Photoshoots and Interviews - 2020

[wanderingstar78]

This thread is for any of Alex's interviews and photoshoots published in 2020.

These will be permanent files of ‘first-run’ interviews (video and text) with the actor, the articles that are written about the actor personally (not about his projects), and formal photoshoots.

[davischristinem]

Photo of Alex from Photographer Aaron Richter
(Shared on 3/26/2020, Thank-You Mr. Richter, we have missed seeing Alex!)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-NzJYCAv4S

                                                         

[wanderingstar78]

skarsjoy.tumblr.com/post/614333058017083392/new-interview-and-promo-stills-with-alexander

NEW interview and promo stills with Alexander Skarsgård forThe Times by Will Pavia

Updated with paper cover for the Saturday Review (dated April 4, 2020) - tweet by Declan, photo by Justin Campbell. (thanks Soph!) - Titled ‘Swede Dream - Alexander Skarsgård on muscling up for his new film’




Alexander Skarsgard: from Sweden’s sexiest man to Hollywood star
The actor talks about getting into the mindset of a murderous sergeant in his film The Kill Team.

The lift doors open and out steps Alexander Skarsgard in a white jacket and jeans. He’s very tall and his height is accentuated by his long pale and gold hair that is swept back, like a scroll, over the top of his head. Also, I think he may be wearing cowboy boots. A cluster of film publicity people scatter before him. He’s armed with a bacon and tomato baguette from a shop downstairs.

We go into a glass-walled office and sit down on a sofa to talk about his latest film, The Kill Team, a military flick in which he plays a charismatic, murderous American sergeant in Afghanistan. He takes a vigorous, jaw-clamping bite of the sandwich, lays it down on the coffee table and turns sideways towards me, stretching one muscular arm along the top of the cushions. It is the time before corona, when two hunky guys in their prime can still sit next to one another on a sofa.

Skarsgard, who is 43, was recognised very early in his acting career as Sweden’s sexiest man. He was the five-time reigning champion.

“Yes, champion,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Winner again.”

Did he get trophies?

“I’ve got them all lined up.”

I don’t think we should play down the achievement. Swedish people all look pretty fantastic, don’t they?

“I like that you think of it that way,” he says. This other guy he spoke to once said it was really not much better than being the sexiest man in Ohio. “He was, like, ‘It’s a small population.’ But I like your take on it,” Skarsgard says, rubbing his beard. “It’s like, the best of the best.”

It did his career no good at all though. “Suddenly I was considered, like, sexy, and I was having a really hard time finding interesting characters,” he says. It was always “the jock, [the] high school football player. It was never anything substantial or conflicted or interesting”.

He wanted more. He was not a piece of meat. “That made me more inclined to come out here,” he says.

We’re in a grand old building in Manhattan, with large windows that look out over the rooftops at the spires and towers of midtown. “My father was working out here,” he says. Stellan Skarsgard was famous in Sweden and pretty well known in America by then too; he was in The Hunt for Red October and Good Will Hunting. They are an acting dynasty now; Alexander is the eldest of six and four of them are actors. But at the time — this would be the early 2000s — “I felt like, well, no one knows who I am out here, no one cares,” he says. “I could come and at least have an opportunity to audition for more interesting roles, which I did and got nothing.”

He was in Los Angeles, “thousands of miles from our family, I was spending money I didn’t have on an apartment and rental car”, he says. The most dispiriting thing of all was that the roles he was asked to read for were very similar to the parts he was offered in Sweden. “I didn’t work for, like, three years,” he says
.
Then David Simon and Ed Burns, the makers of The Wire, cast him as the US Marine Brad Colbert in a mini-series called Generation Kill. It was based on a book by a journalist who was embedded with Colbert’s platoon during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Colbert was known as “the Iceman” for his cool temperament. He was also “as American as apple pie”, Skarsgard says. “It was a very arduous and tough audition process because I hadn’t really worked out here before, I was very inexperienced and I was not from the country.”

In the end, “what played to my advantage on Generation Kill was they did not want recognisable faces”, he says. “They wanted this kind of documentary feel to it … So it’s not Matt Damon as the Iceman, you know?”

Straight after that he did True Blood, in which he played a thousand-year-old Swedish vampire, who was definitely an interesting and conflicted character. Later he was a charming and terrifying domestic abuser in Big Little Lies. Then he starred as the mysterious Gadi Becker alongside Florence Pugh in the BBC’s 2018 adaptation of John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl. Now he is back in uniform, playing this infantry sergeant in Afghanistan in The Kill Team. It’s based on a true story: the “Kill Team” was the name adopted by a unit that murdered at least three Afghan civilians in Kandahar province between 2009 and 2010. Several of its soldiers were eventually convicted for the killings by a military court, including their leader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs.

