PERRI NEMIROFF: David, I love your filmography.
[Laughs]But it took me a minute to findit, you know?
Find my take on it.
Image by Brigade Publicity
Like, why me?
Why amIdirecting this movie?
Why isn’t someone else directing this movie?
Image by Brigade Publicity
What is the messageIwant?
What’s my angle?
And it did take me a minute to wrap my brain around it.
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I’ll follow up on that.
You’re working with Michael’s script here.
YAROVESKY: Michael [Arlen] Ross!
Image via The Avenue
He’s here somewhere.
He did a great job.
I imagine you get a top-tier script from him.
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YAROVESKY: It was great!
It was great, but I was scared of it.
YAROVESKY: It was that scene where he’s torturing him.
Image via The Avenue
I’m enjoying what he’s doing."
So, there was a piece of me that was like…
BILL SKARSGARD: Fucking psycho.
[Laughs]
YAROVESKY: [Laughs]I just felt like he could have a lot of fun.
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It was that, and it was an opportunity…
Okay, this is a longer story.
You’re a big, famous person, and I’m me.
Image via The Avenue
I signed up for acting school and started doing scenes.
This guy, Ben Davis, he said, “He’s the best.
Go to Ben Davis.
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You’re welcome, Ben Davis, but that is really what he said.
Those are the movies I was making.
I just found myself really pulling on that thread.
Image via Universal Pictures
The real joy I got out of this was when I started working with them and finding these characters.
That’s the real answer.
The duo also discuss whether an evil superhero is a more realistic outcome than Superman.
Image via The Avenue
Its Going To Be You, Me, and a Car, Buddy!
So David went and studied acting.
SKARSGARD: You do a lot of line readings for me, huh?
Image via The Avenue
[Laughs] No, David is a fucking treat to work with.
I had a similar thing when I read the script.
I was like, “What the fuck?”
Image via Focus Features
There was something very unique about it.
I’ve never done this.
I was like, “It’s going to be no other actors, just me in a car.
I met with David, and we really just hit it off.
David was like, It’s going to be you, me, and a car, buddy!
And that’s what it was.
Image via The Avenue
That was the experience.
We used this corner of the car.
Can we try that corner?”
YAROVESKY: It’s a great scene.
Look at that backdrop!
SKARSGARD: It was tough.
It was, at times, torturous for me, for real.
But I could not have done it without David, and it was our partnership.
I feel the same, you know that, right?
YAROVESKY: That’s a good question.
First of all, I was a big fan of Bill’s, admittedly.
I mean, I loved you as a clown, man!
I was excited to meet you.
I was excited to meet him.
I’ll say him because you makes it a little intimate, doesn’t it?
SKARSGARD: Are we gonna make out at the end of this?
YAROVESKY: Give the people what they want!
I saw it in him.
Then we started talking, and he started to kind of embody it a little bit.
I could kind of see him, and Ilikedhim.
I was like, “I can be trapped in a car with this guy.
“You know what I mean?
Can you imagine doing this movie with someone I couldn’t be stuck in a car with?
That would have been totally different.
So I was like, You and I are going to go on a journey together.
because it was just a big ask.
We went to places.
You were in the back with stunt drivers.
SKARSGARD: Drinking the pee.
YAROVESKY: Drinking the pee.
I’ll tell this story.
TikTok taught me that I find people retching really funny.
They have… Youre gonna have to say it for me.
SKARSGARD: Its very, very, very, very fermented fish.
A Swedish delicacy that only the toughest, most hardcore bitches like.
YAROVESKY: Yeah, it is.
So, on TikTok, people launch the can and start vomiting all over their friends.
SKARSGARD: And you were like, “Hell yeah!”
Because it doesn’t look real.
People pretend to retch all the time, and it’s fake.
The point of all that is to say you’re really going to go through it.
Also, its so much weighing on you, and you were in, man.
