The Sandman on Netflix needed a sexy Corinthian — even with those eyes

Though it’s his at best second most defining feature, The Sandman‘s Corinthian has an undeniable style. Dressed in creamy white, with fair hair and an ever-present pair of sunglasses, the Nightmare cuts a fine figure whether in the pages of Neil Gaiman sandman Comic or as played by Boyd Holbrook in the Netflix adaptation. It’s a look so put together that you might miss it most distinctive feature: the mouths where his eyes should be.

A renegade nightmare, AWOL by Dreaming in Dreams absence, and serial murder making its way through the waking world, the Corinthian is a chaos of menace and charm. And that required Holbrook to play the role in a way he’d never been asked to do before.

“I think the Corinthian had a sexuality that I… never wanted or wanted,” Holbrook tells Polygon. “So that was definitely something that was uncomfortable at first that I had to work my way into.”

Image: Netflix

Holbrook notes that he and the rest of the cast were instructed to make their respective characters their own and not fall into the trap of feeling too preoccupied with how the character needed to function. Instead, the most important thing is that they “play a rooted real person”. Of course, since the eyes of the Corinthians are the stuff of nightmares, he had to work his way into them without the help of the windows of the soul.

“I really thought I had to do that, or me [would feel] a commitment to bring something else to the role that wasn’t on the page,” says Holbrook. “But Neil Gaiman and Allan Heinberg, our showrunner, really put my mind at ease with that. Because it is not an obstacle, but rather a weapon.”

There’s a slight attraction that emanates from Holbrook’s performance, a natural poise that still manages to infuse every moment he’s on screen with menace. With his eyes somewhere behind the side sunglasses, every act of kindness seems tinged with a touch of malice. He’s cool and composed, perhaps because he knows he’s untouchable in almost every way.

“I think it would basically paralyze everyone,” says Holbrook. “Once the glasses fall off and you see the teeth for the eyes, I think it would just shock people.”

Additional reporting by Tasha Robinson.