Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Vulture Festival

With his new tattoo in tow, Neil Patrick Harris has begun filming the second season of Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. As the Baudelaire orphans’ antagonist, Count Olaf, Harris plays a wonderfully bad actor who transforms into different characters from episode to episode. It’s a dream, save for one downside: Playing Count Olaf requires NPH to grow out his nails. “They’re just gnarly. It’s hard to text,” he told an audience in a conversation at Vulture Festival.

Harris teased some disguises he’ll don in the second season. He’ll play Coach Genghis, the turban-wearing gym coach whose voice is inspired by middle America, Dr. Phil, Brett Butler, and S-Town’s John B. McLemore. Harris said his other Olaf character, Gunther, looks like Karl Lagerfeld but he’s not sure how Gunther will sound. “I don’t quite know Gunther’s voice yet,” Harris told the crowd. “It’s an indeterminate sort of German, sometimes French.”