Alexander Skarsgård says playing a good guy in Wicker scared him. Discussing the role at Sundance in January, he said, “To play this good-hearted, good natured, sweet, morally righteous character was scary to me. I’m not really comfortable doing that.” His guiding question became: “What would Tom Hanks do?”
Skarsgård’s romantic breakthrough in Wicker comes with a promise to repair a roof. Playing the husband of Olivia Colman’s Fisherwoman, he says, “I’m going to fix the roof,” during a sex scene. She responds with what co-writer and co-director Alex Huston Fischer called “a screaming orgasm.”
For fellow writer-director Eleanor Wilson, the appeal comes down to initiative: “people are noticing that the best thing about the Wicker Husband is that he did something without being asked.”
The R-rated romantic fantasy comedy opened in U.S. theaters on October 23. Colman’s character is an outsider who’s mocked by her community and commissions a husband from a basket weaver, played by Peter Dinklage. Fischer and Wilson adapted the film from Ursula Wills-Jones’s short story The Wicker Husband.
Skarsgård said the story’s emotional pull brought him aboard: “I was really moved by the tenderness, how sweet it was.” The physical demands included a bed-breaking sex scene he described as “like a rollercoaster.” Colman’s assessment: “it’s less awkward when it’s funny.”