MVPs of Horror: How Robert Englund fought for Freddy's fedora in 'Nightmare on Elm Street'
Freddy Krueger would not have been as scary in a pimp hat. (Cooler? Yeah, maybe, but scary, no.)
According to Robert Englund, the man behind the legendary Nightmare on Elm Street villain, that was once a possibility before they ultimately (thankfully) landed on the iconic fedora.
“The fedora was [writer-director Wes Craven’s idea],” Englund told Yahoo Entertainment during a Role Recall interview. “But he’d been talked into maybe trying some other hats. And they had this box of hats, and we’re sitting on the floor — kind of uncomfortably, both of these grown men on this futon — and [they’re] telling me to put on all of these different hats. I’m sitting there in makeup going, ‘Guys, please, the fedora is right.’ And they kept putting on like, paper boy hats, and baseball hats, and God, one looked like a pimp hat.
“It was like, ‘What are you thinking, you guys?’ I think I said something to Wes like, ‘Look, the fedora was your idea.’ And I stood and showed my shadow on the wall with the [fedora] hat, and how strong that silhouette was. And then I took the hat off and showed the baldness, revealing the baldness, and how he could save that for the right time in the movie. And I kind of got my way.”
To fuel the fire behind his skin-burnt slasher, meanwhile, Englund found a method-like approach that involved the young actors he terrorized on screen, Johnny Depp and Heather Langenkamp.
“I remember being very envious of Johnny and Heather,” he said. “Their beauty, their youth, they had their whole careers ahead of them. I said, ‘Hey, I can use that. That’s a trick I can use for Freddy when I have to go after them in the film, when I have to muster something up. That can be my sense memory, that can be my little synapse, my little click into why I resent them.”
Watch our full Role Recall interview with Robert Englund in two parts below:
Part 1
Part 2
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