Alexander Skarsgård is the hottest Swede in Hollywood. Currently he’s in the news because of his first Swedish movie in three years, Johan Kling’s Puss which premieres in August. Situation Stockholm’s Cyril Hellman got the only interview.

Alexander Skarsgård tells us that he’s been working on Puss for a long time. A year and a half ago the director Johan Kling had a break down caused by stress and the work was discontinued for an undecided time.

- It became tricky because I don’t live in Sweden. I had to go back to LA and continue working on True Blood. It became an enormous jig saw puzzle to make it work. But I think I can talk for all the actors when I say that we all were eager to finish Puss and not to leave an unfinished film.
- When we were due to continue working I had just finished season two of True Blood but then I was in the middle of filming the movie Straw Dogs in Shreveport in the deepest of Louisiana. It was frantic, I had an intense schedule and on top of it I had to cut my hair off for the part. I flew from Shreveport via Atlanta, New York to Stockholm to Visby where Puss’s producer met me and we went straight to the studio in Fårösund, where a nervous makeup artist was waiting with a wig I never had tried on before. Luckily enough it fit, and then I had a big cup of coffee and then I was standing in front of the camera smiling. We filmed intensively for three days, and then I flew back to Shreveport. I was of course exhausted during the filming, but the joy of finishing Puss with a very inspired Johan and a wonderful team saved me.

Alexander left Sweden at the age of 30 because he was still mostly getting parts as the high school hunk. Today, after the successes in the USA with the TV series Generation Kill and True Blood different parts are offered to him back home. Will you consider working in Sweden in the future?

- Yea. It was also about the Swedish movie climate in the beginning of the 2000 being boring. Nothing much interesting was done, it was uniform mass productions and I kept getting offered the same type of roles. Now things are different. Ten years ago we were the worst in Scandinavia but today we are proud to be Swedes when we travel the world and meet people in the business. People are impressed with what is happening in Sweden. We have many new, interesting film makers who have something personal to tell. Johan Kling isn’t directly a teenager but he belongs to the new Swedish wave of film makers who have a very unique style and feeling, real auteurs. I was a big fan of Darling, an unbelievably sweet film. For me there was no other choice but to work with Johan. And if you haven’t read Johan’s book Människor helt utan betydelse (Translators translation: Totally insignificant people), get it asap!

Puss is a situation comedy and it takes place in a small theater. Alexander’s brother Gustaf is also in the cast and plays a character totally different from Alex’s, an introvert indie guy. They have no scenes together.

- Gurra and I have no major scenes together, but there are a few scenes were the whole cast is together so we got to hang out a little.”

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