Sometimes an actor takes a role because it’s too good of an idea to pass up, while in other cases the change of pace is what determines someone like actor Alexander Skarsgård taking a role in a film like director Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong. That very scenario is what lead to the actor taking part in the latest Monster-Verse entry, set to debut early next year.
Alexander Skarsgård admitted as much during a recent interview, as he explained his choice thusly:
I’d done a row of darker, very intense subject matters and darker roles, like The Kill Team, The Aftermath, The Little Drummer Girl, a limited series that I did about the conflict in the Middle East, Hold the Dark, which was a Netflix movie that was also very, very dark, and Big Little Lies, which was about abuse. So, there was a row of extraordinarily interesting projects and subject matters, but I was also ready to play a character with a bit more levity and have a bit more fun in something that was not as dark and intense.
Bleaker roles have been a bit of a specialty for Alexander Skarsgård, and that pattern certainly isn’t going to let up any time soon. Skarsgård proved this to be true when he recently accepted the role of Randall Flagg, the legendary villain at the heart of CBS All Access’ limited series adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand. But even with his villainous credentials continuing to present themselves in his work, Alexander Skarsgård has still given himself some more room to let loose in pre-Godzilla vs. Kong roles.
This summer’s romantic comedy Long Shot saw the former True Blood actor playing a very fictional equivalent of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, which is most certainly different from the roles that he mentioned to Collider above. So just how did Godzilla vs. Kong manage to land Alexander Skarsgård? That too was explained in this interview, as the actor laid out the path to this credit as follows:
I’d met Adam Wingard, the director of Godzilla vs. Kong, before, and I really liked him. And the guys at Legendary – Alex Garcia, Jay Ashenfelter and Mary Parent – are just awesome people and really good collaborators, if you’re gonna do a big action movie. It was a fun character to play. He’s a good guy and a likable guy, which I was quite ready to play after row of dark characters, but he’s also not boring.
This change of pace sounds like a good fit for Alexander Skarsgård, but it sounds even better for Godzilla vs. Kong, as his inclusion may be refreshing enough to boost the box office chances of the next film in Warner Bros’ Monster-Verse. We’ll see soon enough as Godzilla vs. Kong marches into theaters forcefully on March 13, 2020; provided it sticks with its original release date on the 2020 release schedule.
But if you want to see more Alexander Skarsgård without that long of a wait, his latest film, The Kill Team is in theaters and on VOD now.
