Alexander Skarsgård wants to be left alone to watch TV, just like Murderbot
Can't a killer robot just watch some soap operas in peace? It's a theme Murderbot star Alexander Skarsgård tells Yahoo Entertainment he certainly relates to.
Skarsgård plays the titular role in Apple TV+'s new sci-fi series, out on Friday, about a security unit ('SecUnit') gone rogue who must hide its free will from its clients. Although Murderbot is a killing machine horrified by human emotion, it's drawn to protecting a team of clients more confusing than its favorite soap opera, Sanctuary Moon. The comedic thriller is based on author Martha Wells's bestselling book series The Murderbot Diaries.
Murderbot is a genderless cyborg in the books, with no physical human-looking attributes of note. So, how on earth did Skarsgård fit the bill to play the titular character?
The show's creators, brothers Chris and Paul Weitz, knew it would be an impossible task to cast someone who fit 'everybody's version of what they were thinking of.' They even considered a female lead. But when Skarsgård showed interest, they say, the casting choice was a no-brainer.
'Alexander's a deeply eccentric person. He's somebody who has this exterior that can be intimidating. He was in the Swedish special forces. He appears from characters he's played like he could really kill somebody,' Paul tells Yahoo.
The Weitzes know fans of the books have 'headcanon,' which, in fandom terms, refers to how people envision what a character is going to look or feel like. They say fans won't be disappointed by Skarsgård. (Early reviews agree.)
'He has a really good sense of humor and he's an oddball. Those characteristics were characteristics which one felt would suit Murderbot,' Paul adds. 'We just wanted it to be an actor who was really specific.'
Skarsgård is happy to show off his eccentric side in the series.
'It's such a weird, unique character that I definitely hadn't played before, and I was also excited about doing something slightly more comedic compared to The Northman or Infinity Pool, other, slightly darker projects that I've done recently,' he tells Yahoo. 'I was beyond excited when I came across this weird sci-fi action plot, but centered around a socially awkward android who loves soap operas.'
Skarsgård says he personally relates to Murderbot's 'procrastination.'
'I thought that was quite interesting how it calls itself Murderbot and it's going to go on these epic adventures. And that's kind of what you expect to see when you're watching a sci-fi show — that it's actually heroic and confident and goes out there and kicks ass. But instead ... Murderbot procrastinates and gets stuck just watching its favorite show, Sanctuary Moon,' he laughs. 'I find it quite relatable that, you know, you've got these grand plans, but they can wait till tomorrow. You just got to watch a few more episodes of something.'
Since sci-fi always touches on real-world themes and the closest thing we have to a SecUnit is ChatGPT, I signed up for the AI chatbot to enlist its help for a lightning round of Murderbot and Skarsgård-themed questions. The 48-year-old Swedish star was excited to see how it did.
I'm going to fire them off. Are you ready?
Yeah.
Would you rather binge-watch a show or explore a new city?
Explore a new city.
Twenty-four-hour robot bodyguard or 24-hour robot personal chef?
Personal chef.
Be a brilliant villain or forgettable hero?
Forgettable hero. Forgettable hero is really nice. I like that.
Acting in a heavy costume or acting with heavy CGI?
I'm quite lazy. I like practical stuff that's not CGI, but I'm also lazy. The thought of doing something in pajamas in front of a green screen? I'll go for that one.
Skarsgård family game night. Is it board games or chaos?
I would say chaotic board games.
What would be a favorite recharge, sleeping in or an outdoor activity?
Outdoor activity.
Watch a bad movie with friends or a masterpiece alone?
Bad movie with friends.
Robots taking over or aliens invading?
Aliens invading.
Be famous in a tiny galaxy or totally anonymous on Earth?
I'd like to be famous in a tiny galaxy. I like that idea.
See, these weren't too bad. I mean, I took out the really weird and creepy ones, so my job still needs to be here, but...
Give me one creepy [question].
OK, you asked. Would you rather keep taking your shirt off or only wear clothes in films?
Keep taking my shirt off.
