On this week’s Little Gold Men, the Oscar winner talks about bonding with her onscreen daughter in Louisiana and revisiting Ingrid Bergman films during quarantine.
At first blush, Swedish-born Alicia Vikander couldn’t be further from her latest character. In Justin Chon’s soulful indie Blue Bayou, she plays Kathy—a Southern nurse expecting a child with her New-Orleans-raised, South Korea-born husband Antonio (played by Chon). The couple’s existence is rocked when Antonio is taken into ICE custody and threatened with imminent deportation to the country he hasn’t even visited since he was a child.
It was the exact contrast between Vikander and Kathy, and her desire to find their similarities, that made Blue Bayou such an exciting project. The film, in theaters Sept. 17, also serves as a reminder to Vikander about why she fell in love with filmmaking. “This has obviously been such a tough year for so many people around the world, but for me, it made me not work for a year, which hasn’t happened in, well, my entire career,” Vikander tells V.F.’s Katey Rich about working post-pandemic. “In one way that break made me be able to stop and really reflect over why I love doing this and make me miss it. It’s a job that reinvents itself and becomes new for each day, which makes it so alive and giving.”
On this week’s Little Gold Men, Vikander opens up about shooting on-location in Louisiana, building a connection with her onscreen daughter, and changing her career trajectory after winning an Oscar for in 2016. The episode also contains Oscars and Emmys race updates, along with a special farewell to longtime LGM co-host Joanna Robinson.
Read a partial transcript of the Alicia Vikander interview below.
My colleague talked to Justin Chon about Blue Bayou a little while ago before it was at Cannes. He talked about how he felt so confident in your ability to take on this role that is, as far as we know, pretty removed from your own personal experience. So when he came to you with that confidence, how did you feel about it? Did you look at this role and say, “Yes, this is something I can absolutely do”?
Well, it’s also one of those things where it is very different from any role that has been presented to me. And it was a small film, but it was because of that I was very intrigued to do it. When I began my career, it was interesting, I was in America and because I had played maybe a royal or a princess, or had a bit of a British accent because I lived there for a while, people assume that I come from an upper-class background and that’s not really the case. I’m more of a working-class background in a small town in Sweden. Continue reading »
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