Guillermo del Toro told Vanity Fair in a new look at his upcoming “Frankenstein” movie that he only had nine weeks to turn Jacob Elordi into the film’s iconic monster after Andrew Garfield dropped out of the role due to scheduling conflicts. Del Toro and his frequent makeup artist Mike Hill (“The Shape of Water,” “Nightmare Alley”) had spent a whopping nine months designing and refining Garfield’s look at Frankenstein’s monster only for those plans to be scrapped.
“Andrew Garfield stepping out and Jacob coming in. I mean, it was like Jacob is the most perfect actor for the creature,” del Toro said. “And we have a supernaturally good connection. It’s like, very few words. Very few things I have to say, and he does it… We recast, and we had nine weeks [to get the look down]. You can’t be under more pressure than that.”
Hill said casting Elordi as Garfield’s replacement worked out because Elordi is “everything rolled into one.”
“What attracted me to him was his gangliness and his wrists. It was this looseness,” Hill told Vanity Fair. “Then he has these real somber moments where he watches you really deftly, and his eyelids are low, with the long lashes like Karloff. I was like, ‘I don’t know who else you could get with a physicality like this.’ His demeanor is innocent, but it’s encompassed in a six-foot-five frame. He could really do a lot of damage if this man really wanted to be a bad guy.”
Garfield previously told Deadline that it was “disappointing” to have to drop out of “Frankenstein,” but “meeting Jacob felt really serendipitous so that I could really see and hear that, ‘No, maybe he needed that experience more than me.’ That was cool, to feel that he had a really spectacular time on that job.”
“Frankenstein” is set to world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it will screen in competition and compete for the Golden Lion. Del Toro previously won Venice’s top prize with “The Shape of Water.” “Frankenstein” will stream on Netflix in November after a limited theatrical release.