Jamie Campbell Bower has been in the industry for quite some time, but it was Stranger Things that gave him a breakthrough with his villain role. Bower played Vecna, aka Henry Creel, aka One, in the Netflix show and immediately garnered a fan base, thanks to his bone-chilling performance.
Bower’s repulsive transformation into the villain was met with some comments. In his recent interview with Rolling Stone, Bower was asked about the time when a character in the show described Vecna as a “wrinkled noseless rotting bastard.” He jokingly brushed aside the ‘Vecna backlash’ with the comment, “Don’t listen to the vile vitriol that is spewed by others!”
According to the outlet, the character’s description of Vecna explained his appearance in the show, which matched the gory aesthetics of the Upside Down. Bower had to sit for hours in the makeup room so that he could be covered in a prosthetic.
Weirdly, Bower admitted to taking a prop from the set in an Instagram video. He shared that he took Vecna’s tentacled prop hand from the set. He shared, “I do. I have one, but it doesn’t have the mechanism in it, so it just kind of flops around. I put it on; show people when they come over.”
Interestingly, the 36-year-old actor earlier played young Gellert Grindelwald in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1. He also had a leading role in the movie adaptation of Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments, where he starred opposite Lily Collins. Bower is the recipient of The Television Award at the ZYN Rolling Stone UK Awards 2025.
Stranger Things Spin-Off Prepared Jamie Campbell Bower for Season 5
Jamie Campbell Bower also appeared in flashback sequences as Henry Creel/One in the last season of Stranger Things. Raphael Luce played a younger version of the character in another scene. Interestingly, the backstory of Henry Creel was fleshed out in the stage spinoff, Stranger Things: The First Shadow.
The show has been running in London’s West End since November 2023 and on Broadway since March 2025. Louis McCartney plays the character of Henry in the musical, giving the character a tragic backstory. According to Bower, seeing the play on its first night in London was a “highly emotionally charged” moment.
He shared that he got “wildly emotional” when he saw the story of the traumatized teenager who eventually becomes the vindictive serial killer. He shared with Rolling Stone:
I know this boy, and to see those things [about him] presented in front of me, which were things that I had considered anyway, made it all feel so real. I just wanted to give him a hug.
Bower shared that seeing the backstory in The First Shadow was “definitely helpful” when he played Vecna in Season 5. Bower previously had a few other inspirations that truly made his character into one of the best TV villains.
Why Fans Believe Jamie Campbell Bower’s Vecna Is Perfect?
Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer told Jamie Campbell Bower that one of the influences for his character, Vecna, was Doug Bradley’s Pinhead in 1987’s Hellraiser. He went on to use Bradley’s performance as his “starting reference.”
When Bower first took on the role, he immediately got to work on Vecna’s voice. All Bower got from the script was that the character had “this big booming voice”, but he refused to do a generic monster voice. He recalled creating the sinister voice for his character:
You know, I could do a [generic] monster voice, which would have been fine. But there was something about this [role], and where I was artistically at that point, that made me want to feel every single moment of this. His voice had to come from a place of real truth.
Bower’s choices worked well with the audience, as they absolutely loved his performance. One Reddit fan shared about his performance, “It’s all in the face. He just has a really good villainous stare, whereas most actors will just look like they just have resting b**ch face.” Another fan shared, “Angelic, seemingly charming, but completely unhinged.”
What do you think of Jamie Campbell Bower’s performance as Vecna in Stranger Things? Let us know in the comments below!
Stranger Things Season 5 is arriving on Netflix on November 26, 2025.