SKARSGARD: I did drink the surstromming, though.
You were like, It works, right?
Im like, No, that was all acting, man.
I can drink this shit.
Pour it down my throat.
Bill, I’ve got a follow-up!
I ask this question every once in a while, and it tickles me.
SKARSGARD: I think sneezing is probably almost impossible to pull off.
I’ve never tried it.
The floor is yours!
SKARSGARD: Challenge accepted.
[Fake sneezes]
YAROVESKY: Youre giving me ideas for the sequel.
SKARSGARD:The Sneeze.
I’ve been doing fake driving a lot, but also, why are people bad at this?”
Like, actors when they’re like [mimes driving].
Have they never driven a car before?
You know what I mean?
In the old movies, for sure.
They were like [mimes driving again].
YAROVESKY: Dude, that’s how I drive.
SKARSGARD: For sure, for this one.
There are all these little hints of his backstory.
In the movie, you find out more about him.
That was the first thing that David and I talked about.
Who is this guy?
Where is he from?I draw from childhood friends of mine.
I’m like, “Oh, I know a couple of Eddies.
He just can’tnotbe Eddie.
That was something that drew me to the character as well.
I think I’ve always wanted to play a little street weasel.
SKARSGARD: Fuckboy street weasel.
It’s very relatable.
I had a lot of empathy for him.
I don’t think that they are together anymore, but she’s co-parenting.”
There was a whole thing of, “When do they meet?”
and trying to flesh out this character’s life more.
I’m really glad we went with pink.
It’s a crazy thing doing this movie.
There’s not that many backdrops.
Yeah, it turns out it is pink, but thats because the car is very beige.
[Laughs]
YAROVESKY: No, you’re right.
It’s a much bigger decision than you think.
Why Wasn’t Locked Filmed on the Volume?
“I’m going to take you on this little dream.”
I’ve got to dig into the production of this movie, which I’m absolutely fascinated by.
Lets shoot the whole thing on a stage.”
Can you break it down for us?
How much is on a stage and how much is on location?
You’re looking in the wrong direction, though.
He didn’t want to shoot it on a fucking Volume.
But it’s not real, and you know it’s not real.
There is just a reality to it.
There’s a tactileness.
And I feel like I have a relationship with my audience.
It breaks that sense.
Now, every time I see it driving by, ittriggersme.”
I havemanyquestions about this car.
YAROVESKY: It went on a real journey.
I don’t know anything about cars.
A lot of my friends are car guys.
Theyll talk about cars.
I drive a Bronco.
I’m just not a car guy.
I know way too much about cars now.
My wife is like, “What?”
Because I’ll be like, Oh look, there’s the new Lexus.
“Who are you?”
I didn’t want it to be this spooky thing that drove around.
I wanted you to watch the movie and go, “Ibelieve that that could happen.”
We went through this painstaking process.
That’s a cool moment.
Grant and I and some other people just really went deep on how this would happen.
How would I actually do it?
That was really where my head was: making it real.
Correct me if I’m wrong on any of this.
Bill, between all those sets, which one intimidated you the most?
Which was the most difficult to figure out and make feel authentic for you?
SKARSGARD: I hated that car at the end of the shoot.
[Laughs] We had one that we built on the stage where the doors could move.
That’s movie magic.
We did l how many takes of that?
YAROVESKY: That was the scariest day of my life, dude.
It’s not going to happen.
I was like, Itisgoing to happen.
SKARSGARD: Because if any timing is slightly off, you see a fake door getting pushed and pulled.
That was like a whole kind of advanced choreography.
The actual car wasn’t intimidating to me.
It’s really funny.
Literally, for four weeks, I’ve been driving around in it.
When you said that, a panic rushed through my body.
Its in your director’s statement!Its a cool car.
SKARSGARD: It’s a great car, but it’s just funny.
Now, every time I see it driving by, ittriggersme.
YAROVESKY: Me too!
