Although it’s at greatest his second most defining characteristic, The Sandman’s Corinthian has an simple type. Wearing creamy whites, sporting pale hair and a pair of ever-present sun shades, the Nightmare cuts a superb determine, whether or not within the pages of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comedian or as performed by Boyd Holbrook in Netflix’s adaptation. It’s a glance so collectively that you could be miss his most defining characteristic: The mouths the place his eyes must be.
As a rogue nightmare, AWOL from the Dreaming in Dream’s absence and serial killing his approach by way of the waking world, the Corinthian is a multitude of menace and appeal. And that required Holbrook to play the position in a approach he had by no means been requested to earlier than.
“I feel there was a sexuality to the Corinthian that I… had by no means needed to do, nor requested to do,” Holbrook tells Polygon. “In order that was undoubtedly one thing that was uncomfortable at first that I needed to work my approach into.”
Holbrook notes that he and the remainder of the solid have been instructed to make their respective characters their very own and never fall into the entice of feeling too penned into how the character needed to work. As an alternative, a very powerful factor was that they “play a rooted actual particular person.” In fact, with the Corinthian’s eyes being the stuff of nightmares, he additionally needed to work his approach into it with out the help of the home windows of the soul.
“I actually thought that I must do, or I [would feel] some obligation to carry one thing else to the position that wasn’t on the web page,” Holbrook says. “However Neil Gaiman and Allan Heinberg, our showrunner, actually simply put me comfortable with that. As a result of slightly than a hindrance, it’s extra of a weapon.”
It’s a straightforward magnetism that oozes out of Holbrook’s efficiency, a pure relaxedness that also manages to imbue each second he’s on display screen with menace. Along with his eyes someplace behind the side-paneled sun shades, each act of kindness appears tinged by a little bit of malice. He’s cool and composed maybe exactly as a result of he is aware of he’s untouchable in virtually each approach that counts.
“I feel it could mainly paralyze anyone,” Holbrook says. “As soon as the glasses come off and also you see the tooth for eyes, I feel it could simply type of shell-shock folks.”
Further reporting by Tasha Robinson.