Alexander Skarsgard, Nicholas Braun on lampooning Werner Herzog in the Documentary Now! premiere

Years ago, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, John Mulaney opened up about his longtime fascination with Burden of Dreams. Les Blank's 1982 documentary chronicles the bizarre and chaotic production of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, following the German auteur as he faces off against his mercurial star Klaus Kinski and attempts to transport a real-life steamship over a Peruvian mountain. It's a harrowing and frankly bonkers portrait of the creative process, and at the time, Mulaney called the documentary "one thing I never get tired of." "It's tense and fascinating because the film crew is in a terrible predicament, yet it's fundamentally hilarious because it's a predicament that they put themselves in," he said in 2020. "No one asked them to do this."

Now, Mulaney is bringing that obsession to the screen. The comedian wrote "Soldier of Illusion," the two-part premiere of Documentary Now! season 4 (or, as the show labels it, season 53). Still hosted by Helen Mirren, this off-kilter IFC show has built a cult following for its elaborate documentary parodies, lampooning everything from Grey Gardens to Original Cast Album: Company.

"Soldier of Illusion" is no exception, following an acclaimed German filmmaker named Rainer Wolz (played by Alexander Skarsgard) as he attempts to simultaneously film two projects. One is a hard-hitting documentary about the remote people living in the fictional Russian Ular mountains. The other, shot on the same location, is a campy 1980s sitcom called Bachelor Nanny.

The result is an absurd hour of television, following the intense Rainer as he clashes with his egomaniacal star (August Diehl) and attempts to transport a live studio audience from suburban California to the remote mountains of Russia. Skarsgard's Succession costar Nicholas Braun also appears as a washed-up sitcom actor named Kevin Butterman, who's just happy to have a gig, even if it means living and working in the middle of nowhere.

Before Documentary Now! premieres Oct. 19, EW caught up with Skarsgard and Braun to break down their playful send-up of Burden of Dreams — and the perils of filming in a Welsh mine.

Will Robson-Scott/Broadway Video/IFC/AMC Alexander Skarsgard in 'Documentary Now!'

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you guys get involved in this? What was the pitch even like?

NICHOLAS BRAUN: I got an email from John Mulaney, and I was like, "Oh, that's an interesting email to get in the old inbox today." He reached out and was like, "I've written this thing, and we'd love for you to join us, and it's in Wales." He attached [the script], and I thought it was one of the most amazing things I'd ever read. I was like, this is just an incredible piece of writing. I didn't know all of Werner's documentaries, but I knew a few, and all the nods to stuff were really impressive. And I love s---ing on the sitcom world a little bit. Not that they're not good! But they're a nice target sometimes. I've done 'em myself.

ALEXANDER SKARSGARD: I also got an email from John Mulaney. I had seen a bunch of the episodes from previous seasons. I was a huge fan of John Mulaney and also the whole gang behind the show: Fred Armisen, Seth Meyers, Bill Hader, and freaking Lorne Michaels. I mean, we're talking about some comedy legends there. So, when I got the email, I was already interested, and then reading it, I was just dying laughing. It was so well-written and such a crazy concept.

I love Werner Herzog, and I love Burden of Dreams, the documentary that this is loosely based on. He's so intense and so eccentric. I love the way he talks about nature and the wilderness, how brutal it is. He says stuff like, [adopts German accent] "Birds don't sing. They screech in pain." His whole world view was so dark and twisted, and I know what he went through shooting Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God and how insane those projects were. So on the show, my character is loosely — loosely — based on Werner Herzog.

BRAUN: Super loosely. Almost nothing to do with Werner.

SKARSGARD: [Laughs] Nope. But I love the juxtaposition that it's him shooting a very Werner Herzog-inspired documentary about a nomadic people in eastern Russia, but simultaneously, he's also doing a CBS three-camera sitcom called Bachelor Nanny.

You've got a pretty good Werner Herzog impersonation. How did you want to approach this parody version of him?

SKARSGARD: There was an opportunity to play around with different looks because we have flashbacks to the '60s where he met the Klaus Kinski-inspired character, flashbacks of them doing very, very pretentious and esoteric theater back in the day. Then you have stuff from the '70s or '80s, and then the modern day where he's old. So it was an opportunity to age about 50 years over the span of two weeks.

I tried to capture a bit of Werner's physicality, which was a lot of fun. And also the intensity. When they were out in the jungle, when they were trying to pull a massive ship up and down a mountain, people got injured. It was just chaos. But he did it because he felt it was so important for the art to push himself. On our show, we have a pool table that they need to hoist up and down a mountain for the set of Bachelor Nanny — because the bachelor needs a pool table in his bachelor pad. [Laughs]

So I wanted to do something silly — I mean, they're trying to transport a pool table for the set of a CBS sitcom in the Ular Mountains — but play it with the sincerity and intensity of how Werner would've felt about it. But it's a pool table.

Will Robson-Scott/Broadway Video/IFC/AMC Nicholas Braun in 'Documentary Now!'

Nick, you play Kevin Butterman, a former child star turned sitcom actor. What excited you about playing in that world?

