EverythingBillSkarsgård

How does Dead Man’s Wire reflect on society's fascination with danger, crime, and spectacle?

Bill Skarsgård: Thematically it is commenting on sensationalising news and danger and the excitement of following something live as it is unfolding. This was before OJ Simpson, before all of that. It was the 1970s the world looked quite different at least when it comes to the media and how things are covered. It was before 24/7 news channels.

I think we are always going to be drawn towards something that is sensational and I think it's easier for us to sensationalise danger and fear. The media does it, politicians do it. There’s something about us as human beings that were drawn towards spectacle.

I think it is a is a way bigger thing than just what happens in the movie, but the movie is obviously a high-stakes situation and it's dangerous and people are going to tune in. It's a comment on that especially with the live airing the press conference at the end with a guy having a loaded shotgun wired to another man's neck. Potentially people are tuning in secretly hoping that it would go off.

How did you get a feeling for the period? Are there any films you watched that helped you?

Bill Skarsgård: I think the late 1960s and 1970s era films contain my favorite films ever, like they're all in there in that decade. It wasn't so much that I had to go and revisit them as they are my favorite films, I think I'm very familiar with most of them. What was serendipitous is that I was watching Elaine May’s film Mikey and Nicky (1976), and I hadn't worked for a while. I was just kind of like “What do I want to do?” and I hadn't seen May’s film. While I was watching it, I felt, “Okay, whatever this is, this is what I want to do.” I wanted to do something that is so loose and if you're following two guys (Peter Falk and John Cassavetes) basically on a journey in 24 hours and there's a lot at stake. It's just a fantastic film.

I haven't done the kind the Cassavetes style of just like loose and improvised and long takes where the cameras just there capturing it all. A week later the script for Dead Man’s Wire came to me. I'm reading it. It’s in the 1970s it's with a master like Gus Van Sant. The film really came at the right time for me.

I’ve always been drawn to those types of films. I think Dog Day Afternoon for sure and any sort of Sidney Lumet film. Network was to me, “Okay this movie came out four months before the real events happened and I could picture Tony Kiritsis going and seeing this in the theater and thinking, “I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!” Network, which is one of my favorite films, became sort of spirit guide for Tony.

I just wanted to go further into something you just said there about Cassavetes and Elaine May and is that sort of reactive and naturalistic acting on onset.

Did you find you had that with Dacre Montgomery as Richard specifically because you are on screen with him for most of the time.

Bill Skarsgård: I didn't know Dacre Montgomery before, but we got along really well right off the bat. He’s very eccentric, he's very opinionated, and he's quite obsessive just like myself. I think we vibe with our creative expressions. We had a few couple of days of rehearsals with Gus Van Sant, just the three of us in a room talking through the roles of the characters and the script. We rehearsed some of the scenes and blocked a few of them. In terms of how we move, actually a lot of the time Dacre would move as Dick in a way I as Tony didn't want him to move, so that became the dance: don't go there, you should go here you, should stop. What Dacre was doing really fed into my performance.

Then the way we shot it was a lot of handheld cameras and Gus creates this setting and then he just lets us explore it. and you find a way through it and improvise and it's very organic. It’s the way I like to work. Whatever your scene partner is doing you counteract it or react to it, or you follow it. Whatever Dacre would do would as Richard when he would resist more. The more aggressive I got and that’s fed into the scene. It was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed working with him.

I think that you know the script was great, Austin Kolodney did a great job, and a lot of the dialogue is verbatim what Tony said. It’s interesting to be able to listen to the real guy saying the lines that you're actually going to say. I've never had that experience before I but I have played real people before so that was quite interesting.

There’s so much dialogue and Tony is yelling, he's angry. That there was a rhythm to it in the script was very important for me. You don't write dialogue the way he speaks 'cause he's kind of jumps around. We know what happened, for example when he was calling 911 and saying that the kidnapping was happening. It’s kind of bizarre so you have to find the rhythm that was structured in it.

Gus was very much sort of like just exploring, he was much more just kind of creating a setting and atmosphere was like “Whatever you guys do I'll capture it.” The way he shoots the film which is all handheld. A lot of the times they would go on for a physical 12-minute take and the cameras are there, but you completely lose yourself in it.

I think it's part of Gus’ style as well he has that in him. The sort of documentarian film he's done it before. Elephant (2003) was like a 12-page script, and he showed up and just created the whole movie that loose way. I really wanted it, and I was terrified. I said I didn’t know if I'm going to know the character well enough to feel come to just ad lib and improvise freely. Tony was a great character and was so defined and it was very clear kind of the energy of what he was that like that improvising around it came very naturally.

The actor, known and appreciated for his transformation skills, plays Robin Hood's inseparable sidekick. We asked him about his experience on set and how he approached his character, drawing comparisons to his past experiences with Pennywise and the vampire Orlock. However, we weren't able to get him to reveal his highly secretive acting technique.

What prompted you to participate in this project?

«First of all because it was written by Michael Sarnoski, whose Pig I loved. As l read, I tried to understand the tone he would use in directing it. Michael is talented and he wrote a truly fantastic script. It's funny, intelligent, unusual, and as a project, it was clear that it would raise a lot of issues. Which is exactly what I look for as an actor. A character I'd never played before, in a film that felt like an early medieval fairy tale with a dark, gothic, and violent atmosphere. I knew I'd have a stimulating challenge ahead of me in creating Little John, and I knew I'd have to work hard, understand and create my character. The same goes for the others.

