Jamie Campbell Bower on Mr. WhatsIt, Cult Inspiration
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from Season 5, Part 2 of ‘Stranger Things,’ now streaming on Netflix.
Jamie Campbell Bower is used to playing the big bad, whether his name is Vecna, One or Henry. But in Part 2 of ‘Stranger Things’ he takes the character one step further in possibly his creepiest yet, a cult leader-esque performance as Mr. WhatsIt.
“Jim Jones was an early reference for me,” says Bower, citing the leader of the cult, the Peoples Temple, which led more than 900 of his followers to commit mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978. “He was on the mood board, even in terms of certain things he said when the kids were all in front of him. There were points where I thought, ‘Do I say the word ‘you’ or do I use the word ‘we’? We are a family now.’ That’s really grim! It can completely take away the idea of autonomy, so there definitely had to be that level of cult leader-ishness about him.”
Although Mr. WhatsIt doesn’t Look As vicious as Vecna was, it was just as “terrifying” to take on the other character, Bower says: “There was so much fear in playing it.”
His approach for Season 5 overall was very different from Season 4, when he was editing Henry’s memories.
“What you saw in Season 4 happened and it was real. This is very much like, how kind can I be to these poor kids to make them feel as comfortable as possible in this world? And how much of my experience do I bury in that? And it’s always a very terrifying prospect when you’re sitting opposite another actor and your intentions are so deeply hidden,” he says. “There’s a certain amount of dishonesty in that, and that’s really scary. It’s very difficult, especially towards a child.”
Thanks to Netflix
When Bower first took on the role, he said Variety about the humanity he focused on while playing Vecna. Now that’s a little harder to achieve, as the character gets worse and kills more and more people – but, Bower says, it’s still there.
“There’s definitely a humanity that I can see,” he says now. “How much of that is represented in this book is open to debate and interpretation – there are certainly traumas and experiences that are present, but currently unexplored.”
After seeing the prequel play “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” before Season 5, Bower knew that something that happened to Henry in a cave at age 8 was a “monumental experience” that was “life-changing” — he was never the same afterward. He then begged the Duffer brothers for more information about Henry’s backstory.
“It was something that I really felt like I had to pry out of Matt and Ross Duffer. They weren’t wild about it because they obviously wanted to protect it, but it was important for me to know what that was and why that was the case,” he says. “So it was just a matter of taking what I learned from the piece, and then also just irritating and asking questions.”
In episode 6, as Max (Sadie Sink) and Holly (Nell Fisher) work their way through Henry’s memories, looking for a way out of his mindscape, they come up with what could be the answer to what happened to him. In a mineshaft, young Henry comes across a wounded man holding a silver suitcase, which Henry shoots into his hand in panic. Holly and Max watch as Henry beats the man to death in self-defense and begin to open the case, but then Max calls Holly away. When asked what’s in that silver suitcase, Bower answers with one word: “reason.”
As for what he can say about the series finale, which hits Netflix on December 31? Expect the unexpected. In the final scene in episode 7, “The Bridge,” Henry and the twelve children he has kidnapped—most of whom worship him, like a cult leader—join hands at the Creel dining table. He needs them to complete Vecna’s quest to remake the world, presumably replacing the Rightside Up with the Abyss.
“The end of 7 is incredible preparation for what’s to come. And if you think you know what’s going to happen at the beginning of 8, you’re probably wrong,” says Bower. “It really is a damn blow. What you think you know will be surpassed.”
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