Stellan Skarsgård is among the rare group of actors to have a filmography as diverse as his. From being the beloved Marvel character Dr. Erik Selvig to being Luthen Rael in the Star Wars Universe or playing Orlando Bloom’s father in the Pirates of the Caribbean, the head of the Skarsgård clan has played numerous fan-favorite roles.
Yet the majority of the audience rather remembers him for his role as Bill Anderson in Meryl Streep’s iconic musical film, Mamma Mia! In a recent interview, the actor revealed how he and his fellow male co-stars were demoted to being eye candy in the female-led production.
Stellan Skarsgård Gets Candid About Merly Streep’s Mamma Mia!
Meryl Streep‘s Mamma Mia! might have been blasted by the critics, but it turned out to be an amazing success. Made against a meager budget of just $52 million, the movie went on to gross $694 million worldwide and broke numerous records (via Box Office Mojo). No less than a cult classic today, the movie’s ‘iconic-ness’ is not only because of the presence of Streep or its unique story but also because of its three male leads.
Starring Stellan Skarsgård, Pierce Brosnan, and Colin Firth in the lead, the movie remains elite for the way it brought three of the most amazing actors of the generation together. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Skarsgård revealed how absurd it was to cast them,
“It was absurd to ask me to be in a musical. I can’t sing, I can’t dance. And then I saw it was also Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth, and they can’t sing and dance either. So I felt a little safer there.”
Starring in a musical with no knack for dancing or singing, one would wonder what these three gentlemen were to do. Well, Skarsgård senior had a brilliant epiphany for that as well, one that he realized while on set, that they were purely for the aesthetic purpose of the film — to be the eye candy in a female-led production and film.
Stellan Skarsgård States He Was Like A Bimbo In Mamma Mia!
While starring in a musical film, there is usually a prerequisite for actors to have somewhat of an ability for dancing and singing. But the three male leads of Mamma Mia!, unfortunately, had none despite trying for a month to find that hidden talent within themselves, as Stellan Skarsgård revealed in his interview with Vanity Fair.
“Me and Colin coming to dance lessons, blokes in our slacks and our little Paul Smith shirts, and everything, and everybody, the 60 dancers that are dressed up, like dancers are… we really tried for a month and a half, trying to dance to ‘Voulez-Vous,’ and we failed.”
And so he hilariously deduced that they were meant to serve the aesthetics of the movie and play the male equivalent of bimbos in a female-led production (not that anyone’s complaining!),
“Then I understood that we were just supposed to be like in film that is produced by men and directed by men and with men in the leads, you have ‘the bimbo’. And we were the bimbo. It was a female production. We didn’t have to be anything but look cute and be silly. Only one thing was asked of us, and that was, have fun, because if we don’t have fun, it won’t be a film.”
Hence, that is how the masterpiece called Mamma Mia! was made, and Skarsgård, Brosnan, and Firth could not have been more perfect or any less of the green flags that they were!
Mamma Mia! can be streamed on Netflix.
