Warning: Minor spoilers ahead for the second season of "A Series of Unfortunate Events."
Neil Patrick Harris literally wears many hats as the villain on Netflix's "A Series of Unfortunate Events," but the veteran actor struggles to pick favorites when it comes to the Count Olaf disguises he wears for the show.
"It's so hard to pick — I get to play one character for 27 shooting days, so that's a long time to be someone else," Harris told INSIDER during a Netflix press event.
Harris plays the dastardly Count Olaf, a villain who's intent on capturing the three Baudelaire children and stealing their fortune. Throughout the series, Olaf disguises himself with a new identity over and over again as he tries to gain custody of the kids.
With the second season of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" premiering on Friday, March 30, Harris teased some of Count Olaf's false identities we'll see on the coming episodes. Keep reading for a look at the four new versions of Olaf that Harris loves best, and to learn how he approached each version with a different accent.
Gunther the Auctioneer
"Gunther is the auctioneer in town and he’s looks very Karl Lagerfeld-ish with the big glasses to hide his brow, a ponytail, big fake white teeth," Harris said. "Everything he says is very German but sort of French at the same time, because his accent is bad."
The Gunther disguise has already been shown in Netflix promos for the coming second season (as seen above). Gunther is from the Lemony Snicket book "The Ersatz Elevator."
Doctor Matthias Medicalschool
Another Count Olaf disguise seen in the second season trailer is the evil doctor Count Olaf will pose as during his hunt for the Baudelaire children.
"Doctor Matthias Medicalschool — which is spelled like Medical School but with no space — was in the book 'The Hostile Hospital,'" Harris said.
"You mostly only heard Count Olaf over a loudspeaker, so I wanted to come up with a voice that was a 'loudspeaker voice,'" Harris said. "I thought back to 1930s and '40s with the Hindenburg disaster. A sort of 'Attention! It is very important that you listen to the following thing that I say' [voice].
Harris says the hospital-based "A Series of Unfortunate Events" episode will have a "horror-movie" vibe.
Detective DuPin
"My favorite though? Detective DuPin in 'The Vile Village,'" Harris said. "He just thinks everything is the coolest."
"He has big flashy shoes and a leather jacket, a straw hat, and a gold tooth," Harris said. "He scatted a lot, so I played him like Jason Mraz— everything is 'scoobadobapbop' and he has a toothpick and he was bad, man, just like walking around all funky-like."
Coach Genghis
In Snicket's book "The Austere Academy," Olaf disguises himself as a P.E. teacher in the Baudelaires' new school.
"Season two has a guy named Coach Genghis, who wears a turban and is a gym teacher/motivational speaker," Harris said. "So that was challenging because it was a lot of dialogue and I wanted his voice to be […] a Midwestern PE coach meets Doctor Phil or Al Gore."
We haven't had a peek at Coach Genghis yet, but Harris revealed the way he designed the character's accent based on a popular non-fiction podcast called "S-Town," produced and hosted by Brian Reed.
"'S-Town' is about a guy named John B. McLemore," Harris said. "And as I was trying to come up with a voice for Genghis — which is its own tricky dynamic because when you think someone named Genghis wearing a turban being played badly by a Count Olaf, you're potentially in a world of offense and the last thing any of us would want is to offend anyone — we went against type and I thought John B. McLemore [was] an interesting sound."
To see how Genghis and the rest of Count Olaf's disguises turned out, we'll have to wait until the second season of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" premieres on Netflix this Friday.
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