Javier Bardem’s ‘Cape Fear’ character was inspired by Slipknot, Linkin Park and Bad Omens

Javier Bardem has discussed how metal music inspired his performance in the new Apple TV+ series Cape Fear.

The Oscar winner takes on the role of Max Cady, a convicted murdered who is released from prison and seeks out revenge on the married lawyers (Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson) who represented him 17 years earlier. In a new interview, he talked about how the metal genre influenced his character.

“We absolutely went for a metal look, I loved that,” he told Kerrang!, before sharing the songs that he felt resonated with the character. “I listened to five songs especially,” he said. “Two from Linkin Park: ‘Given Up’, with the great Chester [Bennington], and ‘Up From The Bottom’ from the last album, ‘From Zero’. I think [Emily Armstrong] is an amazing singer.

“She really brought it back,” he continued. “Those two songs really express frustration and the fight for raising up from [one’s] own ashes that [resonates] with Max. And songs by Slipknot, Falling In Reverse and Bad Omens. I’m so bad with the names of songs, but they were in my head all day long before doing anything and helped put me in the mood.”

The actor added that the influence is part of a larger passion for the genre. “It’s not that I use the music,” he said. “It’s that I can’t live without it. It’s what I listen to: when I drive, when I’m being driven, before I go to sleep… Yeah, I listen to Slipknot to go to sleep. For me, metal is a way of living.”

That love extends to live performances. “I’m a huge, huge fan of live concerts,” he says. “I’ve been to a lot, and usually go whenever I can. Sometimes I go to the pit if I can make it, but otherwise I’m privileged enough to enjoy it from a place where I can be left alone. But whether it’s one place or the other, I feel it.”

Cape Fear is adapted from the novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald, and has been adapted twice for the big screen – the first in 1962 starring Robert Mitchum as Cady, and secondly in 1990, with Martin Scorsese directing Robert De Niro in the villainous role.

In NME’s review of the new series, writer Priya Elan called the show “closer to the book than Scorsese’s classic”, concluding: “Cape Fear 2026 is a simmering, star-filled, slow burn – a watchable addition to the ‘Rich People Being Awful’ canon.”