Bill Skarsgård is known for playing unique roles, like Pennywise in IT and Merkel in Atomic Blonde. He’s now tackling a part that he says is unlike any of his others.
In John Wick: Chapter 4, Skarsgård is playing a still undisclosed character but opened up about the film to Collider in a new interview. Skarsgård says his character is “something different, that’s why I wanted to do it,” before going on to explain in more detail.
“I’ve had it [in my mind] for a very long time that I want to try to be as versatile as I possibly can, whether it is crossing genres or playing these vastly different characters. I actually just finished a horror film, but I feel like the horror genre is something that I’ve done a lot of. I’d like to do comedy, and I’d like to do action. I’d like to do as much as possible. And I think that’s the key to longevity in this business and having a fun career where you can go like, ‘I can do a lot of different things,’ so you don’t end up limited into this box, which happens all the time,” said Skarsgård.
He continued, diving into Hollywood’s casting process. “The industry itself is like, whatever your last big success is, that’s what they think that you are. ‘Oh, he’s great at being freaky monsters,’ then freaky monsters become your type, and you’re like, ‘Wait a minute, I can do a lot more than that.’ So, I’m just trying to do as many different types of roles and projects as I can. As long as there’s something that I find interesting and fun in the character, that’s how I respond to it, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I can do something with this.’ That inspires me. So, basically, it’s as simple as that.”
John Wick: Chapter 4 stars Keanu Reeves as John Wick, Lance Reddick (Fringe) as Charon, Ian McShane as the operator of the New York Continent, and Laurence Fishburne (Black-ish) as The Bowery King. Newcomers to the John Wick franchise include Donnie Yen (Ip Man) as a fellow assassin who “shares his same history and many of the same enemies” as John and Japanese-British pop singer Rina Sawayama as an as-yet-unrevealed female lead, Hiroyuki Sanada (Army of the Dead) as an important character known as Watanabe, Marko Zaror (From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series) in a villain role, Shamier Anderson (Wynonna Earp), Bill Skarsgård (It: Chapter Two) and Scott Adkins (The Bourne Ultimatum).
John Wick: Chapter 4 is currently scheduled for a May 27th, 2022 release.
