Alexander Skarsgård, Brit Marling, and Patricia Clarkson Talk about C.E.O. Life at the Premiere of The East
To prepare for his role as a corporation-baiting anarchist in The East, Alexander Skarsgård didn’t ride the rails or join an anarchist collective. “I was already scheduled to film Disconnect andWhat Maisie Knew, two other films, so I basically had to do all my preparation from my trailer on-set here in New York, or in my hotel room, while shooting,” the True Blood star said at a screening on Monday.
Around that time, the Occupy Wall Street protests and Wikileaks incidents arose; both relate to issues raised in the film. “It just felt very timely,” Skarsgård said. “And then the BP oil leak happened a couple of months before that, so it all felt like it was something in the air and a frustration that I definitely can understand.”
“It was kind of amazing, because we wrote the oil-spill jam that opens the film, where these kids break into the East Hampton summer estate of the C.E.O. of an oil company, and they dump oil on his property, and it’s like coming out of his pooland dripping out of the vents onto his bed sheets. And we wrote that, and literally a week later the BP oil spill happened,” said Brit Marling, who co-wrote the script. “And we were like, Holy shit, this is prescient.”
To play the head of an elite private intelligence firm serving big corporations, Patricia Clarkson says she stripped away emotion to the point where she was unaffected. “And that’s what I think happens to those people,” she said. “I have a feeling all those C.E.O.’s, when they go to bed at night, they go to bed as a C.E.O., they wake up as a C.E.O., they make love as a C.E.O. You know, people think they put on all these hats; I think they wear one hat 24/7.
“Like BP,” Clarkson added. “The head of BP, he stood in front of every person in our damn country, and said, ‘Oh, it’s going to be fine.’ Where does that come from? He goes to bed like that; he wakes up like that. And when he takes a shower, nothing comes off.”
Marling, who also stars, had a very practical reason for writing the script, together with director Zal Batmangilij. “I only started writing in order to act,” she told VF Daily. Also, Hollywood is very competitive. “If anybody writes a good part for a girl, there’s dozens of talented girls competing for it, so if you become a writer, you can kind of ensure that you have a job that year,” Marling said, laughing.
One interesting aspect of a female-written script: the gratuitous nude scenes in this film are all of Alexander Skarsgård.
Skarsgård’s scruffy anarchist sports cringe-worthy long hair and facial hair, which he thought was perfect for the militant character. But viewers will be happy to know that—to serve the plot—he eventually ditches the wig and beard and goes back to his handsome self. “I’m glad it wasn’t for the entire film,” Skarsgård admitted at an after-party hosted by Piaget. “Because it was so itchy and uncomfortable and horrible. And so it was kind of a relief once I got rid of it.”
Source: VanityFair.com, Photo credit: characteristicallyexuberant tumblr, Our Edit.
