Neil Patrick Harris’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events launches exclusively on Netflix on Friday, Jan. 13, and in anticipation, the show’s theme song has been released – sung by Harris himself. The show is based on the best-selling book series by Daniel Handler.
The adaptation recounts the tragic tale of the Baudelaire orphans – Violet, Klaus, and Sunny – whose evil guardian Count Olaf (Harris) will stop at nothing to get his hands on their inheritance. The siblings must outsmart the old man at every turn in order to uncover why their parents mysteriously died.
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Harris, who is also a producer on the series, said that it honours the tone and structure of the original reads save for a few minor tweaks.
“I think my take on Olaf and our take on the show in general is a bit more acerbic and drier and a little more dark and intense, a little more Tim Burton,” said Harris in an interview with The Chronicle Herald.
It took between 2 1/2 to four hours of makeup time every day to transform Harris into his character.
“It forced me to stare at my face a lot, a lot more than I normally would in my life, and realize how flaring nostrils, what that accomplishes, how raising a single eyebrow accomplishes (something), what a frown looks like and what a smile looks like,” Harris told the publication. “My face became very technical and that was unique. I’d never really focused on the minutiae of my facial muscles as much as I have in Vancouver.” (The series, it should be noted, was shot in the city.)
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The 43-year-old added that he’s spent time in several Canadian cities and finds “the people uniformly kind, respectful… I have always been a fan of Canada and Canadians in general… A lot of my best friends, most trustworthy friends are Canucks, so I was happy to film there and I’m glad that I’m not doing How I Met Your Mother anymore just so I don’t have to keep telling awful Canada jokes.”
The eight-episode series is a Netflix original production and is executive produced by Emmy Award winner Barry Sonnenfeld. It also stars Patrick Warburton (Lemony Snicket), Joan Cusack (Justice Strauss), Malina Weissman (Violet Baudelaire) and Louis Hynes (Klaus Baudelaire).
Watch the clip of the theme song above.