Alexander Skarsgard Talks ‘War on Everyone’

After his work as the sexy Eric Northman in HBO’s True Blood, Alexander Skarsgard made the decision to star in the comedy War on Everyone to break his image as everyone’s favorite blond vampire.

“To me, I was working on a television show for seven years,” Skarsgard told Complex. “We had five months off every year. Because I wasn’t known before the television show, that was the only character that people knew. It was like, ‘Oh, he’s Eric Northman.’ So people have a tendency to typecast you.

“I want to prove and show people I can do something else. It’s just like you said: why would I spend seven months shooting True Blood and then, during my hiatus, play the same character?”

Michael Pena, who costars in War on Everyone with Skarsgard, weighed in on why he doesn’t choose to do comedy projects all the time. He mixes work projects up like he would with his diet, explaining after eating pizza for so long – doing films he loves – he fancies a taco, meaning he’ll pick a different role.

He and Skarsgard had never met before filming the new project, but they bonded immediately, and their onscreen chemistry is off the scale.

“We didn’t want to make it trivial,” Pena said of their union. “(my character) Bob is so important to Terry (Skarsgard). He’s like the most important person in the world. Terry feels stupid. I’m lost without him. That’s how it feels. It’s funny and broad in many ways, but it’s also a beautiful love story between these two.”

When asked to sell the feature, Pena admitted viewers will “probably be offended”.

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