They all accepted immediately after the reading of the script, which never happens, because first you have to check who the other actors are and other factors.

Instead, for Robin Hood, we all immediately said yes.

What can you tell us about the film?

«The story is set in Celtic lands, circa 1247 AD. Robin Hood is an elderly hermit wandering the ravaged lands, haunted by his past and consumed by loneliness.

He awaits the end that should have come long ago. But then I, Little John, an old companion of his, arrive.

A sweet and amoral tale of pillaging and murder, which drags him into one last adventure, where he is seriously injured.

When he awakens, he finds himself in a remote monastery where Sister Brigid introduces him to this new community, including a leper and a traumatized little girl. Here he has plenty of time to... discover who he really is. It's not a new Robin Hood, but just a different take on the story, as if this weren't the hero the whole world has come to know. In the film, we try to discover nothing other than the man behind the myth.

Was there anything that particularly surprised you?

«When you think of medieval battles, you think of knights in shining armor galloping on horseback, but more often than not it was simply peasants beating each other to death while immersed or immobilized in the mud.

What type is your Little John?

«He hasn't seen Robin for about ten years, he has assumed a different identity and calls himself Edward. He is married, has a daughter and has taken over a farm to try and lead a peasant life, hiding from everyone, in a sort of exile. But someone discovers his identity, figures out who he is, and... they capture his family and hold them hostage. When we meet Little John, it's because he turned to Robin for help. As the story progresses, we learn more and more about him, including the fact that Robin took him in when he was just a boy.

Marlon Brando once said that it's not the size of a role that matters, but how big you make it, leaving your mark. In your case, we always expect wonders with your characters, whether it's Pennywise, Eric Draven, or Count Orlok. How do you prepare? And what about Little John?

«Each character is different and requires different preparation. I don't know if there's something they have in common, perhaps a thread of my creativity that I apply to them. It has to do with a technique of mine that I don't intend to reveal to anyone, though. [laughs] For Little John, I had to develop a language that I don't normally possess, an older English, the Northern dialect that Michael wanted all of us actors in the film to speak. I worked with dialect coach Brendan Gunn. I had to understand how my character spoke to practice and perfect, above all, the voice and accent. Then I wanted to make him believable, and give him a visual aspect, through the costumes, the shaved head, the unkempt beard, the scars. After all, he's a man who's had a much harder life than me.

While for the vampire in Nosferatu and Pennywise in It?

«Pennywise was a much more experimental character; in the first film, neither Andy Muschietti nor I knew exactly what we wanted to achieve, so we tried a lot of different things, and the character emerged from that process. With Nosferatu, Eggers had a very, very specific, meticulously detailed script, which even described how the character would breathe, the sound of his voice, and so on. It was more about trying to be precise and create something that was in line with his vision. It was very different, but in the end, you prepare and do whatever it takes to find the voice of a character, his cadence, tone, accent, and so on. You also try to understand the character's psychology as much as possible, but then, when you play him, the goal is not to think about any of that and just let the character come to life. To exist."

The film was shot entirely in Ireland. How did you find it?

«Ireland is beautiful, I loved it. We were in Northern Ireland. Our base was outside Belfast, and every day we had to travel about an hour and a half. The locations that interested my character were immersed in beautiful landscapes, on top of hills, with panoramic views of nature.

The country is beautiful, the people are fantastic. The only shame is that all my scenes were outdoors, and we were in Northern Ireland, in the middle of winter. So the weather was windy, cold, wet, and muddy. But that was also the beauty of it! •

—When I saw the film, I was very surprised by your performance, your interpretation, but I think you never choose quiet films lately. Here you're always in action, very expressive, and very tense. What attracts you to a project like this?

—Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I was thinking about that too. And I think, "But maybe I'd like to, maybe I should do something quiet and very subtle, passive, you know," but no, this certainly wasn't it. He's a very frenetic man, with a lot of initiative, and he's the one who sets the whole film in motion. And his behavior and his way of being dictate everything that happens in the film. You know, he's the kidnapper. And yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. I don't know if I particularly like it, I don't know. It's hard for me to define what, I mean, it's not like I'm consciously looking for these kinds of roles or anything. It's just that they come to you and you approach them, and then you find that this opportunity presented itself suddenly. I love Gus Van Sant, and that alone was a reason to do it, and also the character was incredible, so dynamic and so complex, and funny, strange, and volatile. It's like so many things were happening that I was so excited to do it, so, yeah, I can't really pinpoint what motivates me, you know, but it's definitely things. And it also scares me a lot. I wasn't sure if I could do it; it had a lot of dialogue, and in a way, it's very region-specific. It's like an Indianapolis, Midwestern, '70s story. And so it was, it was kind of like: the character is so different from my own experience, will I be able to portray him believably? And all that, but those things, like when I'm excited and scared at the same time, that's where I want to be. So maybe the new challenge is to do something where I don't do anything at all.

—Or just being silent, simply resting in the scene. You have some connections with our country. Obviously, the Muschietti brothers, but you also participated in the remake of Four by Four. What connects you to Argentina?

"Four by Four is a great film. And we remade it with the title 'Locked Up.' I've never been to Argentina. I really want to go. I'm very close to Andy Muschietti and his sister Barbara thanks to the It franchise and the films. I consider them part of my family. So I should have visited them a long time ago. Because I want to visit them and get to know Argentina through them. I'm really looking forward to it."

—Well, we're waiting for you here.