Alexander Skarsgård on the Contradictions of Masculinity in Pillion
Not every actor would jump at the chance to star in a movie about a gay BDSM relationship, in which an older sex-god-type dom takes in a naive younger guy, assigns him to the role of sub (along with a litany of daily chores), and does whatever he wants to him sexually. But when Alexander Skarsgård read the script for Pillion, his only thought was: “Yes.”
“I just wanted this movie to exist,” he says from his home in Stockholm. “I just wanted this to be out there.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Pillion premiered last year at Cannes, where it won an award for its screenplay by Harry Lighton, who adapted Adam Mars-Jones’ 2020 novel Box Hill: A Story of Low Self-Esteem for his feature directorial debut. It finally hits U.S. theaters Feb. 6, following near-unanimous praise by critics and a press tour that featured Skarsgård donning plenty of leather for photo opps.
It’s been a busy time for the actor. He attended Sundance in January with two premieres—a mockumentary with Charli XCX and a romantic fantasy in which he plays a wicker man opposite Olivia Colman—and has been publicly supporting his father Stellan’s awards campaign for Sentimental Value. Pillion also arrives during a big moment for gay representation onscreen, driven by mass enthusiasm for Heated Rivalry, a romance that does not shy away from explicit depictions of gay sex, much to the delight of an audience that includes viewers of all genders and sexualities. The question Pillion asks is whether mainstream viewers are ready for a gay romance that is decidedly less vanilla.
In their early conversations, Lighton impressed Skarsgård despite his relative inexperience. In particular, Skarsgård liked that the director had spent time with the U.K.-based Gay Biker Motorcycle Club (GBMCC) as background for his portrayal of the subculture. And he was taken with the “sweet and tender” tone of the dom-com’s screenplay.
The admiration was mutual. Lighton, who, over Zoom, describes Skarsgård as “frighteningly bright,” notes that, when Skarsgård signed on, the film did not have funding. “Once he came on board, the financing came relatively quickly,” says Lighton, who had optimistically included the actor’s image in a pitch for prospective financiers. He adds that the presence of Harry Melling (of the Harry Potter franchise), whose character Colin is the sub to Skarsgård’s dom, was also instrumental.
Lighton was not surprised that Skarsgård was interested. “He certainly has liked roles that have sat outside the pigeonholing of a leading man,” says the director. His recent choices “seemed to be a marriage of naughtiness and high-quality acting.” If anything surprised him, it was that Skarsgård signed on to appear in a small, British film. (Pillion, named after the passenger’s seat on a motorcycle, was largely shot in the London suburb of Bromley.) Skarsgård has, after all, starred in some of the biggest TV hits of the past decade (Big Little Lies, Succession), with his most recent role in Apple’s Murderbot series, alongside big-budget studio fare like The Legend of Tarzan and Godzilla vs. Kong.
His role as the generally leather-clad biker Ray calls for a stoicism that’s borderline sadistic at times to Colin, who grovels in his thrall. Ray is terse, flatly delivering one-sentence commands in and out of the bedroom. Part of the tension comes from how little Colin knows of Ray and his motivation, and at least biographically speaking, not much more is revealed about him. Skarsgård developed a backstory for Ray, then revisited it as he deepened his dynamic with Melling. “It kind of thrilled me, because I was like, ‘Oh, this makes it feel that it’s not set in stone. It’s alive, and it changes,’” he says. “I was still learning about the character, even on the last day of shooting.”
Ray is, in many ways, masculinity embodied, though Skarsgård relished the smattering of “contradictory” aspects to the character. He reads Karl Ove Knausgård in “slightly dorky” reading glasses and sports an upper-torso tattoo that’s a list of three names, “Ellen, Wendy, Rosie”: women talk-show hosts of yesteryear. “If I’m going to take on roles that are more archetypically masculine, then it’s important to instill some friction into the character. Otherwise, it’s just not interesting to me,” he says. For example, the friction he relished within his role in the 2022 film The Northman, came from playing a Viking warrior who is “still a 10-year-old boy who watched his father get killed.” Of these qualities so many of his characters share, Skarsgård says, “It’s interesting to play someone who desperately tries to project masculinity and wants to reek of adrenaline, non-stop. Why do you feel the necessity to project that? That insecurity can be quite fun to explore.”
