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Alexander Skarsgard as Ray, Harry Melling as Colin in 'Pillion'. Credit: A24/YouTube 

Alexander Skarsgård talks Pillion, that viral Pedro Pascal Cannes moment, and bringing humor to onscreen BDSM

Skarsgård sits down with his director, Harry Lighton, to discuss the film and its fearless depiction of dom/sub biker sex.

Nick Romano for Entertainment Weekly, October 4, 2025. (x)

Alexander Skarsgård arrives in the dim-lit lounge of Manhattan’s Bowery Hotel in a matching blue-grey henley and drawstring sweatpants. He’s having a rough go of it. The 6-foot-4 Murderbot and The Northman star sinks into a deep-cushioned leather chair by the fireplace as he relays his trials with food poisoning from the past 24 hours. 

“It was yesterday morning,” he tells Harry Lighton, his director of queer BDSM romance Pillion. “I had breakfast at the hotel. I was just in Zurich at the film festival, and then I was about to board a plane to New York. I felt a little queasy. Then I got on the plane and it was eight hours just on the bathroom floor, the whole trip. Cheek to the floor. This is too much information, but I couldn’t get it up. I was dry heaving. There was a line of people outside the bathroom. I had to go out so they could come in and then get back in there. It was so rough, so f---ing bad.”

Premiere season promotional photo for Saturday Night Live, 1975

Nicknamed the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players," the original cast of Saturday Night Live ignited a comedy revolution with their mix of irreverent characters and satirical impressions of political figures and pop culture icons.

Pictured left to right, top to bottom: Chevy Chase, Michael O'Donoghue, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin, and Garrett Morris.

Eddie Redmayne says Day of the Jackal scripts 'discombobulated' him: 'It threw me off course'

Redmayne and his costar and co-executive producer Lashana Lynch preview Peacock's upcoming thriller adaptation.

By Ashley Boucher September 23, 2024.

Eddie Redmayne had an immediate connection to his latest project — even if it "discombobulated" him at times

The Oscar winner plays the titular assassin in Peacock's upcoming thriller Day of the Jackal, based on Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel of the same name. The mysterious killer for hire was first brought to life on screen in a 1973 movie adaptation starring Edward Fox as the Jackal, who is hired to take out French President Charles de Gaulle while a police detective unravels his true identity.

"It was one of those movies that my family would watch again and again and again,” Redmayne, who also serves as an executive producer, tells Entertainment Weekly. “And so I thought, wow, this is bold, that they're going to try and reimagine this. And what I read, I just found completely thrilling and compelling, and at each moment it threw me off course and it kind of discombobulated me, but I couldn't stop turning the pages... I hadn't done television for a few years, but the idea of getting to spend a proper amount of time with this enigma felt like great material to mine.” 

The scripts that made Redmayne's head swirl update the plot for modern times — and provide more insight into who the Jackal really is, making the 10-episode series "a completely different piece" that has "been reconceived and contemporized with a new target."

The series begins with the Jackal pulling off a high-profile kill from a distance that should have been impossible. The remarkable shot draws the attention of a client whose offer, risky as it may be, could mean retirement for the hit man. But, unfortunately for the Jackal, it also draws the attention of British Intelligence, turning the hunter into the hunted. 

“One of the things that appealed to me about doing this series was, in Edward Fox's version — it's two hours, that movie — Edward is so filled with charisma… and kind of wit and elegance, but you never get to learn anything about it,” Redmayne says. “I wanted to see if through this 10-hour thing, we could get to know someone, but always be second guessing.”

Entertainment Weekly

Eddie Redmayne says Day of the Jackal scripts 'discombobulated' him: 'It threw me off course'

Redmayne and his costar and co-executive producer Lashana Lynch preview Peacock's upcoming thriller adaptation.

Eddie Redmayne had an immediate connection to his latest project — even if it "discombobulated" him at times.

The Oscar winner plays the titular assassin in Peacock's upcoming thriller Day of the Jackal, based on Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel of the same name. The mysterious killer for hire was first brought to life on screen in a 1973 movie adaptation starring Edward Fox as the Jackal, who is hired to take out French President Charles de Gaulle while a police detective unravels his true identity.

“It was one of those movies that my family would watch again and again and again,” Redmayne, who also serves as an executive producer, tells Entertainment Weekly. “And so I thought, wow, this is bold, that they're going to try and reimagine this. And what I read, I just found completely thrilling and compelling, and at each moment it threw me off course and it kind of discombobulated me, but I couldn't stop turning the pages... I hadn't done television for a few years, but the idea of getting to spend a proper amount of time with this enigma felt like great material to mine.” 

Eddie Redmayne is a master of disguise in The Day of the Jackal first-look teaser trailer

The scripts that made Redmayne's head swirl update the plot for modern times — and provide more insight into who the Jackal really is, making the 10-episode series "a completely different piece" that has "been reconceived and contemporized with a new target."

The series begins with the Jackal pulling off a high-profile kill from a distance that should have been impossible. The remarkable shot draws the attention of a client whose offer, risky as it may be, could mean retirement for the hit man. But, unfortunately for the Jackal, it also draws the attention of British Intelligence, turning the hunter into the hunted. 

