ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD HAS ALWAYS BEEN DRAWN TOWARDS ANARCHY: DISRUPTIVE CHARACTERS WHO TURN WORLDS UPSIDE DOWN. NOW, AS HE PLAYS A ROGUE ANDROID IN MURDERBOT, WE MEET HIM TO DISCOVER WHAT PUSHES HIS BUTTONS

WORDS ALEX GODFREY

Alexander Skarsgård, photographed exclusively for Empire in London on 12 March 2025.

RACHELL SMITH

“IS THERE BLOOD IN MY HAIR?” asked Alexander Skarsgård’s Eric Northman, having just killed, dismembered and feasted upon some unlucky soul in HBO’s vampire saga True Blood. For many, the show (2008-2014, RIP) was their first exposure to Skarsgård, who was starting as he meant to go on: anarchic, provocative, and unafraid to play characters with an unhealthy moral compass.

True Blood wasn’t quite the start. The son of Stellan Skarsgård, he acted in a few things as a child in Sweden before jacking it in, then appeared in 2001’s Zoolander, playing a model, Meekus, who gets blown up in a petrol station. After spending a few years in the Hollywood wilderness, Skarsgård finally broke through as Brad ‘Iceman’ Colbert in HBO’s US Marine mini-series Generation Kill (2008); True Blood began airing mere weeks later, and he was off to the races, going on to play dubious gentlemen in the likes of David E. Kelley’s Big Little Lies (physically abusive husband Perry), Robert Eggers’ The Northman ( Viking on a revengemission to hell —or, at least, Valhalla), and Brandon Cronenberg ’s Infinity Pool (holidaying author who accidentally kills someone, escaping jail by having a clone of himself get stabbed to death, precipitating a series of clones that each get mentally and brutally pummelled —worst holiday ever).

Now, Skarsgård takes the lead in Chris and Paul Weitz’s TV comedy-drama Murderbot, in which his privately snarky android finds itself free of corporate enslavement but can’t be bothered to do much about it. Photographing the actor last month in London, Empire then sat down with him to find out where all this mischief comes from…

A lot of your characters — certainly in True Blood , The Diary Of ATeenage Girl , Big Little Lies , The Northman , Succession —stir things up. They’re provocative. They push at things.

Yeah, some intentionally and some unintentionally. Some characters can be quite naive and childish and plain, but then either transform or are thrown into a situation that they can’t handle, and then it spirals into madness and they try to navigate that. It’s not something that I’ve set out to find in projects that I choose, but subconsciously, it’s probably true that I’m drawn to characters that, like you said, stir things up a bit.

Yes — even if they’re not aware of it, or if it’s not voluntary, they are disruptors. And I get the sense that that appeals to you.