The script — and actress Olivia Colman’s attachment to the project – was the ultimate draw for star Alexander Skarsgård to undergo quite a transformation into the straw-plaited husband of Ursula Wills’ short story-based film Wicker from Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson.
“From the first page, I was just immersed in this fantasy, in this fable, in this saga, and I thought it was so funny and romantic and sexy and irreverent with a lot of interesting social commentary on patriarchy and the institution of marriage and jealousy in society and that hierarchy that we that we have in our society and how hard it is to break that,” Skarsgård said Saturday during the panel for the film at Deadline Contenders Film Los Angeles event. “But I thought these guys had done it so beautifully, where it never felt too preachy or annoying. ‘Oh, this is the message of the movie.’ It was so subtly inserted into the story. At no point was it not entertaining and sweet and funny and crazy.”
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The Pillion star admitted that there were moments he cracked up laughing with Colman, who ultimately was “anti-fuss,” according to co-director Fischer.
“They surgically removed those [moments] from the edit,” he said. “I’m also wearing a mask. You have no idea what’s happening underneath.”
The wicker-suit getup was “horrible” to wear, Skarsgård joked.
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“We wanted a bit of a journey and evolution for the character, so that stepping into the suit for the first time helped with the finding the physicality of it. We wanted a certain rigidity and stiffness to the character and also the quality of his voice was something we talked a lot about,” Skarsgård said. “Basically, as he’s coming into his own, he’s he gets a bit more —I wouldn’t say nimble, but [we] dialed down the rigidity, and there’s a bit more fluency to the cadence to the way he speaks.”
Check back Monday for the full video of the panel, which also included writer-directors Fischer and Wilson and makeup-effects artist and character designer Joe Dunckley.
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