The first two episodes of premiere globally May 16 on Apple TV+.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
'I Don't Understand You': Nick Kroll, Andrew Rannells movie inspired by adoption fraud story from filmmakers
While Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells voice some pretty hysterical characters in Big Mouth, they're now sharing the screen in the horror-comedy I Don't Understand You (now in theatres). Written and directed by married filmmakers David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano, the movie had a particularly interesting starting point. In I Don't Understand You Kroll and Rannells play a couple, Dom and Cole, who have just fallen victim to adoption fraud, but things are looking up. A pregnant woman named Candace (Amanda Seyfried) thinks they're the right fit for the family to adopt her child. But just before that happens, Dom and Cole take a romantic Italian vacation. Things take a turn when they get lost outside of Rome, trying to find a restaurant. As their stranded in an unknown location, the trip turns to bloody Italian chaos. As Craig and Crano identified, the first portion of the movie, up until the couple gets stuck going to the restaurant, is quite close to the real experience the filmmakers had. "We were adopting a child. We had been through an adoption scam, which was heartbreaking, and then had a completely different experience when we matched with the birth mother of our son," Crano told Yahoo. "But we found out that we were going to have him literally like two days before we were going on our 10th anniversary trip." "And we were like, 'Shit, should we not go?' But we decided to do it, and you're so emotionally opened up and vulnerable in that moment that it felt like a very similar experience to being in a horror movie, even though it's a joyful kind of situation." A key element of I Don't Understand You is that feeling of shock once the story turns from a romance-comedy to something much bloodier. It feels abrupt, but it's that jolt of the contrast that also makes that moment feel particularly impactful to watch. "Our sense of filmmaking is so ... based on surprise," Craig said. "As a cinephile, my main decade to go to are outlandish '90s movies, because they just take you to a different space, and as long as you have a reality to the characters that are already at hand, you can kind of take them wherever." "Personally, the situation of adoption was a constant jolt [from] one emotion to another that we felt like that was the right way to tell a story like this, which was literally, fall in love with a couple and then send them into a complete nightmare. And I think you can only get that if you do it abruptly, and kind of manically." While Rannells and Kroll have that funny and sweet chemistry the story needs, these were roles that weren't written for them. But it works because Crano and Craig know how to write in each other's voices so well, that's where a lot of the dialogue is pulled from. Additionally, the filmmakers had the "creative trust" in each other to pitch any idea, as random as it may have seemed, to see if it could work for the film. "When you're with somebody you've lived with for 15 years, there is very little that I can do that would embarrass me in front of David," Crano said. "So that level of creative freedom is very generative." "We were able to screw up in front of each other a lot without it affecting the rest of our day," Craig added. Of course, with the language barrier between the filmmakers and the Italian cast, it was a real collaboration to help make the script feel authentic for those characters. "All of the Italian actors and crew were very helpful in terms of being like, 'Well I feel like my character is from the south and wouldn't say it in this way.' And helped us build the language," Crano said. "And it was just a very trusting process, because neither of us are fluent enough to have that kind of dialectical specificity that you would in English." "It was super cool to just be watching an actor perform a scene that you've written in English that has been translated a couple of times, but you still completely understand it, just by the generosity of their performance." For Craig, he has an extensive resume of acting roles, including projects like Boy Erased and episodes of Dropout. Among the esteemed alumni of the Upright Citizens Brigade, he had a writing "itch" for a long time, and was "in awe" of Crano's work as a director. "Truthfully, in a weird way, it felt like such a far off, distant job, because everything felt really difficult, and I think with this project it just made me understand that it was just something I truly love and truly wanted to do," Craig said. "I love the idea of creative control and being in a really collaborative situation. Acting allows you to do that momentarily, but I think like every other job that you can do on a film is much longer lasting, and I think that's something I was truly seeking." For Crano, he also grew up as a theatre kid, moving on to writing plays in college. "The first time I got laughs for jokes I was like, 'Oh, this is it. Let's figure out how to do this,'" he said. "I was playwriting in London, my mom got sick in the States, so I came back, and I started writing a movie, because I was living in [Los Angeles] and I thought, well there are no playwrights in L.A., I better write a movie.'" That's when Crano found a mentor in Peter Friedlander, who's currently the head of scripted series, U.S. and Canada, at Netflix. "I had written this feature and ... we met with a bunch of directors, great directors, directors I truly admire, and they would be like, 'It should be like this.' And I'd be like, 'Yeah, that's fine, but maybe it's more like this.' And after about five of those Peter was like, 'You're going to direct it. We'll make some shorts. We'll see if you can do it.' He just sort of saw it," Crano recalled. "It's nice to be seen in any capacity for your ability, but [I started to realize] this is not so different from writing, it's just sort of writing and physical space and storytelling, and I love to do it. ... It is a very difficult job, because it requires so much money to test the theory, to even see if you can." But being able to work together on I Don't Understand You, the couple were able to learn things about and from each other through the filmmaking process. "David is lovely to everyone," Crano said. "He is much nicer than I am at a sort of base level, and makes everyone feel that they can perform at the best of their ability. And that's a really good lesson." "Brian literally doesn't take anything personally," Craig added. "Almost to a fault." "And it's very helpful in an environment where you're getting a lot of no's, to have a partner who's literally like, 'Oh, it's just no for now. Great, let's move on. Let's find somebody who's going to say yes, maybe we'll come back to that no later.' I'm the pessimist who's sitting in the corner going, 'Somebody just rejected me, I don't know what to do.' ... It just makes you move, and that's that's very helpful for me."
