Stellan Skarsgård Says His 'Mamma Mia' Casting Seemed 'Absurd' Until He Realized the Men 'Were the Bimbo' | Video

03/03/2024 02:36

Stellan Skarsgård has enjoyed an incredible career with roles in both “Dune” and “Dune: Part Two,” “Good Will Hunting,” “Chernobyl” — as well as 2008’s “Mamma Mia!” film adaptation and the 2018 follow-up “Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again.” The actor admitted to Vanity Fair that he found the idea of being cast in a musical “absurd,” because he doesn’t sing or dance. But then he had an epiphany: the men in the film were there simply to be “the bimbo.”

“Then I saw it was also Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth, and they can’t sing or dance, either. So I felt a little safer there,” he continued. “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,” he added. “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.”

That doesn’t mean the trio didn’t have to work. “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.”

“Mamma Mia” grossed $394.7 million after its release in 2008, and its follow-up had brought in $100 million by its fourth weekend in theaters in 2018.

Meryl Streep played Donna Sheridan in both films. As a young woman, Sheridan found herself pregnant but unsure who the baby’s father was. In the sequel, that baby is all grown up and ready to dig into her mother’s past. Streep told Good Housekeeping that her agent thought she’d turn down the role immediately, but instead the actress “was like, ‘Say yes!'”

Both Streep and Amanda Seyfried (who plays Sheridan’s daughter, Sophie) have said they would happily return for a third film. In 2023, Streep told Vogue, “I’m up for anything. I’ll have to schedule a knee scoping before we film, but if there’s an idea that excites me, I’m totally there.”

We’re only one presidential term away from what would be the original’s 20th anniversary, and mark 10 years since the last film, just as it did from the original.

But in an interview with TheWrap, Seyfried explained why she’s not sure a third film is possible. “Nobody is saying no, but nobody is saying yes either. The powers that be probably can't afford us to be honest. I hate to say it, because would I do ‘Mamma Mia 3’ for free — of course I would — but that's not the business we're in.”

“What's fair is fair, and I feel like a third film is going to come down to something stupid like whether or not Universal wants to pay the money,” she added.

Watch the interview with Stellan Skarsgård in the video above.

The post Stellan Skarsgård Says His 'Mamma Mia' Casting Seemed 'Absurd' Until He Realized the Men 'Were the Bimbo' | Video appeared first on TheWrap.