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Amazon’s “Red One” is led by Chris Evans and Dwayne Johnson, two past winners of People’s Sexiest Man Alive, but one half-goat, half-heartthrob is stealing the show.
“Game of Thrones” alum Kristofer Hivju plays Krampus, Santa’s surprisingly hot, devilish brother. He’s introduced halfway through the movie as Evans’ Jack O’Malley and Johnson’s Callum Drift are looking for the missing Santa Claus, played by an equally muscular J.K. Simmons. Their search takes them to Krampus’ dark lair, where he’s surrounded by various mythical creatures playing “Krampusschlap” — a game with the goal of slapping your opponent across the room. Despite being estranged from his brother, Krampus denies being part of the kidnapping plot that his ex-girlfriend and winter witch Gryla (Kiernan Shipka) has planned. However, Krampus can’t let Callum and Jack leave without playing Krampusschlap. Unfortunately for the hulking, yet hot, beast, Callum has some magic tricks up his sleeve, and the humans walk away free and (mostly) unscathed to continue their hunt for Santa.
Makeup artist Joel Harlow and specialty costume designer L.J. Shannon created the Krampus suit for Hivju, who flew back and forth from his native Oslo, Norway, to Los Angeles for fittings over several months.
Popular on Variety “First we made a sculpture of my whole body, and then they made suits around it. When I flex my muscles, it has reactions in the suit,” he said. He compared the 85-pound, full-body suit to Colin Farrell’s “Penguin” transformation, where the Irish actor turned into a balding, overweight gangster. The only snags were that Hivju’s skin broke out, and it took hours to put on.
“Your skin can’t breathe when you’re covered from top to toe, so I got rashes and my skin went bananas,” he said. “It was quite tough, but the reward for how it looked was worth it.”
Everett Collection The transformation began as a four-hour process, then was reduced to around two and a half hours. Around 40 makeup artists worked on the Krampusschlap scene, which featured a variety of background actors dressed in equally detailed costumes as satyrs, fauns and other mythological creatures.
“You’ve got six horns, a body suit, hands, gloves, teeth, lenses, then you have to make that design,” Harlow said of making Krampus practically. “Putting six horns on somebody’s head is not as easy as just gluing them on. You have to have an under-skull that supports those horns. That needs to blend seamlessly with the silicone skin, which needs to blend seamlessly with the hair pieces that go on top. Everything gets tied together with the lenses and the teeth and then it’s up to Kristofer to bring it to life.”
Despite the rashes and long hours in the makeup chair, Hivju pushed through and delivered a menacing, swaggering performance as the horned monster. By the end of the movie, Krampus even comes around and helps the heroes on their chilly adventure to save Santa.
“That’s where the charisma of Kristofer comes in,” Shannon said. “I always love whenever I’m creating a creature, my team makes fun of me because I’m like, ‘I want chicks to dig him. He’s got to be hot.’ There’s something about a lovable creature where you are drawn to them. Any bad guy has to be well-rounded enough that they’re interesting to watch, and there’s a part of you that kind of roots for them.”
“She said, ‘I want to make you sexy with the leather pants,’” Hivju added. “We played with how low the waist should go. Like, ‘What kind of butt do you want?’ I wanted a bigger butt, bigger butt, bigger butt. We had all these different sizes of muscles and legs. We spent a lot of time with costume fittings, but definitely the goal was to make him a hedonistic half-god.”
The team didn’t just want to turn Krampus into a dreamboat; they also wanted to pay homage to his German and folklore origins. That included making Hivju a tank top that resembled birch bark — Krampus’ wood of choice for spanking naughty kids — and replacing his cloven hooves with boots inspired by Dr. Martens.
“If Santa is God, then Krampus is the devil,” Hivju said. “We just made him a bit more masculine than in the folklore.”