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Yahoo
'I Don't Understand You': Nick Kroll, Andrew Rannells movie based on adoption fraud story from filmmakers
While Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells voice some pretty hysterical characters in Big Mouth, they're now sharing the screen in the horror-comedy I Don't Understand You (now in theatres). Written and directed by married filmmakers David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano, the movie had a particularly interesting starting point. In I Don't Understand You Kroll and Rannells play a couple, Dom and Cole, who have just fallen victim to adoption fraud, but things are looking up. A pregnant woman named Candace (Amanda Seyfried) thinks they're the right fit for the family to adopt her child. But just before that happens, Dom and Cole take a romantic Italian vacation. Things take a turn when they get lost outside of Rome, trying to find a restaurant. As their stranded in an unknown location, the trip turns to bloody Italian chaos. As Craig and Crano identified, the first portion of the movie, up until the couple gets stuck going to the restaurant, is quite close to the real adoption experience the filmmakers had. "We were adopting a child. We had been through an adoption scam, which was heartbreaking, and then had a completely different experience when we matched with the birth mother of our son," Crano told Yahoo. "But we found out that we were going to have him literally like two days before we were going on our 10th anniversary trip." "And we were like, 'Shit, should we not go?' But we decided to do it, and you're so emotionally opened up and vulnerable in that moment that it felt like a very similar experience to being in a horror movie, even though it's a joyful kind of situation." A key element of I Don't Understand You is that feeling of shock once the story turns from a romance-comedy to something much bloodier. It feels abrupt, but it's that jolt of the contrast that also makes that moment feel particularly impactful to watch. "Our sense of filmmaker is so much based on surprise, Craig said. "As a cinephile, my main decade to go to are outlandish '90s movies, because they just take you to a different space, and as long as you have a reality to the characters that are already at hand, you can kind of take them wherever." "Personally, the situation of adoption was a constant jolt [from] one emotion to another that we felt like that was the right way to tell a story like this, which was literally, fall in love with a couple and then send them into a complete nightmare. And I think you can only get that way if you do it abruptly, and kind of manically." While Rannells and Kroll have that funny and sweet chemistry the story needs, these were roles that weren't written for them. But it works because Crano and Craig know how to write in each other's voices so well, that's where a lot of the dialogue is pulled from. Additionally, the filmmakers had the "creative trust" in each other to pitch any idea, as random as it may have seemed, to see if it could work for the film. "When you're with somebody you've lived with for 15 years, there is very little that I can do that would embarrass me in front of David," Crano said. "So that level of creative freedom is very generative." "We were able to screw up in front of each other a lot without it affecting the rest of our day," Craig added. Of course, with the language barrier between the filmmakers and the Italian cast, it was a real collaboration to help make the script feel authentic for those characters. "All of the Italian actors and crew were very helpful in terms of being like, 'Well I feel like my character is is from the south and wouldn't say it in this way.' And helped us build the language," Crano said. "And it was just a very trusting process, because neither of us are fluent enough to have that kind of dialectical specificity that you would in English." "It was super cool to just be watching an actor perform a scene that you've written in English that has been translated a couple of times, but you