Alexander Skarsgård photographed by Adriana Iris Boatwright at the Savannah Film Festival’s Q&A for The Diary of a Teenage Girl (October 26, 2015, Georgia).
From SavannahNow.com:
Best known for his role as the 1,000-year-old Viking vampire Eric Northman on the HBO series “True Blood,” Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård attended a short Q&A after the screening of his latest film “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” on Monday at the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Museum of Art as part of the Savannah Film Festival.
The indie film debuted earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and had a limited release in August and has received positive reviews. Skarsgård plays 35-year-old Monroe who begins a love affair with his girlfriend’s (played by Kristen Wiig) 15-year-old daughter Minnie Goetze, played by Bel Powley. The storyline follows Minnie on her sexual and artistic awakening and is based on the graphic novel “The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures” by Phoebe Gloeckner. The film is written and directed by Marielle Heller.
Variety’s Malina Saval moderated the Q&A with Skarsgård and made note of the film’s honest depiction of a teenage girl and said, “You don’t get that a lot in cinema.”
Skarsgård agreed.
“I was given the script by a friend who knows Marielle … and she said she’s incredibly passionate about this project. … You want to read it? … I fell in love with it. …The script felt so unique and honest in this portrayal of this young girl…”
Saval asked Skarsgård about how he prepared for the sex scenes with Powley and how they were able to keep the balance of the relationship on-screen from coming across as predatory.
“Bel had never kissed a guy on screen before this let alone have five sex scenes,” he said. “We had two weeks before we started filming, and we could hang out and talk about the scene and talk about the relationship and … find that arc of it to make it interesting because it could have easily become too predatory…
“We were aiming to make it awkward and slightly uncomfortable for the audience … but at the same time there are some real and beautiful moments in their connections with each other.”
Saval also points out that this film has a female director, the source material comes from a woman, and the two main characters are women. She asked Skarsgård why he feels it’s important to get more women in film.
“It’s quite sad and tragic that I have worked with only one female director before Marielle … and it felt really refreshing to see (the story) from a teenage girl’s point of view and to have that directed by a brilliant and really strong female filmmaker who had an important story to tell and I think that’s key… She wanted to tell that story and hopefully people can connect with that story … and hopefully more women will get that opportunity to tell that story because it’s quite interesting.”
While Skarsgård has closed the door on his vampire days at “True Blood,” he’s not short for work these days and discussed his upcoming film, “Tarzan,” which is set to release next year and co-stars Margot Robbie and Christoph Waltz.
Skarsgård said the movie was filmed just north of London and he was nervous because he was told all the filming would take place on a set. Filming in Africa would take place later without the main characters.
“I was worried it would have no sense of the jungle.”
But he said he was relieved when he saw the sets, which featured real trees and rivers as well as African villages. “But there were no animals.”
He said the new film basically picks up where the film “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes” (1984) left off even though the film is not meant to be a sequel.
“It begins in London and (Tarzan) is having tea with the prime minister. He very much fits in and doesn’t want to go back to the jungle but he has to go back. … It’s kind of a reversal of Greystoke.”
Source: Kim Wade for SavannahNow.com (x), Photos: Adriana Iris Boatwright via SavannahNow.com (x)