Stellan Skarsgård loved embracing his inner bimbo for “Mamma Mia”: 'Look cute and be silly'

Thank you for the music indeed.

Stellan Skarsgård was skeptical at first about signing on to star in Mamma Mia — that is, until he realized he just needed to find his inner dancing queen.

In a recent Vanity Fair interview, the veteran actor, 72, looked back on how ridiculous the initial casting request seemed to him. "It was absurd to ask me to be in a musical," he said. "I can't sing, I can't dance. And then I saw it was also Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth, and they can't sing and dance either, so I felt a little safer there."

Skarsgård, Brosnan, and Firth starred in the 2008 film as the three potential fathers to Amanda Seyfried's Sophie, having all been intimate with Donna (Meryl Streep) in before she got pregnant. The musical is an adaptation of the hit stage show of the same name, which follows Sophie's attempt to find her father as she prepares for her own wedding, all set to the tunes of ABBA.

Once Skarsgård realized that the trio's job was essentially to be eye candy, he was completely on board. "I understood that we were just supposed to be — like in a film that is produced by men and directed by men and men in the leads, you have the bimbo — and we were the bimbos in this female production," he mused. "We didn't have to be anything but look cute and be silly. There's only one thing that was asked of us and that was, 'Have fun.' Because if we don't have fun, it won't be a film."

Still, that doesn't mean he didn't try to improve his singing and dancing skills. "Me and Colin coming to dance lessons, in our slacks and our little Paul Smith shirts and everything, and 60 dancers that are dressed up like dancers are," Skarsgård recalled. "We really tried for a month and a half, trying to dance to 'Voulez-Vous', and we failed.'"

Though they failed at the dancing, they were victors in audiences' hearts. So much so that they came back for a sequel in 2018, and fans are still clamoring for more. Producer Judy Craymer has even said she has an idea for a third film, while Firth, Brosnan, Streep, and Christine Baranski have all expressed a desire to do another movie.

"If we could go back and have the same amount of good fun and be on a Greek island together filming and dining together at night at some wonderful trattoria or taverna, I don't think anybody would give you an argument," Baranski previously told EW.

We can't resist the idea either.

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Related content:

• The cast of Mamma Mia: Where are they now?

• We ranked every musical number in the Mamma Mia movies

• Meryl Streep would 'totally' star in Mamma Mia 3 as a reincarnated Donna: 'I'm up for anything'
  

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