Alexander Skarsgard as Ray, Harry Melling as Colin in 'Pillion'. Credit: A24/YouTube
Alexander Skarsgård talks Pillion, that viral Pedro Pascal Cannes moment, and bringing humor to onscreen BDSM
Skarsgård sits down with his director, Harry Lighton, to discuss the film and its fearless depiction of dom/sub biker sex.
Nick Romano for Entertainment Weekly, October 4, 2025. (x)
Alexander Skarsgård arrives in the dim-lit lounge of Manhattan’s Bowery Hotel in a matching blue-grey henley and drawstring sweatpants. He’s having a rough go of it. The 6-foot-4 Murderbot and The Northman star sinks into a deep-cushioned leather chair by the fireplace as he relays his trials with food poisoning from the past 24 hours.
“It was yesterday morning,” he tells Harry Lighton, his director of queer BDSM romance Pillion. “I had breakfast at the hotel. I was just in Zurich at the film festival, and then I was about to board a plane to New York. I felt a little queasy. Then I got on the plane and it was eight hours just on the bathroom floor, the whole trip. Cheek to the floor. This is too much information, but I couldn’t get it up. I was dry heaving. There was a line of people outside the bathroom. I had to go out so they could come in and then get back in there. It was so rough, so f---ing bad.”
It feels like a feat for this man to be sitting here now on this Friday afternoon, submitting to an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Even as Lighton offers to take over for him, he’s committed to doing it. How’s he feeling now? “Still f---ed,” Skarsgård responds, before flashing a charming smile. “Well, good to see you guys.”
His character in Pillion would never dare be this vulnerable and honest in public, and perhaps not even in private. Skarsgård fills the role of Ray, a motorcyclist and a sexual dom to Colin, played by Harry Melling (Harry Potter, The Pale Blue Eye) in the film inspired by Adam Mars-Jones’ book Box Hill. Romance and kink, drama and comedy all intertwine as Colin, a sweet parking enforcement officer who lives with his parents and sings in a barbershop quartet, awkwardly follows this handsome, leather-clad adonis into the world of BDSM.
Alexander Skarsgard at Cannes in support of 'Pillion'. Credit: Rocco Spaziani/Archivio Spaziani/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty
With the exception of this bout of food poisoning, Skarsgård and Lighton have had a blast taking this movie to international film festivals. Pillion has been gaining traction and garnering headlines for its overt and unashamed depictions of sex — a clumsy back-alley blowjob and a backwoods orgy included. And the cast is very much channeling that spirit on the road.
A few striking photos exist on Lighton’s Instagram feed that depict a moment from their Cannes afterparty: Paul Tallis, a member of the Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club (GBMCC) in the U.K. who also have roles in Pillion, squats down on all fours in his leather dog mask and harness at the typically glamorous event.
“It felt kind of naughty in an environment where you're told that you have to wear a certain kind of bow tie,” the filmmaker says. “Paul sneaked in the mask. It appeals to my sense of...I dunno, rebellion.”
The one moment that has brought more goodwill to Pillion than any marketing campaign so far was a brief exchange between Skarsgård and actor Pedro Pascal at Cannes. After the screening, video circulated online of the True Blood alum, wearing a white Magliano T-shirt with an image of a boot hovering over a man's outstretched tongue, hugging Pascal and kissing him on the cheek while the cast received a standing ovation at the screening.
Alexander Skarsgard with 'Pillion' director Harry Lighton at Cannes. Credit: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty
Skarsgård is unaware that the exchange got any kind of play online. “I had no idea,” he says. “Obviously, he was at our premiere. I gave him a little smooch.”
He can’t even recall what Pascal said to him in that moment. “That was quite overwhelming, that whole experience after the credits,” he continues. “It was just so many people and so much intensity. And so exciting and overwhelming, and also kind of awkward because they kept clapping and at one point you're like, ‘Should we start juggling or what?’ Your narcissistic side is really lapping it up, but also the humble side, or the fake humble side, is like, ‘Oh no. Stop this.’”
