On Alexander Skarsgård’s trousers, The Rehearsal, and the importance of weirdos

This col­umn first fea­tured in Huck’s cul­ture newslet­ter. Sign up here to make sure it lands in your inbox every month.

There’s a lot going on in the world at present. The UK is rene­go­ti­at­ing its rela­tion­ship with Europe post-Brex­it, with the biggest points of con­tention being fish­ing (why always fish­ing?) and a youth mobil­i­ty scheme that would allow 18 – 30-year-olds to trav­el and work more freely around the EU (yet anoth­er eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy that tells mil­len­ni­als to go fuck them­selves). A mem­ber of the Irish rap group Kneecap has been charged with a ter­ror­ism offence for alleged­ly dis­play­ing a flag in sup­port of Hezbol­lah on stage last year, which is con­sid­er­ably more legal action than has been tak­en against any­one com­mit­ting ongo­ing war crimes in Gaza. A num­ber of kid­nap­ping plots have tar­get­ed cryp­to mil­lion­aires and their fam­i­lies in France. A 53-year-old white British man alleged­ly tail­gat­ed an ambu­lance and ploughed through a crowd of peo­ple in Liv­er­pool dur­ing the Pre­mier League vic­to­ry parade. The world is, in the immor­tal words of Castil­lo, ​“not look­ing good, brev.”

Moments of lev­i­ty are rare and fleet­ing, so it’s impor­tant to hold onto them when they arise. With that in mind, I’m going to – and I hope this is under­stand­able – spend a sub­stan­tial por­tion of this newslet­ter talk­ing about Alexan­der Skarsgård’s trousers.

May is the month of bank hol­i­days, hay fever and dumb shit, as the last dregs of win­ter are final­ly swilled out by long days, half-reli­ably good weath­er, and the start of fes­ti­val sea­son. On that note, May is also the month of Cannes. Our friends over at Lit­tle White Lies have all the details of the fes­ti­val cov­ered as far as film is con­cerned, but I want­ed to zero in on the wardrobe of a man who has stunned time after time on the red car­pet: Alexan­der Skars­gård. It was his first appear­ance at Cannes this year, and he threw a cheeky two fin­gers up at their rules of pro­pri­ety (ban­ning the ​“naked dress,” being gen­er­al­ly fuck­ing bor­ing) by attend­ing the screen­ing of his upcom­ing gay bik­er dra­ma, Pil­lion, decked out like a Ger­man noise musi­cian in black leather trousers, pud­dle shoes, and a vin­tage BDSM tee depict­ing a boot step­ping on a man’s open mouth. 

At oth­er points in the week he wore thigh-high leather boots tucked into plain suit trousers, and elec­tric blue sequin trousers with a pink bow-tie, but it’s the fetwear that real­ly got peo­ple going – prob­a­bly because he has some­thing of a pen­chant for it. When pro­mot­ing Infin­i­ty Pool in 2023 he had co-star Mia Goth walk him into the pre­mière on a leash. In 2022, he cov­ered Inter­view Mag­a­zine look­ing like an Amer­i­can Appar­el girl in knee-high boots and a com­i­cal­ly over­sized white slo­gan tee that said ALEXAN­DER SKARS­GÅRD IS A SEXY BITCH. Sim­i­lar­ly, he attend­ed the MTV Movie Awards 2016 in a black-tie look that can only be described as ​‘for­got my pants.’ Around Cannes there were urgent calls for Bill to step it up over fears he was being ​“out­f­reaked” by his broth­er, but just because you can play a freak – Pen­ny­wise, Eric Draven, Nos­fer­atu – doesn’t mean you are one. Those pay­ing close atten­tion will know that Alex, deliv­er­er of that line about the blood brick in Suc­ces­sion and blonder than Lego­las using his pur­ple sham­poo, is and always has been the nat­ur­al born sicko.

• Read next: Why Katy Perry’s space flight was one giant flop for mankind

Speak­ing of which, this month also saw the finale of sea­son two of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal. I won’t spoil it for any­one that has­n’t seen it, but all you need to know is it’s a show about plane crash­es that begins and ends with ​‘Bring Me To Life’ – the 2003 chart-top­ping debut sin­gle by the goth met­al band Evanes­cence, yes – by way of a giant repli­ca of Hous­ton air­port, a fake singing con­test called Wings of Voice, and a child­hood sim­u­la­tion so night­mar­ish I fear it might be adopt­ed as an FBI inter­ro­ga­tion tac­tic. It’s one of the most ambi­tious things ever broad­cast on net­work tele­vi­sion, and def­i­nite­ly the fun­ni­est mate­r­i­al you could pos­si­bly con­sume about avi­a­tion safe­ty pro­ce­dures. Enter­tain­ment Week­ly sum­marised the finale in a piece titled ​‘Nathan Field­er pilots full Boe­ing 747 after exploit­ing licens­ing loop­hole and dodg­ing autism diag­no­sis,’ which is some­how entire­ly accu­rate, and makes Field­er the only come­di­an of our era who has man­aged to gen­er­ate a head­line dumb­er than actu­al cur­rent affairs. 

As with all his projects, The Rehearsal is car­ried by Fielder’s own fas­ci­na­tion with inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships and appar­ent strug­gle to exist in the world as a painful­ly awk­ward man. There are loads of threads to pick up on regard­ing inti­ma­cy, fear, and ​“mask­ing” that are just as inte­gral to the show as the (admit­ted­ly insane) plot, but the way he makes them have to be seen to be believed – not least because it took him sev­er­al years and a sub­stan­tial chunk of HBO’s money.

Final­ly, to wrap up the month in Mas­sive Finan­cial Drains I’m Glad Exist, Peter Andre is star­ring in a new film as a con artist who takes on a high-stakes job where he has to mas­quer­ade as a Jamaican gang­ster in order to raise £35,000 for his nan’s care home fees. It’s called Jafaican (obvi­ous­ly), it’s direct­ed by Fre­di Nwa­ka (who cut his teeth as a body­guard for Big­gie Smalls, TLC, and 50 Cent), and it’s caused a ​“race row back­lash” that has exclu­sive­ly been report­ed by the tabloids (because the only thing they hate more than being racist them­selves is celebri­ties like Peter Andre). ​“What a load of shit,” you might think. ​“Ter­ri­ble, garbage idea. Kill your­selves.” And you’d be right. At the same time, though, with the cre­ative indus­tries in sham­bles, the vast major­i­ty of fund­ing being allo­cat­ed to unimag­i­na­tive scripts pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to RADA bores, I think it’s beau­ti­ful that a film in which a Greek Cypri­ot man from Har­row says ​“I love de bat­ty” sev­er­al times not only got green­lit and fund­ed, but actu­al­ly fin­ished. Is this not exact­ly the kind of fis­cal irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty we’ve been cry­ing out for since Ben Stiller got $92 mil­lion to make Trop­ic Thun­der?

Per­haps every­thing will be ok, after all.

To read Emma’s rec­om­men­da­tions, exclu­sive inter­views and more, sign up to the Huck cul­ture newslet­ter here.

Emma Gar­land is a free­lance writer and for­mer dig­i­tal edi­tor of Huck. Fol­low her on Bluesky.

Buy your copy of Huck 81 here.

Enjoyed this arti­cle? Fol­low Huck on Insta­gram for more from the cut­ting edge of sport, music and counterculture.

Sup­port sto­ries like this by becom­ing a mem­ber of Club Huck.