Alexander Skarsgård on Tarzan, True Blood , and the roles that shaped him

Alexander Skarsgård has played Vikings and vampires, models and marauders, soldiers in the trenches and sociopathic Succession moguls — even several kinds of royalty, not least of them the King of the Jungle. With the release of his latest project, The Northman, the Swedish-born actor, 45, looks back at the most memorable roles of his 20-plus-year career, including two deathless Northmen more than a decade apart.

Paramount Pictures; HBO; Aiden Monaghan/Focus Features; Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros.; Paul Schiraldi/HBO; Getty Images

<i>Zoolander</i> (2001)

"Everything about it felt very crazy and very glamorous to me," says the actor of his first introduction to a major studio production, in which he played a male model with a taste for orange mocha Frappuccinos and not much sense beneath his frosted tips. "The fact that we shot it driving this Jeep down Broadway [in Manhattan], cutting through traffic, singing the Wham! song.... it was all very surreal. I was barely an actor — I was on vacation in Hollywood when I got the job. It was my first audition. So I couldn't quite believe that two weeks later I was in New York shooting that scene with Ben Stiller. And obviously, the infamous gasoline fight was a lot of fun."

Does he remember what kind of stunt fuel they used in that now-iconic scene, maybe iced tea or Gatorade? "No," he deadpans. "We're all Method actors. So we used real gasoline, obviously."

<i>Generation Kill</i> (2008)

Skarsgård, who served 18 months in the Swedish Armed Forces, has played an American soldier at least three times on screen — including a pivotal early turn in the fact-based HBO miniseries Generation Kill, which he describes as "an attempt to truthfully and accurately portray the first five weeks of the invasion in of Iraq in 2003. We wanted to show it from the point of view of the soldiers, the boots on the ground. David Simon and Ed Burns, who created the show, had done and were still working on The Wire. And if anyone's familiar with their style of filmmaking, it is very authentic and genuine. So when people who experienced that and were out there on deployment say that it felt like an accurate and truthful depiction of what it was like, that means so much."

Still, to land the part he had to overcome one not-small hurdle: Simon wasn't sure if Skarsgård could convincingly pull off an American accent. "There are a couple of sounds that Swedes often get wrong," the actor admits. "'Viking' versus 'Wiking' is one. 'Zombie' versus 'Sombie.' That S-Z sound."

<i>True Blood</i> (2008-2014)

Skarsgård initially tried out for the part of True Blood's main antagonist Bill Compton (which eventually went to Stephen Moyer), before stepping into the more libertine role of Eric Northman in the long-running HBO series. "I don't think Alan Ball, the creator of the show, ever considered me for Bill," he says. "He probably already had Eric in mind. Then, yeah, I just basically had to stay pale for seven years, which is not easy when you shoot and live in Southern California. But anything for the art," he laughs.

The art, famously, also called for a lot of randy undead coitus, though he recalls: "There were no intimacy coordinators around at the time. We knew each other so well, Anna Paquin, [who played telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse] and myself. And again, we spent seven years together shooting that show.... Having had that long experience of working together, we really established that level of trust quite early on."

<i>Melancholia</i> (2011)

Skarsgård's actor father, Stellan (Dune, Chernobyl) had made several formative films with Danish auteur Lars von Trier, including Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves, when the opportunity came to appear onscreen together for the first time in von Trier's surreal apocalyptic drama Melancholia — in which Alexander played the unlucky groom to Kirsten Dunst's clinically depressed bride at the end of the world, and Stellan (spoiler) his dad.

"I actually worked with Lars for literally three seconds on the eve of the millennium. He was shooting a crazy project in Copenhagen live over New Year's Eve," " he remembers. "I had a tiny little part, it was literally a couple of seconds. But when he called about [Melancholia], I said yes before reading the script or asking what the role was because I was such a fan and so excited to be on set with him that I just jumped and said '100% whatever, whatever it is.'"

<i>The Diary of a Teenage Girl</i> (2015)

"Mari is now obviously a very successful director," Skarsgård says of writer-director Marielle Heller, who went on to helm 2018's Melissa McCarthy scammer biopic Can You Ever Forgive Me? and the 2019 Tom Hanks vehicle A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. "But at the time, The Diary of a Teenage Girl was her first film. And not a small budget film, but a tiny, tiny budget film. It was basically Mari, her husband, Jorma [Taccone, of the Lonely Island], producing it, and friends and family in San Francisco helping out. That project would not have reached me through the traditional channels of agents or managers. My neighbor in L.A. at the time was a friend of Mari's and basically said, 'Hey, my friend wrote a script. I think it's pretty cool. And she wants you to play this character. Would you want to read it?'" Of course, I said yes. And I read it and I absolutely loved it."

There's no small likability risk in playing a man who seduces the 15-year-old daughter (Bel Powley) of his bohemian girlfriend (Kristen Wiig). Still, he says, "I loved Mari and her take on it and what she was trying to do....[And] to shoot a movie set in San Francisco in the '70s, it was a real treat. I got to have a lot of fun together with the costume designer and the hair and makeup department. It was absolutely wonderful."

<i>The Legend of Tarzan</i> (2016)

Though it mostly missed with critics, The Leegend of Tarzan was still a formative experience — and not only for its green-screen apes and eight-pack abs.

Director David Yates, who has four Harry Potter films and three Fantastic Beasts on his resumé, "was, at the time, definitely way more experienced in working with CGI than I was," Skarsgård recalls. "And I learned a lot from that experience of working with him. He's an incredible filmmaker and just a very sweet, gentle soul. It was very challenging because not only was it technically sometimes quite difficult, but... John or Tarzan obviously has these emotional connections to these animals, and to shoot action sequences was not that difficult, but to shoot an emotional moment with a tennis ball as your costar was not always easy."

<i>Big Little Lies</i> (2018)

"It felt like such a honest and nuanced portrayal and depiction of an abusive relationship," Skarsgård says of taking on his Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning role as the charming but volatile husband of Nicole Kidman's Carmel homemaker Celeste in the HBO limited series Big Little Lies. "It wasn't lazy in the way it was portrayed. It wasn't cliché. It really avoided the stereotypes of the dude wearing a wife beater on the couch with a beer and watching baseball and screaming at his wife. It showed the nuance of it and gave her, Celeste in this case, more respect because you understood why she would've fallen in love with him in the first place. Again, he's not a cartoon. He's not a caricature. There's complexity there. And he's a great dad. They have a really strong connection. They have a great love life, sex life. There's a passion there. Obviously tremendous darkness as well, but it was important to portray and capture the complexity of that relationship."

<i>The Northman</i> (2022)

Going from Kidman's onscreen lover to her son in Robert Eggers' Viking epic was "a very different dynamic... but I was just thrilled to be reunited," says Skarsgård. "Working with Nicole on Big Little Lies was one of the absolute highlights of my career. So when the first draft of The Northman came in, I felt — and everyone agreed — that Nicole would be the perfect Queen Gudrún. And yeah. It's another very dark twisted, weird, dysfunctional relationship. But to kind of explore that with someone not only of that caliber, but who's also a friend and someone you've gone through that intense experience of doing Big Little Lies together meant a lot, because it's someone I really trusted deeply and felt comfortable being completely open and vulnerable with."

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