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This just in: Robert Eggers's Nosferatu has broken $100M at the global box office. There's a lot about the film to which you can attribute its success, but for my money, one of movie's strongest assets is its casting. Lily-Rose Depp absolutely kills it as Ellen Hutter, Nicholas Hoult is great as Thomas Hutter, and of course, Bill Skarsgård makes a terrifying Count Orlok. But according to the latter, that casting was almost very different, with two of the roles going to separate actors that made it to the final cut. Let us explain.

Skarsgård was recently on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, hosted by Josh Horowitz, where he broke down his journey being cast as the titular vampiric fiend. It's a journey that starts farther back than you might expect, and character-wise, in a very different place.

"I met [Robert Eggers] in New York almost 10 years ago," Skarsgård told Horowitz, "and then he was doing Nosferatu - that would be the follow-up movie after The Witch. I read the script and it just blew my mind. I was like, ‘This is incredible, this is so him, and so great.’ The [current] script didn't change all that much; it was so solidified. I read for Aaron [Taylor Johnson’s]'s role, Friedrich Harding, and then [Eggers] thought I could be good for Thomas Hutter. I read for that and I booked that, so I was supposed to be Thomas Hutter in this movie 10 Years ago."

At this point, Hororwitz asks the obvious question - at that time, who was Eggers planning on using as his Count Orlok? 

"It was Mad Mikkelsen," Skarsgård told him, "It was a couple of names. At one point, it was Willem [Dafoe] as well. I think Robert liked that idea."

There's good reason fro Eggers to get behind the idea of Willem Dafoe as a possible Orlok. In a sense, he's played a kind of Orlok before, in 2000's Shadow of the Vampire. The movie is not a Nosferatu remake but a fictionalized version of the filming of the original Nosferatu, in which director F.W. Murnau casts a real vampire (played by Dafoe) to play the title role.

However, Dafoe didn't end up playing the part in Eggers version of the story, due to the fact that that version of Nosferatu fell apart. It wasn't until some years later that Eggers returned to making his Nosferatu project, which Skarsgård went on to explain to Horowitz.

"Then after I heard that he was going to follow up with Nosferatu after the Norseman," Skarsgård sais, "I was like, 'Oh shit! Well I'm Thomas Hutter, right?' No, Nic Hoult was. So maybe I was Friedrich Harding? That's a pretty sick roll too, but that was Aaron Taylor Johnson."

Skarsgård continues to clutch for a role "Ellen?" he muses, "A rat?"

"I thought [Eggers] felt slighted or something. Then at that point, I wrote him a very shamefully earnest letter titled Wisborg in Flames [Editor's note: Wisborg is the setting of the film]. That was the title of the email. [...] He didn't respond. And then out of the blue, he did reach out and he said, 'I think you can play Orlok.'"

"And I was like, "Oh. Oh! Oh."

Oh indeed, Bill, oh indeed.

Nosferatu is in theaters now.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." We couldn't agree more, which is why we think you should check out horror aficionado Greg Silber's list of the best horror movies of all time. Or, if you've already seen those classics, check out our list of the most underrated horror movies from the past couple years. And if you've already seen all of those, Let us tell you what to look forward to (or dread) in Popverse's list of upcoming horror movies.