Did You Know? It Took 10 Hours to Turn Jacob Elordi Into Frankenstein’s Monster

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has once again taken a life of its own by way of Netflix’s newest movie adaptation. Directed by auteur Guillermo del Toro, the film stars Oscar Isaac as the titular Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as his tortured creature. Jacob, who replaced Andrew Garfield for the role, turned out to be perfectly cast, standing at a colossal 6’5 with haunting, wounded eyes.

To fully immerse himself in the role, he had to sit through a grueling 10 hours of makeup and prosthetics application at the hands of makeup artist Mike Hill, who previously worked on The Shape of Water. “He was a fabulous canvas for me to play with and to work this creature on,” he told Elle Magazine.

In pop culture, Frankenstein’s creature is best known to have green skin and knobs sticking out of his neck. While Guillermo is a fan of the 1931 adaptation that popularized this image, his vision deviated from the blueprint. For the 2025 version, the creature is instead made up of a patchwork of skin—42 geometric pieces to be exact. “When you saw him, you immediately knew that he was man-made. He’d been tailored, he’d been designed,” explained Mike.

Applying the whole thing took up almost half a day, enough for Jacob to play games on his Steam Deck, read a book, and internalize his character. “It was like the perfect amount of time to be able to sort of leave all of this stuff behind and sort of become something else, I guess,” he shared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

That's not all. Removing the makeup was an equally time-consuming ordeal. It would take them 90 minutes in an inflatable sauna set up in Jacob’s trailer to shed off all the pieces stuck on his skin.

Before production began, Mike had warned Jacob beforehand via Zoom call about the tedious process. “I said, ‘Look, Jacob, you’re going to hate my face at 2 a.m. when I’m leaning over you, and I’m going to hate yours because you’re hating mine,’” he told Elle. His predictions proved to be false as the two ended up becoming good friends, with Mike even pronouncing that he's never known a better subject. “He didn’t complain. But I know there’s inner turmoil. How could there not be?”

You can now stream Frankenstein exclusively on Netflix.