The new BBC series Dracula hit Netflix on January 4 and brought a beautiful and disturbing new take on the classic Bram Stoker vampire saga.
Check out our review of the first episode of Dracula here.
The show was full of fantastic performances, the highlight of which might be Dracula himself, portrayed by Danish actor Claes Bang.
Here is what you need to know about Claes Bang.
Claes Bang on Dracula
When Dracula first introduces the blood-sucking prince to the viewers, he is old and weak. It is very similar to the Francis Ford Coppola version of Dracula, with Gary Oldman.
However, once he is able to revert to his youth he morphs disturbingly into an almost replica of Christopher Lee’s version of Dracula from the Hammer Horror films.
Claes Bang then finishes off his first victim and heads out to, in his words, slaughter and kill countless people in England.
He is charismatic and purely evil, a familiar yet frighteningly terrifying monster in Netflix’s Dracula.
Who is Claes Bang?
If you thought that Dracula was familiar, that is because he is. While Claes Bang spent most of his time in European movies (he won the European Film Award for Best Actor for the 2017 film The Square, the first Dane to win it), he has done more for American audiences lately.
In 2018, American fans saw him on the big screen when he appeared in the Fede Alvarez movie The Girl in the Spider’s Web — the sequel in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series.
He played Jan Holtser, who was the accomplice to Camilla Salander, Lisbeth’s sister in the movie.
Television fans also got to know him thanks to his appearance in the Showtime television series The Affair. The series starred Dominic West, Ruth Wilson, Maura Tierney, and Joshua Jackson
Claes Bang appeared in the fifth season in 2019 as Sasha Mann, Helen’s (Maura Tierney) love interest that season.
Dracula currently is streaming on Netflix.