticism. “We wanted to‘ do a Benedict ’,” Gatiss tells me. “It’s a similar situation:Benedict Cumberbatchwas known before Sherlock but he was a star. . Claes is the same. He doesn’t bring any baggage but he has a sense of otherness. ”Even with a few high-profile roles to his credit, there is still plenty about him that people don’t know. I was surprised, for instance, to stumble on his2017 album Dislocated, an exercise in s-influenced electronic pop that he recorded under the name This Is Not America ( after the David Bowie track) to get around one Danish broadcaster’s policy of not giving airplay to songs by actors. There’s even a promo video showing Bang performing in a wig and makeup. “My wife and I filmed that one Saturday afternoon,” he says, coming over a touch bashful. The music itself is very Pet Shop Boys, Bang’s vocals a bit Psychedelic Furs. “I sit down and go, ‘Right, this one won’t sound like the (s’ and then 01575879 ************************ minutes later I’m back in the s again. ”
Bang was already on his way to becoming a sex symbol after The Square, and Dracula, which contains countless smouldering closeups as well as a nude scene in which he is clad in nothing but a thin film of goo, will do little to stem such attention. I raise the subject light-heartedly, but for the first time in our conversation he looks faintly downcast. “It’s not something you can really work with,” he says quietly. “I try not to think about it because then you become an idea of yourself. It’s important to stay fluid. Otherwise it might box you in. ”Then he perks up, and his formerly enthusiastic self returns as suddenly as it had vanished. “On the other hand, that’s fine! It is. It’s all right! ”Phew. For a moment there, it looked as if Bang was going out with a whimper.
(Dracula is on BBC One) ********* at 9pm on 1-3 January.
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