BRAUN: His name. That was the main thing.

SKARSGARD: Also, Nick, kudos the backstory you created for Mr. Butterman.

BRAUN: Thank you. I'm not sure where it came from, but the thought was that Mr. Butterman was a child star on some family show like The Brady Bunch or something. He's been out of work for a while, and as it happens, occasionally those kids end up in a bit of a rut. I think he ends up in a weird place in his life. It sounds like he's going to porno theaters a lot and sitting there in the dark with strangers. I just thought maybe he'd been wounded by some producers touch back in the day, so this was a chance to recover without any creepy producers and go possibly be his own creep. So, that didn't make it in much, which is probably good because it's a pretty sick backstory.

SKARSGARD: But it really informed your performance, Nick.

BRAUN: It did. I was trying to bring a lot of trauma into the role and into every scene. Every line.

SKARSGARD: Watching it, you can see it in your eyes behind that beautiful smile. There's some sadness there.

Bachelor Nanny is such a delightfully stupid premise. Did you have fun immersing yourselves in that goofy '80s sitcom world?

SKARSGARD: Oh, yeah. I mean, I grew up in the '80s, so I grew up watching Alf and all the other classics.

BRAUN: I spent two years in the '80s alive, so I didn't experience the '80s too much. But I will say, I loved the mullet they gave me, which felt quite period. I don't do a lot of wigs, so I was a little hesitant. But once I saw the hair along the neck, paired with some of the clothes, I was like, this is cool. This is a good look.

SKARSGARD: Another aspect that people don't do much anymore is to shoot sitcoms in front of a live audience. They needed a really good audience to get great laughs when Kevin Butterman landed those zingers, and the best test audience is in Woodland Hills, California. This is an important project, Bachelor Nanny, and they had a lot invested in this. So, they would fly out the audience from Woodland Hills, California, to the planes of eastern Russia. Then, they would have to trek over the mountains in order to sit in the audience, outdoors, and watch this. You've got to have a really good audience that really appreciates the timing of Butterman's jokes.

BRAUN: And also English-speaking. Otherwise, the jokes might not land because of the language barrier there.

SKARSGARD: Unfortunately, some of them didn't make it. But all in all, I would say it was worth it for the laughs we got.

BRAUN: Yeah, it was surprising that all those elderly people could make it down the mountain without falling down.

SKARSGARD: A lot of them never made it back up, unfortunately. May they rest in peace. But still, it's arguably the greatest test audience ever. And I think it shows when you see the final result. Bachelor Nanny, that's a good sitcom.

Will Robson-Scott/Broadway Video/IFC/AMC Alexander Skarsgard as the elder Rainer Wolz in 'Documentary Now!'

What was your most memorable day on set?

SKARSGARD: We shot in Wales in what I believe is the largest slate mine in the world. Apparently, it's like 90 miles of just tunnel. That was quite an incredible experience. It was visually stunning, but also a little bit terrifying because they basically said, "If you turn the wrong corner when you try to get out of here, we're never going to find you. Because of the acoustics of the tunnels, we're never going to hear you scream. Once you turn the wrong corner, it's pitch black. You can't find your way out, and you will starve to death in there. Okay, now go to set and have fun and shoot all day!" [Laughs] So that was quite an intense experience to try to make jokes and be funny, knowing that I'm 15 feet away from certain death.

BRAUN: Alex would go off at lunch and find tunnels. That was tough for production because they'd have to chase him down. They'd keep a P.A. with him at all times because they knew he wanted to explore, and that's a huge insurance liability.

SKARSGARD: I was still in character. I didn't want to see human faces. I needed to be alone. You've worked with me a bunch of times, Nick. You know I don't like human faces when I work.

BRAUN: On Succession, I heard last season that he made Kieran [Culkin] put a bag over his face while he was doing a scene with him.

SKARSGARD: I got a bit overboard with Brian Cox because he made eye contact once. I ripped into him. But it's my process. Please respect it.

BRAUN: It's all about the character work. It was amazing to watch what he was doing — from inside the paper bag.

SKARSGARD: Not to toot my own horn here, but I think when people watch the show, it'll pay off. They realize, "Okay, he might have been slightly tricky to work with. He got half the crew fired. He didn't allow anyone to make eye contact. But my God, that's an amazing performance." [Laughs]

BRAUN: But seriously, I did have a moment where we were doing the first scene, where Butterman enters the set, and Bachelor Bryan is there. It was raining. We're in a slate mine. We're on a fake set with yurts with smoke coming out of them. And there are literally puddles on the sitcom set. It was pretty crazy. They did a really good job of making it feel like a sitcom set. Because like I said, I've done it. I'm a pro. Alex could see that, too, that I've got a lot of experience.

SKARSGARD: It definitely wasn't your first rodeo.

BRAUN: Nor my second or third rodeo. [Laughs] But that was pretty amazing, doing acting in the pouring rain, pretending you're in this terrible sitcom doing brutally bad jokes. It was pretty special. I don't know if I'll ever be doing that again.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Documentary Now! returns Oct. 19 on IFC and AMC+.

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