Real life and make-believe merged in Nicholas Hoult’s daring on-screen escape.
The actor appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Dec. 23, where he recounted a scary moment that took place while filming Nosferatu. Hoult will star alongside Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgård, Willem Dafoe and Emma Corrin in the horror drama set to release on Christmas Day.
Meyers noted that Hoult is “terrified in a great amount of this film.”
Hoult said every time he had been truly terrified in his own life, the feeling only manifested internally. So, conveying dread and fear outwardly for this film was a new experience for him.
One time he felt “real fear” on the Nosferatu set, though, was when he was being chased by wolves. Hoult’s character, Thomas Hutter, flees out a window in an attempt to escape the wolves chasing after him.
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As those on set prepared to shoot the scene, the wolves had to be restrained from Hoult.
“I’m, like, running on the spot and getting hyped up before the take,” Hoult said. “And they’re being held back from me on leashes — barking, like, with death in their eyes. They want to eat.”
Hoult added that in one shot, he just barely made it out the window as the wolves were “let loose” after him. That take was unusable, he said, because director Robert Eggers told him he made a silly face. Hoult reviewed the footage himself and agreed it was too funny for the final cut but confirmed to the director that that was “real fear.”
As that shot was filmed, the actor realized he didn’t know what would occur if the wolves actually got to him.
“Like, I don’t know what happens if I don’t make it out of the window,” he said. “Like, what are they then trained to do?”
Nosferatu is in theaters Dec. 25.
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