With just weeks to go until one of the year’s most bizarre cinematic offerings, Wicker, hits cinemas, hype is really starting to build around Alexander Skarsgård and Olivia Colman’s new movie.
The twisted fairytale centres around a lonely fisherwoman, who wishes for a husband to be woven for her, only for him to come to life and cause quite the stir in their medieval village.
Critics who’ve seen Wicker ahead of its release have already made a point of referencing its many sexual scenes, with co-director Eleanor Wilson admitting that these took a new lease of life when Alexander and Olivia actually made it to set.
“We always thought of the sex scenes as the comedy of the film, too. They were supposed to be played for laughs, and they are,” Eleanor told The Hollywood Reporter.
“But I think once we actually had Alexander in costume, Olivia and Ita O’Brien, our intimacy coordinator, working together on these scenes – that’s when they did become surprisingly more sexy than we thought they would.”
To portray his Wicker Husband character, Alexander has opened up about donning heavy prosthetics, though Eleanor and collaborator Alex Huston Fischer pointed out that casting a “beautiful” actor was crucial to the storytelling.
“For everything that happens with the villagers, he needed to be very striking,” Eleanor added.
“That was the brief with the workshop – we wanted him to be strikingly beautiful and in the actor’s likeness, which was huge because we really wanted Alexander’s performance to be able to shine through the prosthetic. And just that the prosthetic could move to his facial [expressions].”
Wicker’s creative team preferred to rely on practical effects, with only minimal VFX used in the film, while Alexander’s costume and prosthetics were created using 3D printing.
“[The costume] was real and made by the same artists that worked on Lord of the Rings,” the Swedish actor told Graham Norton earlier this month. “The suit was exquisite, and it took them 18 months to make.”
“I particularly liked the nipples – they had extraordinary craftsmanship, so I kept them,” he enthused, before presenting them to the talk show presenter as a gift.
Wicker hits cinemas on Friday 30 October.
