Eddie Redmayne Recalls His 'Trial and Error Experience' of Using Prosthetics on “The Day of the Jackal”: 'Sweat Oozing Out'

The actor said that the special makeup affects can be "so deeply uncomfortable"

Eddie Redmayne isn't disguising his thoughts on wearing prosthetics.

In an interview with Variety that published on Friday Nov. 8, the Academy Award winner, 42, went into graphic detail about wearing the special effects makeup used for his character's transformation in The Day of the Jackal, a modern retelling of the classic 1973 film.

In the first episode of the Peacock thriller series, Redmayne disguises himself as "an elderly German cleaner."

“My overwhelming memory of those days was Richard coming and doing pin pricks through the prosthetic and this sweat oozing out the top,” Redmayne told the publication.

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"You don’t get much time to prep with them, because it costs so much money, and they take so long to put on," the Fantastic Beasts actor added. "And they’re so deeply uncomfortable that people quite often go, 'Oh, that’s a prosthetic performance.' "

"But having experienced quite a lot of it myself, when I look at someone like Colin Farrell’s performance [in The Penguin] or Gary Oldman’s performance [in The Darkest Hour], you don’t get much time to prep in it. So it’s really a trial and error experience."

One important part of making the prosthetic believable, Redmayne added, is creating a voice to match. In Day of the Jackal, Redmayne spoke German as the elderly caretaker while under layers of makeup.

"You can have a wonderful prosthetic, but if that doesn’t marry with a voice, then you’re screwed," he said. "Once you’ve prepped the German-speaking, you’ve then got to drop the pitch of it in order to marry with the fact that this guy is a 70-year-old chain smoker."

The Peacock show is an adaptation of the 1973 movie of the same name. In the Peacock remake, "an unrivaled and highly elusive lone assassin, the Jackal, makes his living carrying out hits for the highest fee," an official synopsis reads.

"But following his latest kill, he meets his match in a tenacious British intelligence officer (Lashana Lynch) who starts to track down the Jackal in a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase across Europe, leaving destruction in its wake."

Related: Eddie Redmayne to Reprise Role as Newt Scamander for Ministry of Magic-themed Harry Potter land at Universal

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The Day of the Jackal premieres Thursday, Nov. 14 with its first five episodes on Peacock. The remaining five episodes will drop weekly on the streaming service.