“I was fascinated by him,” Skarsgard says. He saw a 2013 documentary about the unit and “I was really disturbed by it. I’m fascinated by the psychology behind it and how easy it is to manipulate someone.”

It reminded him of the famous psychological experiment in which an authoritative chap in a white coat orders participants to administer steadily larger electric shocks to people strapped into a chair “and they’re, like, ‘Well, I guess I’m supposed to do this.’ ”

The ambient pressure must be a lot greater in Kandahar province for a band of soldiers trained to follow orders and beset on all sides by an invisible but deadly force. In the film the company’s sergeant is killed by an improvised explosive device as he steps forward to give some sweets to a group of village children. In comes Sergeant Deeks, as Gibbs is named in the film. “They’re disillusioned, they’re young, they’re inexperienced, then he rolls up, literally jumps off a helicopter and it’s like the coolest soul you’ve ever seen,” Skarsgard says.

It’s him, of course, with a slight moustache. His Sergeant Deeks is a charming fellow, a caring father who skypes his son in the evening and a commanding, charismatic leader. “He’s, like, ‘This is the situation, here’s what’s happening and this is how we do it,’ ” Skarsgard says. Sergeant Deeks’s attitude is that “they’re all enemies, basically, because even if they’re not holding a Kalashnikov they know where the bad guys are [and] they don’t tell us,” he says. “I can understand why the guys would be like: ‘OK, I guess this is how it’s done.’ And what’s interesting and disturbing is how far you can take that before someone raises their hand and they’re like, ‘This is not OK.’ ”

Someone did. In the film a lone private raises the alarm under the threat of retaliation from his comrades and his commander, who appears on his bed in the middle of the night and tells him softly that he is alone. “Now I’m going to have to threaten you,” Deeks says, before handing the terrified soldier a box containing a severed finger.

Skarsgard is not sure if that bit is true. “There’s actually a story [that’s] almost Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, that he had a necklace made of bones,” he says. (Court reports don’t mention a necklace, but Gibbs was convicted of murder and of cutting off body parts from corpses to keep as mementoes.)

He had no desire to meet the man to check. “I was more fascinated by the dynamic of the group,” he says. The soldiers are thrilled by the killing, but also by their collective survival under fire. “To survive that is one of the most exhilarating feelings,” he says.

Skarsgard was a sergeant himself once, in the Swedish Marines. “I was serving in Sweden and it was peace time,” he says. “[But] I have a lot of friends who have been overseas and who’ve fought and who’ve been shot at and killed.”

Among them are friends from the Swedish military and some of the Marines he worked with on Generation Kill. Rudy Reyes, a Marine who played himself on the series, “is a close friend now”, Skarsgard says. “To hear what they’ve been through … those are experiences I never had.”

The way he tells it, his time in the military sounds rather like a gap year. “I was 19, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. [It] just sounded like a great adventure. I don’t think I would have joined had I been [at] risk of being sent to a foreign country to kill people.”

He led a unit of three guys, “an anti-sabotage, counterterrorism unit” that was deployed on the islands near Stockholm. “It was a lot of sneaking up on islands, that kind of stuff.”

Could he kill me with his bare hands?

“I probably,” he begins, and pauses to reconnoitre briefly our surroundings: a lamp, a coffee table, his partially eaten lunch. “I could kill you with my baguette,” he says. “I need something.”

I sort of imagine it being rather civilised in the Swedish Marines. I imagine it’s all: “All right, guys, let us camp here for the night.” “Sir! I shall erect the tents and the Falholmen flatpack dining table.” “Sir! I shall sauté the meatballs!” And so on.

Skarsgard offers a subtly different portrait of it. “If you put a group of 19-year-olds in a tent for two weeks in [the] middle of nowhere, with complete autonomy … it turns into Lord of the Flies quickly.” His job was “about finding the right balance between a superior and a buddy”.

I ask how it compared with the celebrity-heavy expedition he did to the South Pole in 2013 in aid of a veterans’ charity. That “was more of a solitary experience”, he says. “It was quite unique, I’ve never experienced that before.”

Alone, as it seemed, on the great ice sheet at the extremity of the world Skarsgard heard a voice in his head. It was Alan Partridge. “I had Alan Partridge on as an audiobook and that was beautiful company to have on that journey,” he says.

Partridge would be delighted to hear this. I expect he’s quite keen on polar exploration.

“Oh yeah,” Skarsgard says. “If he found out that what got me to the South Pole is the soothing sound of his voice.”

I ask about Prince Harry, who was on the expedition too. They would all hang out and talk at night, Skarsgard says, but the days were “very challenging” and much of their energy was focused on not getting frostbite. “Quite quickly people forget who’s who in terms of status or what you do in the real world. I think it was quite nice and refreshing for him to be treated just like one of the guys. You know, he embraced that.”