“One of the things that appealed to me about doing this series was, in Edward Fox's version — it's two hours, that movie — Edward is so filled with charisma… and kind of wit and elegance, but you never get to learn anything about it,” Redmayne says. “I wanted to see if through this 10-hour thing, we could get to know someone, but always be second guessing.”

Indeed, the Jackal keeps not only the audience, but those around him constantly on their toes — particularly MI6 arms specialist Bianca Pullman, played by No Time to Die star Lashana Lynch. Bianca becomes obsessed with finding out the Jackal’s identity, to the detriment of her career and family. “She is so determined to be this strange version of human superhero — and I say strange version because it's all the twisted elements of things that you would hope that a human wouldn't do when doing good for the world,” Lynch, a co-executive producer, tells EW, adding that, “The way that she goes about her work means that there has to be a fall off and a sacrifice somewhere. And unfortunately for her, that sacrifice and the racking of the brain is worth it.” 

What both Bianca and the Jackal put themselves through — and the destruction they leave — as they traverse Europe to carry out their missions will surely have viewers questioning their judgment. “People working for good and people working for bad can have such similarities,” Lynch says. “At the end of the day, they both just have jobs to do.”

Those jobs just might cost them everything.

The Day of the Jackal premieres Nov. 7 on Peacock.

When it came to casting someone to play Wonka in his youth, King counts himself lucky to have landed Chalamet. "I really don't think there are many people who could play this role at all," he says. "Those are mighty big shoes to fill." The Dune actor, he recalls, was able to find "the manic and mischievous and mysterious energy you'd expect from Willy Wonka," but also the heart. "He's such a brilliant actor at expressing really deep emotions within the context of a family movie. He's just extraordinary as well at singing and dancing. He's got the voice of an angel and the toes of... I don't know what toes. I can't wait for people to see it. I think it's gonna blow people away."

Click the link below for the full interview.

After almost a week of initial auditions, the producers narrowed it down to about seven different actors for each of the four roles. And while the actors were using demos of "Wake Up" and "Bright" during auditions, it wasn't guaranteed that the songs would actually make it into the series. But when Ortega saw Reyes, Gillespie, Joyner, and Shada auditioning, he saw something special in both them and the songs. "They made it their own," he says. "Every time we put this group together, I was feeling something that I wasn't feeling in the rest of them."

During the "mix and match" process of the auditions, Ortega and the other producers would put together different groupings to see how all the actors performed with each other. "We were matched up with so many different people during that process, but every time it was me, Owen, Jer, and Madison, we felt it from the very first moment," Gillespie says. "There was just an instant chemistry," Shada adds. "The first time I was with Charlie and Owen, there was this brotherly bickering vibe that was perfect. And then when we had Maddie, it just sent it over the top." Finally, Ortega couldn't deny the magic he was seeing with this foursome. "When we were all finished with every single actor, I turned to Netflix and my partners, and I said, 'Can I show you what I believe is our band?'" he says. "I went into the back and I dismissed everyone and I said, 'I'm going to look at one more audition, everyone else is free to go,' and I called up Madison, Jeremy, Charlie, and Owen. And they came out onto the stage and they huddled in a band circle. And it gave me goosebumps."

The four actors had no idea they already were Julie and the Phantoms. But they acted like it anyways. "They decided they were going to be this band, and I was feeling it," Ortega says. "And all of a sudden Madison came out of the circle and she walked up to the microphone and she said, 'Hello everybody, I'm Julie and we're Julie and the Phantoms,' and the band kicked into the song, and every camera in the room went up into the air like we were at a real concert. And I turned around and every Netflix executive and all of my creative partners, everyone in the room had their camera up and I was like, 'We are filming our future right here.' That was the moment that I knew, and that there wasn't going to be a debate, we found it, and it was clear.”

2018: S1E22 - The Last Crash of the Sunchaser!

This endlessly smart revival has a rapturous zigzag sensibility. The best surprise? Turning its funniest (and most devastating) adventure into a bottle episode set inside a half-crashed plane full of secrets. —Darren Franich

2019: S2E7 - What Ever Happened to Della Duck?!

This whole time, DuckTales had been hiding its best character off screen. But this episode finally showed us what Huey, Dewey, and Louie’s mom has been doing on the moon for the past 10 years. It’s heartbreaking to watch Della (voiced by Paget Brewster) reckon with how her love of adventuring has kept her away from her family—and her lullaby for her sons might break you—but the hope of reunion is powerful too. —Christian Holub

2020: S3E2 - Quack Pack!

In its first two seasons, the new DuckTales thoroughly surpassed its predecessor in humor and cleverness. With its third (and unfortunately final) season, DuckTales set its sights on the other Disney Afternoon cartoons as well—even though they all belonged to different genres. The Huey, Dewey, and Louie of DuckTales are death-defying adventurers, but the Quack Pack version of the characters just act like a normal sitcom family. This episode reconciled the two by using another element of Disney’s Duck mythology—Gene the Genie (Jaleel White) from the 1990 DuckTales film Treasure of the Lost Lamp. When Donald Duck wishes his family was normal, they get sent to a sitcom dimension; only Huey (Danny Pudi) senses something is wrong, and the resulting journey to convince his family evokes the best episodes of The Twilight Zone. The fact that Pudi also played iconic fourth-wall breaker Abed on Community is just one facet of this episode’s playful dance with meta absurdity. —Christian Holub

2020: S3E12 - Let's Get Dangerous!