Although it’s at finest his second most defining characteristic, The Sandman’s Corinthian has an plain type. Wearing creamy whites, sporting pale hair and a pair of ever-present sun shades, the Nightmare cuts a high-quality 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 means by way of the waking world, the Corinthian is a multitude of menace and allure. And that required Holbrook to play the function in a means 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 to start with that I needed to work my means into.”

Picture: Netflix

Holbrook notes that he and the remainder of the solid had 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, an important factor was that they “play a rooted actual particular person.” After all, with the Corinthian’s eyes being the stuff of nightmares, he additionally needed to work his means 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 deliver one thing else to the function that wasn’t on the web page,” Holbrook says. “However Neil Gaiman and Allan Heinberg, our showrunner, actually simply put me relaxed with that. As a result of quite than a hindrance, it’s extra of a weapon.”

It’s a simple 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 means 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 form of shell-shock folks.”

Extra reporting by Tasha Robinson.