One morning, breaking camp, Skarsgard and a guy from his team noticed that someone had taken down the lavatory tent, leaving the toilet still standing against a backdrop of infinite white. He ripped off his clothes, everything but his boots, and sat on it with a book, while his friend took a picture. “It was minus 30 or 40,” he says. “It was a very quick photoshoot.”

I expect that’s kind of a Swedish thing, to be comfortable in your own skin like that.

“I think sexuality in general is [less] stigmatised in general than it is here,” he says. “There’s a puritanical quality [in America], which I find quite silly. They’re very uncomfortable talking about their bodies, to the point where they won’t even say the word penis.”

He half-understands it if there are children present, though, “like, why won’t you be able to say penis in front of a kid? But people get all red and flushed,” he says. “Even the word is considered a profanity here, which I find so surreal.”

His father had none of those inhibitions. “You know, he would walk around naked a lot, and he would wear weird, like, robes and dresses that he bought in Morocco or when he was on set in India or something. He was just very different from most of my friends’ dads.”

Skarsgard hung out on sets as a kid and acted a bit. “At 13 I did something that got a bit of attention” and he started getting offers of other work. But he had begun to feel desperate “to blend in and be normal”. He began to wish that his father was not an actor, because of his eccentricities. “I was very adamant that I wasn’t going to be an actor. I was going to do something completely different, preferably an office jock, like nine to five.”

For a while he considered architecture, but was put off by all the maths it seemed to require. After larking around on the islands for his national service, he went to Leeds Metropolitan University to study English. There he did a bit of acting and remembered that he liked it. “So I was, like, ‘Maybe I’ll just give it a little go.’ ”

What would his 13-year-old self make of him now, a famous actor, living in the East Village in New York? He used to live in the pounding heart of it, among the nightclubs and bars and student dormitories. Now he’s on a quieter street, although he must still get stopped quite a bit.

His teenage self “would be terrified”, he says. But there were years when no one saw his plays and a long spell in Los Angeles when he felt “deprived of human interaction”. “I just decided to look at it differently,” he says. “So I decided to kind of just force myself to not freak out in those situations and instead, like, be grateful. It’s lovely if you do something that someone cares about.”

Photos of Alex as Sergeant Deeks and writer/director Dan Krauss by still photographer Manolo Pávon. (2nd still added - different version of the Skype chat scene!)

Huge thanks to MissingAngel for the find and asloveas from Delish for getting the article! *Updated with photos by Justin Campbell and of Alex as Gadi Becker in The Little Drummer Girl with Florence Pugh (used in the online article)

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/alexander-skarsgard-from-swedens-sexiest-man-to-hollywood-star-rmvxb6hgk

The Kill Team is available on DVD and Digital download on April 13, 2020 in the UK.

#Alexander Skarsgard #The Kill Team #Sergeant Deeks #long post #Alexander Skarsgård #Dan Krauss #Walking With the Wounded #Saturday Review #cover
April 2, 2020 – 70 notes / April 2, 2020

[wanderingstar78]

Hot damn

https://www.instagram.com/p/CFb0lroojx6

[davischristinem]

More Pictures from the Photo Shoot!

Found at:  alexskarsgardnet.tumblr.com/
















A preview of Alex in the October 2020 issue of L'Uomo Vogue (he’s #3 out of 7 different cover stars)!


Source/Thanks: luomovogue instagram (x): “’For someone like myself who has that kind of wanderlust, who’s always looking on the horizon, it’s very attractive to never know just what the next adventure might be.’



For the #Breaking Boundaries issue of L’Uomo, Alexander Skarsgård here in @dolcegabbana photographed by @studiojohansandberg, seems like he could have all the right pieces to become a future cult classic. ‘Every movie is different,; he says. ‘Your part, the tone, the energy, the people - it’s always different.’ After getting his first big break as the lead in David Simon’s “Generation Kill”, Skarsgård acted in “True Blood” and “Melancholia” at the same time. Since then, he has been a very buff Tarzan in “The Legend of Tarzan”, a mute bartender in “Mute”, a very dark killer in “Hold the Dark”, and a hilarious Canadian Prime Minister in “Long Shot”, as well as giving an Emmy - and Golden Globe-winning turn in HBO’s “Big Little Lies”. And now, the Swede actor is set to star in “The Northman”, Robert Eggers’s highly anticipated third film, a “Viking revenge story” that Skarsgård himself was crucial in bringing to production.” Cover 3 of 7

——

The magazine is out today.

Full credits: Styling @martin__P, Editor-in-Chief @efarneti, Creative Director @thomasperssonstudio, Casting Directors @pg_dmcasting @samuel_Ellis

Interview @yestimsmall, Grooming @karinwesterlundd @lundlundagency, Hair @amandalundhair @lundlundagency, Production @maddooxx @olle.eo @lundlundagency, Digital tech Daniel Lindgren.”

