Jamie Campbell Bower: Black widows, horror dolls and stranger things

“I often find myself in the upside down and I embrace it,” says the soft-spoken Jamie Campbell Bower, very different from his menacing on-screen persona of Vecna, the big bad of Stranger Things 4, as we catch up on a post-midnight Zoom call. As Jamie’s Vecna manipulates the minds of the Hawkins residents in the fourth season of Netflix’s science fiction horror drama — feasting on their inner turmoil and cracking their bones open in his vendetta against humanity — the actor admits it was nothing short of a challenge to immerse himself in Vecna’s universe. The actor says he created a mind map to understand the many shades of the character, which he describes as resentful “sub human being; a kind of a mortal hubris combined with pure malice.” “I realised that I had to play three different characters, three different versions of myself. With this show, it always felt like a beautiful idea with these gorgeous references and stunning visuals and the universe just expanding as the seasons progress,” he says.. Jamie will next be seen in The True Haunting, opposite Erin Moriarty based on Edwin F Becker’s 2011 novel chronicling paranormal experience of Ed And Marsha Becker, to be directed by Gary Fleder.