The Best Line In Charli XCX's The Moment Was Improvised [Exclusive]

It's more than fair to say that the Skarsgård family are having a moment. While patriarch Stellan has a long, storied career behind him (and a buzzy Academy Award-nominated role in "Sentimental Value") and his sons have been in the business for years, it's Bill and Alexander who have recently been wowing audiences for several years straight. Bill has proven himself to be a new genre king, delivering the instantly classic characterizations of Pennywise in "It" and Count Orlok in "Nosferatu." Alexander, meanwhile, has expanded and deepened the stock "bad boy" persona he began his acting career with into a fascinatingly freaky, kinky space. His turns in films like "Infinity Pool" and "Pillion" as well as his delightfully weird sci-fi series, "Murderbot," demonstrate his fearlessness as a performer.

Sure enough, that fearlessness applies to comedy, too, as Alexander Skarsgård's performance in the bitterly hilarious Charli XCX mockumentary "The Moment" demonstrates in abundance. In "The Moment," the actor portrays the fictional pretentious filmmaker Johannes Godwin, a man who encapsulates the worst of corporate groupthink, performative "woke" masculinity, and other such odious qualities. Quite simply, Skarsgård is having a ball playing the character, and his comedic timing is top notch. So, apparently, are his improvisational skills. During an exclusive chat I had with the film's co-writer and director, Aidan Zamiri, he revealed that while a good portion of the movie was scripted, it is in fact Skarsgård who's responsible for ad libbing the movie's best line.

In "The Moment," it doesn't take long for everyone involved with the Charli XCX (playing herself) "Brat" tour, especially Charli's friend and creative director, Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates), to realize that Johannes has been brought in to completely take over the tour itself. Literally and figuratively endorsed by Charli's label, Johannes soon becomes emboldened to make sweeping changes to the stage show which condense and sanitize the "Brat" aesthetic. At one point, he advises getting rid of any on-stage allusions to cocaine, something that Celeste objects to, given that one song in particular is literally about cocaine. Johannes, with the self-confidence possessed by most showbiz turnips, helpfully suggests that the song could be interpreted to be about "metaphorical cocaine."

It's this hilarious line which Alexander Skarsgård improvised that caused Aidan Zamiri to become a little jealous of the actor. While Zamiri and writing partner Bertie Brandes wrote the film properly to start with, Zamiri wanted "to make sure that this thing which was scripted felt unstaged and didn't feel contrived." As Zamiri explained, this led to Skarsgård having the freedom to ad-lib:

"I think in every single scene, I would allow time for improv, and sometimes something amazing would land. And so, that would make its way into every take. I have to admit, it's so painful for me to admit this, but 'metaphorical cocaine' was actually an ad lib ... The minute that Alexander said that for the first time, that obviously was then in every single take."

The line is a fantastic encapsulation of the film's satire of showbiz and of Charli's image. It's also a perfect representation of Skarsgård's character, too. Just goes to show that, when it comes to creative inspiration, it all comes down to the moment.