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

Black and white image of several people in suits, some with long hair and unconventional appearances, alongside a large ship or boat model. Text overlaid: "FREAKS AND FINANCES".

Freaks and Finances — In the May edition of our monthly culture newsletter, columnist Emma Garland reflects on the Swedish actor’s Cannes look, Nathan Fielder’s wild ambition, and Jafaican.

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 ISSEXY 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.

“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.” Emma Garland

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.

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