I see it, and I’m like, “Oh, man, that car.
There it is.”
SKARSGARD: I know that car way too well.
I have to ask about working with Sam Raimi.
You’ve both had experience working with him.
YAROVESKY: That’s a great question.
It’s a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and it’s this compromise.
Then he’s my partner makingthatmovie.
But it’s the industry, I guess.
I wanted to confirm to end on this question.
YAROVESKY: Oh, I want this one.
Because it was joyful.
We shot it in 19 days, so it felt like there was a bomb strapped to my chest.
It was a joy to work with you.
It was a joy to make this movie.
It was a joy to see it come together, but it was terrifying.
This is an independent film.
Its on a big screen!"
But it was a tiny, littlemovie.
I believe in it."
If that sounds exciting to you, you’ll probably be a filmmaker.
SKARSGARD: It wasn’t joyous for me.
Im not kidding, parts of it were torture.
Every take is just like agony, agony, agony, agony, agony.
It was exhausting at times.
But working with Anthony Hopkins was really fucking cool.
It was really fucking cool and intimidating.
I remember the first time I was there, and he wasn’t there before we started to shoot.
I was like, The whole movie is this conversation between these two guys.
When does he come in?
Are we going to have rehearsals?
And David was like, Yeah, sure.
That ended up not being the case.
The connection was bad, and he couldn’t really hear.
I’m sitting there going, “The whole movie is this.”
And he just kept ad-libbing, I remember.
I was like, “I have so much dialogue.
But then he showed up, and helovedthis character.
He hadsomany ideas and a very William perspective.
Part of it was in the script, but a lot of it he came with.
And I’m like, Yeah.
Something happened on that.
I said, That was the best day of filming I’ve ever had.
I think we captured magic.
I just watched two of the greatest living actors go at each other.”
Did you write it?
He’s like, It’s great!
Let them keep going!
I went home, and I went, If that scene works, it’s going to be cool.
I can confirm it’s very, very cool.
YAROVESKY: Thank you!
What’s Tougher, a 300-Year-Old Vampire or Acting Solo?
AUDIENCE: Bill, I love your versatility as an actor.
Whats more constricting, filming an entire movie in a car or filming under lots of prosthetics, likeNosferatu?
SKARSGARD: I don’t make it easy for myself, do I?
[Laughs] They’re very, very different.
Ineedthe face to perform through it, you know?
Then, it becomes liberating.
I’m like, I am a 300-year-old fucking vampire.
[Groans like Nosferatu] So, there’s something to that.
So much of this production is just me and a camera.
YAROVESKY: And me!
SKARSGARD: And Dave, and a first AD reading lines.
So, there was a challenge.
YAROVESKY: You said that to me, and I laughed about it for a week.
I’m like, Oh my god, it is!"
Im so sorry, Bill.
SKARSGARD: What am I looking at when I’m talking?
Part of acting, at least for me, is you have to give in to this illusion.
You have to really believe that this is happening.
YAROVESKY: We love you, Pierre [Henry], if you’re watching right now.
SKARSGARD: Pierre is awesome.
But you know what I’m saying?
It was just the fakery of it.
It’s not just Orlok’s ‘stache that gives me the creeps.
YAROVESKY: Knowing myself, it would be the loneliness.
It would be just the total isolation from humanity, which I generally just feel on a normal basis.
SKARSGARD: This whole movie is a metaphor for your life.
Life to you is being trapped in a car and tortured.
That’s just existence for you.
So it was just like, “You’re freezing.
Put every piece of clothing you have on and lie there.”
I’m like, “This is fucking performance gymnastics here.”
I’m freezing, and I’m supposed to be sweaty.
But if I have to pick a torture, I don’t think the heat’s that bad.
I think the cold would be the thing.
SKARSGARD: And the performance would have beenso much better.
Hes really cold; bring in the surstromming!
Lockedcruises into theaters on Friday, March 21.
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