It’s a funny thing that one can potentially be a fan of Bill Skarsgård without actually knowing what he looks like. After all, two of his most famous roles – Pennywise in the IT franchise and Count Orlok in Nosferatu – have him featured in heavy makeup and prosthetics that make him utterly unrecognizable. He has delivered remarkable performances when his appearance is wholly transformed… but how does his preparation compare for a film like Gun Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire, which sees him undergo a much more subtle change in his look?
I got the answer to that question earlier this week, and to my surprise, the answer is “not very much.” I had the pleasure of interviewing Skarsgård during a virtual press day for his new movie (which arrives in theaters this weekend), and I asked him how his work changes when he’s not going to extremes in his appearance. He explained that while he plays a real person in Dead Man’s Wire instead of a transdimensional entity that takes the form of a clown, his personal method is very much a reflection of how he first brought Pennywise to life nearly a decade ago. Said the actor,
I was 26 when we did the first IT movie, so it is fair to say that I was pretty young and that was pretty early in my career. And then the progression of that – Pennywise or Orlok or whatever I've done, these big prosthetic creatures and monsters, and I really enjoy it. What I enjoy the most is absolutely not the application of the prosthetics, which is tedious, but I enjoy the sort of freedom of creating something, playing, finding a voice and recording yourself, listening back and using nuance. The whole abstract creative process of playing creatures is really fun. And then I think it's colored how I play other characters now.
In the case of Dead Man’s Wire, Bill Skarsgård stars in the film as Tony Kiritsis, who made headlines in 1977 when he took his mortgage broker hostage, believing that there was a plan in place to screw him out of property he owned. In the movie as in real life, the whole event becomes a massive spectacle, with Tony earning support from members of the public who are likewise sick of being exploited and screwed over in an unfair system.
Skarsgård sports a different haircut and a mustache as Tony, and he is outfitted in period-appropriate garb – which is obviously not the same kind of transformation as turning into Pennywise. Still, he told me that he still took a matching approach with a focus on finding the right voice for the performance. He continued,
With this one, Tony was a real guy, so there was a lot of footage and a lot of recordings of his voice and accent and how he sounded and cadence and rhythm of how he spoke. And some of the dialogue is verbatim, things that were recorded of the real guy saying, so you could listen back.
For the actor, understanding the way a character speaks is understanding who they are and where they are from, and he made it clear that he gets a kick out of that part of the process. He concluded,
I bring that into every character. The character should sound like he's from that place that he's from, and it's an aspect of performing I think is fun – finding a voice of a character, whether it is a creature or a real man like Tony. And of course, yeah, there was the mustache and the haircut (laugh). There was stuff which I also think is fun, and not all characters are like that. Some, like the one I'm doing now, is pretty, you know, closer to myself; I think certainly look-wise. But Tony was definitely a sort of a particular guy that I got the chance to portray.
(He’s likely referencing writer/director Andrew Niccol’s Lords Of War, which sees him starring opposite Nicolas Cage and began production last month).
The method is certainly working out, as Bill Skarsgård continues to earn great acclaim for his work – very much including Dead Man’s Wire. Co-starring Dacre Montgomery, Al Pacino, Cary Elwes, Myha’la and Colman Domingo, the movie had premieres last fall at both the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, and it is now playing in theaters everywhere.
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