{"id":11376,"date":"2025-09-10T03:50:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T03:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/11376\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T03:50:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T03:50:06","slug":"the-zombie-on-wednesday-was-inspired-by-klaus-kinski-and-frankenstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/11376\/","title":{"rendered":"The Zombie on ‘Wednesday’ Was Inspired by Klaus Kinski and Frankenstein"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday<\/a> actor Owen Painter recently sat down with Vulture<\/a> to discuss the human element he brought to his performance as Slurp the zombie<\/a>\u2014and of course, what it was like eating the disembodied Professor Orloff<\/a> (Christopher Lloyd)\u2019s brain.<\/p>\n

As Painter stated, \u201cI was told to act out \u2018You\u2019ve been sitting for a thousand years and your voice box doesn\u2019t work, and water\u2019s going to fix that, so you should have a glass of water across the room, but some stuff is in your way.\u2019 I had so much fun messing around with that and coming up with physical gags and jokes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Slurp looks like he stepped right out of 1985\u2019s Return of the Living Dead, 1985\u2019s Day of the Dead, or 1985\u2019s House, Painter said his performance was largely influenced by classic depictions of Frankenstein, as well as cult-beloved German actor Klaus Kinski.<\/p>\n

\u201dWeirdly, I took a lot. It feels a little funny, because you point to a performance that\u2019s so iconic, and then it\u2019s just what you did. But the person in my mind the most was Klaus Kinski. He is a German actor who worked with Werner Herzog a bunch, and he\u2019s a lunatic. He delivered some of the most gorgeous performances ever. I think he had so much energy in his body. It feels like there\u2019s a current going through his limbs all the time. So I was trying to steal a little bit of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Kinski never actually played Frankenstein or his monster, he did play similar roles in 1982\u2019s Android and 1974\u2019s The Lover of the Monster, as well as Nosferatu in 1979\u2019s Nosferatu the Vampyre, Nosferatu a second time in 1988\u2019s Vampire in Venice, and even Renfield in 1970\u2019s Count Dracula. <\/p>\n

In the article, Painter stated he channeled the actor in some creative ways. \u201cBecause of all of that wandering around and looking stupid, I came up with a sheet of funny jokes that I thought could be in the choreography, and then I had some sessions with the stunt team. They\u2019re so knowledgeable about the athletics of everything. I would be able to bring creative ideas to them, and they would help me fine-tune the movements,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of it is off the cuff in a really fun way. At one point, I showed up for a day and they just handed me the camera for POV footage. I\u2019m holding a GoPro while I\u2019m punching myself in the face. That was like the best day of work ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

As any actor worth their salt will tell you, a good scene partner will naturally elevate their performance, so it\u2019s a bit heartbreaking to learn co-star Lloyd wasn\u2019t actually there the day Slurp ate his character\u2019s brains. \u201cI was bullying a robot all day. Yeah, there was a prop head, but the mechanical bot was there and controlled by people on the crew. I don\u2019t think a lot of it\u2019s in the actual episode, but we had so much fun shoving the robot around. It\u2019s almost kind of tragic. The wheels start squeaking and it feels like it\u2019s a puppy dog.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Lloyd\u2019s head may have cost a fortune, it sounds like his brains did not. According to Painter, he was eating \u201csome Jell-O blood mixture. It just tastes like sugar, kind of gnarly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wednesday actor Owen Painter recently sat down with Vulture to discuss the human element he brought to his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270,11381],"class_list":{"0":"post-11376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-wednesday"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}