                                                              

[em666]

September 25, 2020

A Swede through and through, Skarsgård is one of the most interesting actors in Hollywood right now. The 43-year-old is set to star in The Northman, Robert Eggers’s highly anticipated third film

Alexander Skarsgård is a really, really nice man. A Swede through and through, Alexander, or Alex, is a very down-to-earth gentleman who could definitely act as more of a big hot, considering he is also one of the most interesting actors in Hollywood right now, a town that, in true Swedish style, he once defined as “kind of silly”. After getting his first big break as the lead in David Simon’s excellent Iraq War mini-series for HBO, Generation Kill, Skarsgård exploded in our collective imaginations as Eric Northman in True Blood, while also acting for Lars von Trier in the wonderful Melancholia.

Since then, he has been a very buff Tarzan in The Legend of Tarzan, a mute bartender in future Berlin in Mute, a very dark killer in Hold the Dark, and a hilarious Canadian Prime Minister in Long Shot, as well as giving an Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning turn in HBO’s Big Little Lies. The self-defined “restless” 43-year-old is set to star in The Northman, Robert Eggers’s highly anticipated third film, a “Viking revenge story” that Skarsgård himself was crucial in bringing to production – and, by all accounts, it seems like it could have all the right pieces to become a future cult classic. It certainly has that kind of hype.

(LV) The Northman is such an interesting project. I know it’s important to you. It’s also part of a growing resurgence of interest in the Viking era and Norse mythology and that sort of epic Scandinavian adventure. How did it all begin?

(Alex) It all started seven or eight years ago. As a Swede living in America, I realised there was a certain level of fascination with the Viking era and Viking culture – and this was before any of the Viking shows that have since happened. It made me realise that there basically had never been a real great epic Viking movie made, and I thought that that’s what I wanted to do.

(LV) So how did the project kick off?
(Alex) I started having conversations with a studio back then, trying to crack the best story. All I knew at the time is that I wanted to make a big Viking movie. We had a couple of potential different starting points: we had a story about two brothers, and then one about the Viking travels down to Constantinople with the Viking siege of the city. We were looking for the right story, but I never really felt we were there. I knew the scope I wanted it to exist in. But what was the story?

(LV) And that’s when you met Robert Eggers.
(Alex) Yes, like three or four years ago. We met about something else. I can’t remember how, but we started talking about Vikings. And he was, like me, a huge fan of Viking culture and of that historical era, and I immediately felt he would be the perfect guy to direct this movie. And then we found an author and poet in Iceland, Sjón, who came onboard to write the screenplay – and they did a fantastic job, just cracking the story and the essence of it.

(LV) Sounds great.
(Alex) It’s a real adventure movie, but it’s much more. It taps into the culture, and the mysticism of the Vikings, it becomes more intimate and more personal. I didn’t want it to be a generic “swords-and-sandals” movie. Robert is one of the best filmmakers out there. And the whole process is so much more gratifying than when you’re quote-unquote “just an actor”. It’s been truly extraordinary.

(LV) But then you had to halt production.
(Alex) Yeah. I was in Belfast, Northern Ireland, three months into prep on The Northman, about seven days away from principal photography. Just gearing up, you know, getting ready to start a very long, very intense shoot – a shoot that we were scheduled to wrap in July – and that’s when the virus hit.

(LV) What did you do then?
(Alex) I normally live in New York, while my family lives in Stockholm. When the first wave came, I was on the fence: nobody really knew how long it would be, or what precisely was going on. So we shut down production for six weeks. The idea was to then see what would happen. I basically moved to Stockholm for four months.

*additional quote from luomovogue 9/25/2020:

I had not been home for this long in… more than 20 years.” reveals Alexander Skarsgård. “It was strange. We were in a bubble; we were all healthy and safe. In a lot of ways, I had moments when I felt being surrounded by my loving family, feeling safe and loved, and taking a break from work, but then also feeling very guilty because I was, for the lack of a better term, being spared.”

** 2nd additional quote from luomovogue 9/25/20

“To me, authenticity is very important. I don’t want to endorse products I don’t genuinely like. That’s why I was excited when Clarks reached out.” reveals Alexander Skarsgård. “I’ve been wearing Desert Boots for 25 years. Also, I like to travel a lot. I like to explore new cities by foot. I want to be able to walk around comfortably in a classic, iconic shoe. I travel from movie set to movie set, and I often live out of a suitcase. And this teaches you to be frugal. Whatever fits in that suitcase, that’s all I can bring.”

skarsjoy.tumblr.com/post/630237931726061568/skarsjoy-updated-partial-interview-and-larger