In conversation, Skarsgård doesn’t appear to be trying nearly as hard as his character. I reached him at home in Sweden, where he bought an apartment three blocks from where he grew up. This is where he “recharges his batteries” between acting jobs. He is thoughtful and verbose. He projects a down-to-earth ease, even when admitting, “I don’t think I’m very grounded at all,” in response to a question about being cast as an objectively hot character (Pillion’s official synopsis refers to Ray as “impossibly handsome”). With that kind of role, “my narcissistic ego is being stroked.” He says he avoids reviews because, as a “narcissistic actor,” he knows any negative words will stick with him, or worse: “They’re gonna expose the fact that I’m a fraud.” When I ask whether he prefers Alexander or Alex, as a publicist referred to him, he says either is fine, then corrects himself with a grin: “Lord Skarsgård is perfect.”
Ease has also defined Skarsgård’s relationship with playing queer characters. He’s done it repeatedly—his True Blood character, Eric Northman (no relation to the 2022 film); his role in the 2010 North Pole mockumentary Beyond the Pole; his appearance in Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” video. (OK, so that’s not technically a queer role, but it’s also not not a queer role). Pillion punctuates this list with an exclamation point. “My godfather—my uncle—is gay,” he explains. “From when I was a toddler, having a gay uncle wasn’t any different from having a straight uncle. I’ve always been quite immersed in gay culture. If I go out, I tend to go to gay clubs. A lot of my friends are in that world. It’s something I’ve always been drawn to and felt comfortable in.” But then, don’t guys at the club hit on him all the time? “That’s why I go,” he says, laughing. “Whenever I need a little ego boost.”
The streets have been buzzing about Skarsgård’s sexuality, especially recently. At the Zurich Film Festival in October, he said his sexual background was irrelevant to his role in Pillion: “I mean, I do have a kid [with actor Tuva Novotny], but what I’ve done in the past, who I’ve been with, men, women… To me, what was important was that this felt like an opportunity to tell a story about a subculture I hadn’t seen portrayed this way – with so much authenticity.” In a recent Variety feature, he walked back these words which some had interpreted as his coming out as bisexual. Then, during a November episode of The Graham Norton Show, actor Miriam Margolyes turned to him and asked, “You’re not gay, are you?” With a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye, Skarsgård answered, “No—not really.” When I point out the coyness of that response, Skarsgård chuckles and says, “We all remember the college years.”
He doesn’t mind the speculation, but adds, “I think it would be beneficial if people focused less on a laundry list of who you’ve slept with, and rather focus on the creative output.” Still, keeping sexuality and acting separate is a bit complicated with a movie as sexually explicit as Pillion. Skarsgård says he never felt intimidated by the sex scenes, which include public encounters and a wrestling match that ends in penetration. “I just felt excitement,” he explains. “I thought they were so well constructed and integral to the storytelling. So at no point did I feel uncomfortable.” He and Melling worked with intimacy coordinator Robbie Taylor-Hunt, while members of the GBMCC and kink communities, who appear on screen as Ray’s biker crew, were effectively on-set consultants, who weighed in on positioning as well as aids used in the sex scenes. Lighton describes Skarsgård’s approach to those scenes as “incredibly relaxed but also engaged.”
Skarsgård says that a scene in which Ray and Colin kiss was especially intense. “You’re face to face and it can feel more intimate than just humping away, for sure, the physical closeness and feeling each other’s breath.” Skarsgård says he is “quite comfortable” appearing nude on screen—he’s done it before, perhaps most notoriously in a much-circulated full-frontal True Blood scene—but he declines to confirm whether prosthetics were used in the new film. “We try not to talk about how the sausage was made,” he says with a grin.
The more he discusses his character, the more it becomes clear that Skarsgård is attached to Ray. Though his sadism seems to extend beyond a typical dom/sub dynamic—he criticizes Colin’s cooking, while doing virtually none of his own, and he attempts to bait his partner into jealousy by engaging in sex with another member of their crew in front of Colin—the actor defends his actions. “He is very up front with Colin from the very beginning [about] what this situation is,” he says. “He’s clear on what he wants out of a relationship, which I find quite refreshing, because most people have no clue what they want out of a relationship. The cards are on the table and the door is always unlocked. Colin can walk out. He’s not captured. He’s not held hostage. He’s there voluntarily, and he’s a grown man.”
Unlike icy Ray, Skarsgård is effusive. “I love that this movie exists,” he gushes. “At these screenings, it’s been such a wonderful mix of people, and that really warms my heart. It should be a fun ride, a fun movie to watch. But there is an opportunity to tell something with authenticity, without excluding everyone that’s not part of the community. That is the goal here.”