Dune Star Stellan Skarsgard Loved Playing a “Bimbo” in Mamma Mia

Stellan Skarsgård is known for an array of films including Good Will Hunting, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Thor, Mamma Mia!, and much more. Currently, the actor is busy promoting Dune: Part Two, which hit theaters over the weekend. The film is currently up on Rotten Tomatoes with a 94% critics score and 95% audience score and is having a great first week at the box office. Recently, Skarsgård took part in a Vanity Fair interview that saw him reflecting on his past roles. In the video, he recalls how much fun he had making the first Mamma Mia! film. 

“It was absurd to ask me to be in a musical,” Skarsgård shared. “I can’t sing, I can’t dance. And then I saw it was also Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth, and they can’t sing and dance either, so I felt a little safer there.”

“I understood that we were just supposed to be – like in a film that is produced by men and directed by men and men in the leads, you have the bimbo – and we were the bimbos in this female production,” he explained. “We didn’t have to be anything but look cute and be silly. There’s only one thing that was asked of us and that was, ‘Have fun.’ Because if we don’t have fun, it won’t be a film.”

“Me and Colin coming to dance lessons, in our slacks and our little Paul Smith shirts and everything, and 60 dancers that are dressed up like dancers are,” Skarsgård recalled. “We really tried for a month and a half, trying to dance to ‘Voulez-Vous’, and we failed.”

What Is Dune: Part Two About?

Dune: Part Two will explore the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a warpath of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee. 

In addition to Skarsgård, the movie sees the return of Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, Zendaya as Chani, Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica, Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck, Javier Bardem as Stilgar, and Dave Bautista as Glossu Rabban. New cast members include Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot, and Christopher Walker as Emperor Shaddam IV. 

“We have been hearing in the past few decades that it’s not possible to adapt this book, and that it’s an impossible task. I think that in the back of the mind of the studio, it’s still the same!” director Denis Villeneuve told Total Film in a 2021 interview. “So the first thing was to prove that there was a beautiful, popular movie that can exist, and I think that I proved that – everybody at Warner Bros and Legendary, they are 100 percent behind the project. They feel that it would need a really bad outcome at the box office to not have a Dune: Part Two, because they love the movie. They are proud of the movie, so they want the movie to move forward. And they still did half of it. So, you know, I’m very optimistic.”

Dune: Part Two is now playing in theaters.