Alexander Skarsgård is addressing comments he made about his sexuality while promoting his latest BDSM film, Pillion.
Skarsgård, 49, was asked on the 2025 Zurich Film Festival what he brought from his own life to the upcoming film, which follows timid Colin (Henry Melling) as he meets confident biker Ray (Skarsgård), who initiates him right into a submissive relationship.
“I mean, I do have a child, but what I’ve done previously, who I’ve been with, men, women…,” Skarsgård explained on the time. “To me, what was vital was that this felt like a possibility to inform a story a few subculture I hadn’t seen portrayed this manner — with a lot authenticity.”
Some fans took the actor’s explanation as a confirmation of his assumed bisexuality. Nonetheless, when asked in an interview with Variety published on Tuesday, January 20, Skarsgård clarified that he was merely attempting to de-center his own personal experience when explaining the premise of the film.
“Oh. That it resonated with my past? It was definitely not an intended statement,” the Big Little Lies star told the outlet when asked about his previous comments. “I don’t know what I used to be talking about. Perhaps it has to do with — there’s a number of focus sometimes on me as an actor. Perhaps it was attempting to shift the main focus more to the story and these characters. And the importance of telling the story like this.”
This isn’t the primary time Skarsgård has made headlines for his remarks concerning the film. The True Blood alum previously opened up about why he was “excited” to shoot Pillion’s graphic sex scenes along with his costar Melling, noting that the movie strays from the everyday construct of what intimate on screen moments often seem like.
“I used to be excited because [the sex scenes] are interesting [in Pillion],” he told The Hollywood Reporter in September 2025. “And that’s quite rare. Most sex scenes on screen are quite boring and sanitized.”
Skarsgård added that the sex scenes don’t shrink back from the “awkwardness” of many intimate situations, which he appreciated.
“We actually leaned into the authenticity, the awkwardness of sex, which I assumed was really funny and sweet,” he explained. “It’s quite rare to have a sex scene that really has an emotional journey. There’s stuff happening, and it’s like erotic and sexy, but then it’s awkward, after which it’s funny. I feel [director Harry Lighton] instilled a number of trust in us. We just felt very comfortable. There was no trepidation entering into. Quite the alternative. We were excited to leap in.”
When asked whether any sex scenes were deemed too explicit for Pillion’s final cut, Skarsgård said with amusing, “Oh yeah, we’ve got some extra scenes we’ve saved for the Christmas Special edition, a triple X version for the youngsters.”
Pillion relies on writer Adam Mars-Jones’ 2020 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize-winning novel Box Hill. The book was also shortlisted by the Royal Society of Literature as among the best British novels of 2021.
Alexander Skarsgård revealed that he gets “quite excited” to shoot “graphic” sex scenes. The Big Little Lies alum, 49, and costar Harry Melling have multiple intimate scenes of their critically-acclaimed romantic drama Pillion, which chronicles a BDSM relationship between a biker gang leader (Skarsgård) and a shy young man (Melling) who lives along with his terminally […]
In his months promoting the film, Skarsgård has been praised for his method-like fashion selections, often showing up on red carpets wearing bondage-themed attire. While chatting with Variety on Monday, he admitted clothes are usually not his usual forte, but something he’s been fiddling with more recently.
“I never buy clothes. In the event you saw my closet, my wardrobe could be very limited,” he confessed. “I’m not an enormous consumer of fashion. I don’t spend money on expensive brands. I actually benefit from the creativity of it, but it surely’s not like I’m out searching for these outfits. I assume it’s something I’ve leaned right into a bit more of late.”
Pillion hits theaters on February 6.