LONDON – In the telling of Alexander Skarsgard, the idea for his latest film, “The Northman,” has its roots on a long, slender island off the coast of Sweden called land, where his great-grandfather built a wooden house . hundred years ago.
“Some of my earliest memories are from walking with my grandfather in land and he showed me these massive stones and inscriptions,” he told of the rain on Monday during lunch at a hotel far away in central London. “Telling the tales of the Vikings, who swept the rivers beneath Constantinople.
“So, in a way,” he continued, “you could say that the dream of one day making a Viking movie or being a part of it was born in that moment.”
Dressed in a gray crew-neck sweater and dark jeans, he was centuries away from the bloody, sloppy nerd he played in “The Northman,” the highly anticipated action-adventure that marks director Robert Eggers’ leap into big-budget filmmaking. Is.
Six-four, blond and undeniably handsome, Skarsgard would take a no-brainer to launch a Viking movie, but the film took a while to make. Skarsgard said he spent years working with Danish filmmaker Lars Knudsen, trying to determine what shape the project would take. Then, in 2017, he met Eggers, who had fallen in love with Iceland during a trip two years earlier, to talk about another project.
Skarsgard and Eggers both described that meeting as “fate”, and this eventually inspired Eggers to write “The Northman” with Icelandic poet and writer Sjon. Eggers, who said he had $70 million to make the film, took some inspiration from 1982’s “Conan the Barbarian,” which he had watched as a child.
Skarsgard’s character is a Viking prince, Amleth, who is bent on vengeance after his father is murdered. Skarsgard is producing the new film, which opens on April 22 and also stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman and Björk.
“It was a real treat to be a part of the project from Genesis as an actor,” Skarsgard said. “To be a part of that journey and to be able to interact continuously with the screenwriters as they are shaping the story, talk about Amleth’s arc, the story, the essence of it – that’s very inspiring to me. Was.”
The 45-year-old and always humble star has played a Viking in the past. In fact, he’s played a Northman before: Eric Northman, the proud undead, ultrasexy Viking vampire on the HBO series “True Blood.” But the title character of “The Northman” is a Viking following Skarsgard’s own heart—a faithful faithful to the medieval lore of Icelandic sagas that doesn’t question fate or faith. And one that, design wise, doesn’t have much to say.
He said the storylines on which the film is based are “very brief”. And the characters “don’t really speak unless absolutely necessary.”
With an easy smile, Skarsgard himself is open. He is aware of the world around him, including being up-to-date on the latest news from Ukraine and knowing that asparagus season is upon us. He paid his full attention to the questions, paused to collect his thoughts before answering them – and didn’t look at the cellphone once.
Although he grew up listening to Viking stories, Skarsgard read books and watched lectures to prepare for his role. He said the most interesting thing he learned was that the Vikings believed that every person had a female spirit to guide them.
Skarsgard said, “I thought it was pretty fascinating, the juxtaposition between that and the brutality you get when you first meet Amleth.” He continued, “That he would have believed that there was a female spirit inside him to guide him, I really liked the idea.”
Their preparations were done, it seemed that everything was coming together in the film. As the shooting was about to begin, the pandemic hit.
“For about 48 hours we were still moving, but everyone was like, ‘Is this happening? Are we doing this? What’s going on?’ And then finally, they pulled the plug and said we had to break up and we were going home.
Although Skarsgard considers New York as his base, going home meant going to his hometown of Stockholm.
He lived with his large family in his mother’s country house. He is the eldest son of actor Stellan Skarsgard and his first wife, Mai, and one of eight siblings. Three of his brothers are also actors, including Bill Skarsgard, who played Pennywise, the creeper clown in the “It” movies; Another brother is a doctor who apprised him of the developments in the Kovid crisis. Skarsgard said that despite the appalling circumstances, he got the chance to spend time with his family.
“We made dinner and hang out, worked in the garden,” he said, adding that it can be difficult to gather the whole family as work gets in the way. “I really enjoyed it. Then I almost felt guilty because it was a pandemic and people were dying.”
Family and Sweden, where Skarsgard grew up and spent some time in the military, are important subjects of his life.
“We are all a very tight group,” he said. “In South Stockholm everyone lives within two blocks of each other and we see each other all the time when I’m at home.” (He is not married, but when asked if he was single, he answered an emphatic “no.”)
