Alexander Skarsgård Reveals Role as a Sexy Wicker Man ‘Intimidated’ Him at Sundance

Alexander Skarsgård can do anything on screen. The Swedish actor, son of Stellan and brother to Bill, has portrayed everything from a thousand-year-old vampire on True Blood to a tech mogul in Succession, to the dominant half of an BDSM relationship in the new A24 film Pillion. But there’s one challenge that Skarsgård has yet to take on. And it’s a challenge posed by his latest movie, the romantic, fairy-tale like fantasy of Wicker.

At a panel that followed Wicker’s world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, which Den of Geek contributors and Horrored Girl hosts Geri Courtney-Austein and Harley Bronwyn attended, Skarsgård admitted that the story scared him.

“I was quite intimidated when I read it,” Skarsgård said of his role as the Wicker Husband in the film, which is exactly as it’s described: a husband made out of pliably weaved wicker. Although, the reasons it scared him might surprise: “I tend to be drawn towards more conflicted characters with more internal turmoil and darkness, and to play this good-hearted, good-natured, sweet, morally righteous character was scary to me. I’m not really comfortable doing that.”

The admission got a chuckle out of Skarsgård’s co-stars, Olivia Colman and Peter Dinklage. Written and directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, Wicker draws from Ursula Wills-Jones’ 2008 short story, “The Wicker Husband,” which very much involves the magical creation of a made-to-order spouse of high quality weaving. In the film, Colman plays an outcast in a fishing village who commissions the lover to be created by a basket maker (Dinklage) in order to escape the judgment of her neighbors. Meanwhile Elizabeth Debicki and Richard E. Grant play said neighbors, who are baffled by Colman’s Fisherwoman and the devoted husband who suddenly appears beside her.

Skarsgård is hardly the only person forced to stretch their acting muscles for Wicker. “The Wicker Husband” has already been turned into a musical with music and lyrics by Darren Clark and a book by Rhys Jennings. The stage production has been mounted across the U.S. and the UK, often with impressive effects to bring the titular spouse to life.

That aspect isn’t what worries Skarsgård. The actor has certainly been part of big productions in the past, even beyond the false fangs and fake blood he used in True Blood. In addition to acting besides CGI creations of the King of the Monsters and the Eighth Wonder of the World for 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, Skarsgård was in lavish productions such as Brandon Cronenberg’s stomach-churning Infinity Pool and Robert Eggers’ Viking epic The Northman. More recently, Skarsgård got a warm-up for Wicker by portraying a different inanimate object that gains sentience. On the Apple TV series Murderbot, Skarsgård portrays the titular android, who begins to develop a sense of self that puts him in conflict with the creators who designed him as a security apparatus.

Based on his comments at Sundance, the Wicker Husband may have a similar personal journey as Murderbot, but starts in a very different place than someone called, well, Murderbot. Wicker appealed to him because “it wasn’t heavy-handed or didactic or preachy. It was so funny and sweet and obviously a very interesting character to play,” he revealed. “It was a stretch, as an actor,” he added.

Those last words, Skarsgård delivered with a big smile, proving that his practice playing the Wicker Husband is paying off already. And indeed, it will be an interesting departure from a blood-soaked Viking (The Northman), a vain author full of self-delusion (Infinity Pool), or a BDSM dom (Pillion).

Wicker premiered Jan. 24, 2026, at the Sundance Film Festival.