Alexander Skarsgård played a vampire in True Blood, a human monster in Big Little Lies, and a robot in Murderbot. But his role as a sentient basket husband in Wicker is shaping up to be his most beloved yet. With the film hitting theaters this month, you might also see Skarsgård starring in a campaign for Valentino Vendetta, a new perfume and cologne, alongside Dakota Johnson. Fans have been clamoring for over a decade to see the two on screen together, and the result, while not a full-length movie, is as sultry and delightful as you’d expect.
Ahead, we caught up with the actor to learn why he loves Vendetta’s scent, what it was like finally working with Johnson, and his one wish for Wicker fans everywhere.
Tell me about shooting this campaign with Dakota Johnson. This was your first time working together with her, but you've known each other for a decade. How was it working with her?
We met in New York around 2015 or 2016, through lots of mutual friends. I adore Dakota, and we've kind of circled a couple of projects together, but nothing has ever really come to fruition. But I've always wanted to work with her, so I was really excited when this came up. And it was also kind of great that we knew each other because it's a very short story we're telling in a nonlinear way, but in a very short amount of time, and it's nonverbal. So to already come into it knowing each other, the chemistry was already there in a way. There was no getting-to-know-each-other phase. We could just like jump in and get started.
What do you love about the Vendetta scent and the message that it sends?
I was a bit surprised. I loved and was surprised by the freshness. When you first smell it, it has ginger tones that are kind of intense, and then it evolves into something a bit more earthy, kind of cinnamony. It hits you, then evolves, which I think is really appealing to me. I love how bold it is. It's like a statement. It's not super subtle. It makes a statement when someone walks into the room wearing it, and I think that's interesting.
Which one of your past characters best aligns with the Vendetta scent?
The character who would need it the most is probably Amleth, a character I played in a movie called The Northman, because he was a Viking berserker who hadn't taken a shower in three weeks. So I would have given him a good spray of Vendetta. But in terms of personality, maybe Eric Northman from True Blood, because there's a mischievous quality to it, and a self-confidence to it, and an assertiveness that I think kind of aligns with that character.
I loved that show. Let's get into Wicker for a second. Did you read the short story before or after reading the script?
I read it after, not before. It depends on the project, on talking to the writers of the screenplay, and on how much it has departed from the original story. So in this case, I felt like I wanted to focus on Alex's and Eleanor's version of it, and then when we wrapped it, because I was curious to read it, I read it after we ran.
What did you think of it?
It's very, very great—it's great. It's phenomenal. Obviously, the same reaction I had when I read the script. It was so sweet and funny and sexy and said a lot about our society, but without being didactic or preachy. It was done with a very light touch, which I thought kind of spoke to my kind of aesthetic of how to tell a story in a very kind of irreverent way.
Did the wicker suit that you were wearing have a scent?
Yep, smelled of wicker! Because it's actually made out of wicker. The suit was made by Wētā Workshop in New Zealand, the company that made all the characters for The Lord of the Rings. It is, you know, the best in the world, and it is very old-school. It's all practical. They wanted to do it for real, so there are two artists. So there was almost no CGI. In a couple of shots, they had to clean up stuff, and the sun reflects through my wicker arm. So that was obviously superimposed, but everything else was practical. Everything down to, like, my eyelashes and my lips were prosthetics. So it was just an extraordinary suit, and it did smell like wicker.
Did it stay with you? I imagine as you're filming, and once you take that off at the end of the day, the scent lingers…
Yeah, it did. It was quite intense because it was glued to my face. During the lunch break, it wasn't like I could take it off for an hour and get a little bit of a break. It was pretty intense, and we shot it over the summer, so it was incredibly hot when you have something glued to your face. But they, Joe and Sarah from Wētā, who made it and who applied it every day, were very, very sweet and considerate. And they also made me a little bib for my wicker beard, so I could, like, put that down, and hair clips for my mustache to help me eat as well. So it was an all-hands-on-deck approach to it. An absolutely extraordinary experience.
What do you hope people take away from the film?
That if you can't find love, make it.