Now in Manhattan for the New York Film Festival stop of the tour, Pillion hits the States for the first time. A movie like this is going to naturally feel disruptive when few films these days approach sex and kink — and for that matter, gay representation — in such explicit ways. The Showtime miniseries Fellow Travelers is perhaps the closest that comes to mind in recent memory.
Lighton very much wanted to “disrupt notions of romance and relationship models” with the film, he says. “There's a version of disruption, particularly when applied to a subject like BDSM, which could be quite deliberate or trying to shock for shock’s sake. My focus was always trying to bring the kind of complexities of the kink world to the screen…trying to find the warmth in that community rather than be like Prince Albert, whips, chains, and gags. I think by nature of it being about outside culture, it’s gonna be disruptive in a way, but I then wanted to find the ways in which even the outside culture has an affinity with the mainstream.”
Instead of adapting some of the book’s harsher material, including moments of sexual assault, he applied a touch of romantic comedy to it. Colin is a character who’s so alienated from the gay community, though he has an overly supportive mother setting him up on dates. So when he’s thrown face-first (literally) into the world of kink, there’s a, shall we say, learning curve that leads to some laughs.
Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgard in 'Pillion'. Credit: A24
As Lighton describes, “It became about how to find those actions which would carry that same charge of a naive person entering into a world which he has no understanding of but approaching it as if he's learning about how to fish rather than learning about how to f---.”
Skarsgård was hooked by the logline alone before reading the actual script. He echoes a similar sentiment to Lighton. “Sometimes you're too respectful and it's too sanitized or it's like the Cruising version of the film where it's the dark subculture, but it's dangerous and it's a threat,” he says. “This was so beautiful 'cause it felt so warm, sexy, funny, awkward, and weird.”
In terms of the many intimate bottom-baring moments of Pillion, “I thought the sex scenes were fun and great,” he says with a playful smile. “I often find sex on screen boring. Often, the tension, the buildup, the drama is there, but as soon as they hit the sack, it's like, ‘Well then they're f---ing.’ What was so great about the sex scenes in Pillion was that there was an emotional arc to them, a narrative. Lots of things happen in those moments.”
He points to Colin's birthday scene as an example, which culminates in an outdoor group sex sequence on picnic tables. "It's a big, big emotional moment. It's not just an orgy in the woods,” Skarsgård continues. “I really love that. If I feel that excitement, there's no trepidation going into it. Then it's just fun.”
One not-so-fun thing was his motorcycle uniform. When riding his bike as Ray, Skarsgård is decked out in heavy leather from head to toe, resembling in a way his previous role on Murderbot. “That space condom was very sweaty and uncomfortable,” the actor says of those six months working on the Apple TV+ series.
He sent a photo of himself in the Pillion costume fittings to the wardrobe department on Murderbot. “They knew how relieved I was when I got to take it off after those six months," he says. "And then a week later, I sent a photo of pretty much the same outfit. I’m like, ‘Here we go again! God damnit.’”
Skarsgård is pulling it together to present Pillion to a New York Film Festival crowd on Saturday night, which includes a moderated Q&A with him and Lighton. Food poisoning be damned! Lighton acknowledges what a movie like this means now for our current reality. He didn't write it with any intentional political messaging embedded within. Yet, at a time when LGBTQ rights are being scaled back and the more extreme MAGA supporters in the States protest the mere presence of a trans character on an animated show that ended three years ago, such an unapologetic story as this feels like a giant middle finger to that sentiment.
"Definitely on our side of the pond, as well, people who do exist on the margins, particularly queer people, are having their rights rode back. So I'd probably feel more defensive about my desire to portray those people in a complex, human way," he says. "I definitely didn't set out for the film to be a social issues film, but I did set out to make something which humanized a group of people that I think have been portrayed in a very derogatory way. Take trans people, for instance. At the moment, there's so much misleading, derogatory portrayals of that group of marginalized people."
Skarsgård views the movie as a chance to gain insight into a subculture. "I hope that they'll walk away feeling the way I felt when I was reading the script. I really cared about all these characters. I felt with them and for them, and I was invested in their journey."
Pillion is slated to open in theaters in February 2026.