He started out as a child artist, but began in his early teens before fully embracing an acting career in his 20s. He has said in the past that acting did not attract his attention when he was young.
His path to “The Northman” runs through dozens of roles in film and TV, some just different sides of the same coin. He plays an Israeli spy (“The Little Drummer Girl”) and a German man coming to life after World War II (“The Aftermath”). A young Marine who helps the United States invade Iraq (“Generation Kill”) and a sadist Army sergeant who misleads young recruits into Afghanistan (“The Kill Team”). An abusive husband (“Big Little Lies”) and a painfully lovable stepfather step in to care for his neglected stepdaughter (“What’s Messy Know”).
He played a small but important role in HBO’s iconic drama “Succession”, playing Swedish tech billionaire Lukas Matsson.
Mark Mylod, an executive producer on the show who directed Skarsgard in two of the three episodes in which he appears, said that the actor was “really the only choice for the character because of the intelligence of his work.”
The makers of “Succession” envisioned a character with “that kind of Elon Musk” charisma, but not necessarily based on the Tesla chief executive. At the heart of the “succession” must be the gravitas in the Matson character to the family behind Vestar Royco, said Melod.
“He found a way to make that character so great and watchable and totally believable,” Meilod said. “With fewer scenes, he made such an impact.” (Myload won’t say whether Matson will be returning in Season 4.)
Rebecca Hall, an actress who had worked with Skarsgard on “Godzilla vs. Kong”, said she struggled to obtain financing for her passion project, “Passing”, which was based on the 1929 Nella Larsen novella. Last year was his adaptation about the friendship between the two. Black women in New York, one of whom passes away as white.
While working on “Kong,” Hall mustered up the courage to ask Skarsgard to read her script. He did and agreed to play a racist husband. “I understood that he cares about the fine art in the world and will do what he can,” Hall said in an interview. “He’s no stranger to complicated characters doing bad things.”
For Skarsgard, there is “zero strategy or planning” for his career. “The lovely thing is when I am struck by the character, and I understand the aspects of him and that makes me curious to know more,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun because then it means I’ll probably enjoy diving in and deepen it a little bit more.”
On “The Northman,” diving meant bulking up. He was reunited with Kidman in the film, playing his wife in “Big Little Lies”, for which she won an Emmy, a SAG Award, and a Golden Globe. This time she is his mother.
The two actors traveled with the rest of the cast to Northern Ireland, Ireland and Iceland to shoot ‘Northman’. Skarsgard described it as “seven months in the mud”.
Eggers, a precise and meticulous director, said that he was “not a sadist to be a sadist”, but he was serious about detail and precision, which would come as no surprise to audiences of his earlier films, such as ” The Witch” “and” Lighthouse.
Skarsgard has talked about being shackled and dragged through ducks in interviews. But Eggers said that, like him, Skarsgard wanted the best result. “When we started this together, he was nothing but perfection.”
Eggers said, “Alex has talked about me taking him to the edge, but at times I remember asking him for another take because he’s as perfectionist as I am.”
The director acknowledged that the working conditions were difficult. “I’m not trying to make things difficult for us,” he explained, “but when you’re telling the story of the Viking Age in northern Europe, you’re going to be looking for puny places with extreme weather and terrain. . And that should be all it takes to tell this story.”
Eggers said there were benefits to working with such a big budget and cast, but it also meant a lot of pressure. “If this film doesn’t perform, it will be a problem,” he said.
After all the work, Skarsgard said, “I just want people to see the film, that’s it,” adding, preferably on the big screen.
As is fairly standard fare for the Skarsgard project, she is nude in parts of “The Northman”, including during a fight scene at the volcano.
Does he ever just ask to take off his clothes? He said that he took off his shirt during a recent photo shoot, “I think there’s enough nudity in the film.”
Skarsgard, who had spent the morning doing press by Zoom and had traveled to Europe to campaign in the days before we spoke, had slipped under the banister by the end of the interview, resting his head against a cushion. . He said that he realized that his films are heavy. “I may have to do a comedy soon,” he said, adding that he would like to work with satirist Armando Iannucci or British comedian Steve Coogan.
“The Northman,” he said, “was so intense. It was the greatest experience of my career but, gosh, it was intense.”
