Alex interviewed Bill for Interview Magazine:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BU9ytfoA8HI/?taken-by=interviewmag
BILL SKARSGÅRD By ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD
Photography CRAIG MCDEAN Published 06/05/17
Of the eight Skarsgård siblings, four of them—Valter, Bill, Gustaf and Alexander—are professional actors, each blessed with the good looks and distinctly rakish swagger of their father, Stellan. So the odds of 26-year-old Bill finding his footing in the industry weren’t exactly stacked against him. More unexpected is the path he’s chosen: neither through the mainstream (such as Alexander, a leading man since his star turn on HBO’s True Blood) nor through auteur-driven projects (such as Stellan, who has appeared in six films by the Danish provocateur Lars von Trier), but rather through a series of unexpected, résumé-confounding detours. Take his biggest American role to date, as Pennywise, the demonic child-eating clown, in the upcoming remake of It, out thisSeptember. As the blood-curdling creature originally played by Tim Curry in the 1990 miniseries of the same name, Skarsgård spends the entire film hidden beneath layers of garish and grotesque makeup—a daring choice for any young actor with matinee idol features.
But Skarsgård has been in the business long enough to know what he’s doing. He spent much of his youth traveling the world with his father, from film set to film set, and his first role came at the age of 9, as the younger brother to Alexander’s character in the Swedish thriller White Water Fury (2000). After being cast in a handful of roles, both big and small, back home—including an award-winning turn as a young man with Asperger’s syndrome in Simple Simon (2010)—his first major appearance on Stateside screens was in the Netflix fantasy series Hemlock Grove. This July, he will begin his play for international stardom alongside Charlize Theron and James McAvoy in Atomic Blonde, a high-octane spy thriller set in a simmering East Berlin. After that, he’ll appear in Assassination Nation, alongside cool-kids Hari Nef and Suki Waterhouse.
But first: breakfast. Over a meal at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, Skarsgård submits to some words of wisdom—and a little gentle bullying—from his older brother Alexander.
ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD: Did you take out the trash this morning?
BILL SKARSGÅRD: No. Why?
ALEXANDER: Well, as your older brother, I think I should make sure you do that. Routines, or lack thereof, are a pretty good way to get to know someone. So what have you done today? What time did you wake up?
BILL: You were at my house last night.
ALEXANDER: But I tapped out early, because I’m a responsible journalist.
BILL: But being the gracious host that I am, I had to entertain my houseguests. People left around 1 a.m. and I went to bed, so it wasn’t super-late by my standards. I woke up around 10. I had a cup of coffee; that’s the first thing I do in the morning.
ALEXANDER: How do you take it?
BILL: Black.
ALEXANDER: Like your soul?
BILL: Like my soul. [laughs] And then I’ve been doing some really uneventful things. I worked on an audition that I have tomorrow and answered some e-mails, and now I’m here for this interview.
ALEXANDER: I suddenly feel like maybe it was a mistake, as a journalist, to fraternize the night before with the person I’m going to interview.
BILL: Everything that happened last night was on the record—is that what you’re saying? Did you take notes?
ALEXANDER: It was officially off the record, but as a serious journalist, I feel like maybe I shouldn’t have done that.
BILL: Well, that’s on you.
ALEXANDER: It is on me. But let’s move on. You said 10 a.m. is not particularly late for you. It sounds pretty late to me. It’s a Tuesday—****, I even got that wrong. It’s a Monday.
BILL: Between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. is usually when I get up. I’ve always been a night person. There’s a sense of virtue attached to getting up in the morning and doing things and starting the day, and I always felt bad for not being that person. But as I’ve gotten a bit older, now I’m completely okay with it. That’s just who I am.
ALEXANDER: Because you feel like you get a lot of **** done at night when other people are sleeping?
BILL: Yeah, or I just don’t like mornings. The day feels way too long for me.
ALEXANDER: Do you also feel that life is too long? Do you wish that life were a bit shorter?
BILL: Just the day.
ALEXANDER: What would be ideal for you, a four-hour day? [laughs]
BILL: Stockholm is a good place for it, in the winter.
ALEXANDER: What do you miss about Sweden, other than friends and family and all that? Is there anything specific that you miss when you’re abroad?
BILL: I miss being in my home country; here, I’m always a foreigner. America is, of course, built of people who are not from here. But going home, even just landing at Arlanda, the Stockholm airport, I think, “This is where I’m from. These people are my people.”
ALEXANDER: Does it make you even more proud of Sweden because you have that distance?
BILL: It’s not about being proud of Sweden; it’s just a sense of belonging. Even if you’ve lived in a place for a long time, those first formative years are going to be a part of you forever, and it’s something you can’t replace.
ALEXANDER: Why don’t you have a home?
BILL: I think it’s a commitment issue for me. I have a hard time committing to stuff.
ALEXANDER: What’s wrong with us? I’m also homeless. Maybe it’s a fear of missing out. Like, if I commit to one city and get a place there, then maybe there is something else out there. But wouldn’t it be nice to have somewhere where you can at least drop your bag and unpack?
BILL: 100 percent. I’ve been living like this for the past five or six years, so I’m looking for an apartment in Stockholm. Just like a two-bedroom thing. Every apartment I look at is so nice and tastefully renovated.
ALEXANDER: Great furniture and beautifully done, but they all look identical. I think that kind of sums up the Swedish mentality in a way. It’s all beautiful midcentury modern furniture, and they all have that Moroccan rug. You won’t find originality. Swedes are very safe that way. So, what’s your first memory from a film set other than with Dad when you were a kid?
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