still completely understand it, just by the generosity of their performance." For Craig, he has an extensive resume of acting roles, including projects like Boy Erased and episodes of Dropout. Among the esteemed alumni of the Upright Citizens Brigade, he had a writing "itch" for a long time, and was "in awe" of Crano's work as a director. "Truthfully, in a weird way, it felt like such a far off, distang job, because everything felt really difficult, and I think with this project it just made me understand that it was just something I truly love and truly wanted to do," Craig said. "I love the idea of creative control and being in a really collaborative situation. Acting allows you to do that momentarily, but I think like every other job that you can do on a film is much longer lasting, and I think that's something I was truly seeking." For Crano, he also grew up as a theatre kid, moving on to writing plays in college. "The first time I got laughs for jokes I was like, 'Oh, this is it. Let's figure out how to do this,'" he said. "I was playwriting in London, my mom got sick in the States, so I came back, and I started writing a movie, because I was living in [Los Angeles] and I thought, well there are no playwrights in L.A., I better write a movie.'" That's when Crano found a mentor in Peter Friedlander, who's currently the head of scripted series, U.S. and Canada, at Netflix. "I had written this feature and ... we met with a bunch of directors, great directors, directors I truly admire, and they would be like, 'It should be like this.' And I'd be like, 'Yeah, that's fine, but maybe it's more like this.' And after about five of those Peter was like, 'You're going to direct it. We'll make some shorts. We'll see if you can do it.' He just sort of saw it," Crano recalled. "It's nice to be seen in any capacity for your ability, but [I started to realize] this is not so different from writing, it's just sort of writing and physical space and storytelling, and I love to do it. ... It is a very difficult job, because it requires so much money to test the theory, to even see if you can." But being able to work together on I Don't Understand You, the couple were able to learn things about and from each other through the filmmaking process. "David is lovely to everyone," Crano said. "He is much nicer than I am at a sort of base level, and makes everyone feel that they can perform at the best of their ability. And that's a really good lesson." "Brian literally doesn't take anything personally," Craig added. "Almost to a fault." "And it's very helpful in an environment where you're getting a lot of no's, to have a partner who's literally like, 'Oh, it's just no for now. Great, let's move on. Let's find somebody who's going to say yes, maybe we'll come back to that no later.' I'm the pessimist who's sitting in the corner going, 'Somebody just rejected me, I don't know what to do.' ... It just makes you move, and that's that's very helpful for me."
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Yahoo
Apple Watch 圈圈真的準？美國有研究指 Apple Watch 部份運動數據追蹤表現準度不足
Yahoo購物節，6月2至13日正式舉行！集合全球精選著數的網上大型購物節：波鞋低至36折、手袋低至4折、自助餐半價、旅遊產品買一送一等，更有獨家優惠為您而設，把握限時兩星期優惠，1Click買盡全世界！ 早前消委會就發表智能手錶評測報告，強調智能手錶、手環的運動數據都是估算，只適宜作參考之用。其實智能手錶在追蹤不同數據時準度的確存在著誤差。最近美國就有研究指 Apple Watch 於運動時記錄燃燒了多少卡路里的數據，準度並不是想像中的高。 美國密西西比大學的研究人員做了一個關於 Apple Watch 的研究，分析了 56 數據得出一個整合分析，並以 Apple Watch 每一項的表現都與標準的醫療級工具進行了比較。結果顯示 Apple Watch 於測量心率及步數方面極大部份情況下是準確的。研究人員指，測心率與步數的平均絕對百分比誤差（即衡量準確度的標準指標）分別為 4.43% 與 8.17%，然而估算燃燒了卡路里數據表現就達 27.96%。對於一般大眾買到的穿戴式裝置而言，低於 10% 的誤差值表現已被視為「十分優秀」，但研究團隊測試 Apple Watch 在走路、跑步、混合強度訓練和踩單車等多種活動中計算用戶燃燒了多少卡路里的數據時，卻發現其估算值大幅超出可接受範圍。 不過研究人員同時指出，這個數據本身就相當難以估算，因為涉及許多變數如體重及運動方式等等。因此，不要把每個數字都當作 100% 準確，而是可當成其中一種鼓勵的工具，達至恆常運動、保持追蹤習慣並維持動力。團隊還指出，目前 Apple Watch 的準確度已提高了不少，顯示蘋果在硬體及演算法方面都在逐步改進，而指出弱點可幫助開發者獲得更真實的回應建議，協助他們進一步研究，以製出更好的感應器或演算法，提升智能手錶追蹤健康數據的表現。 更多內容： 9to5mac 消委會試智能手錶運動偵測，Garmin 最貴最高分，一款千元級高評分！Apple、Samsung、華為各有高低 智能手錶推薦 2025 | Apple、三星、Garmin 如何選？三鐵、跑山、單車各有不同，睇清楚點揀！ 緊貼最新科技資訊、網購優惠，追隨 Yahoo Tech 各大社交平台！ 🎉📱 Tech Facebook： 🎉📱 Tech Instagram： 🎉📱 Tech WhatsApp 社群： 🎉📱 Tech WhatsApp 頻道： 🎉📱 Tech Telegram 頻道：
