Friends and film collaborators Michael Shannon and Alexander Skarsgård ed us in Letterboxd’s Tribeca studio in anticipation of the premiere of Shannon’s directorial debut, Eric LaRue.

Adapted from Brett Neveu’s stage play (Shannon is a Broadway veteran), the character-driven drama follows protagonist Janice (Judy Greer) and her husband Ron LaRue, a conflicted couple who each process their seventeen-year-old son Eric’s murders of three of his classmates using disparate methods. Ron finds solace through a new, fanatical church—and a flirtationship with a perky coworker (Alison Pill)—while Janice agonizes over going back to work at a big-box store, cleaning out Eric’s room and a prospective meeting with the bereaved mothers.

“Eric LaRue delicately handles the complexities of parenthood commingled with tragedy, and emerges as one of Tribeca’s finest offerings, courtesy of Judy Greer’s tour de force performance,” writes Letterboxd member Josh @ The Movies. (For more about the wonderful—and often underutilized—Judy Greer, check out our other Tribeca 2023 interview with Shannon, Skarsgård and more about actors directing.)

Although Shannon and Skarsgård technically both had small roles in gangster-thriller 13 in 2010, it wasn’t until they shared major screentime in Park Chan-wook’s 2018 miniseries The Little Drummer Girl (co-starring Florence Pugh) that they, in Skarsgård’s words, “kind of fell in love.” But we’ll let them tell that story: without further ado, here’s our new favorite cinema power couple in conversation about their Greek meet-cute, favorite recent rewatches and formative crushes on Jessica Lange and Julia Child. 

MS: With therapy.

AS: ‘Cause this thing is real, my friend. I’m not gonna let you go.

MS: I can’t believe Letterboxd is getting an exclusive here.

AS: Yeah, I’m gonna pull out a ring now.

MS: This is big news: Skarsgård and Shannon!

AS: [Mimes pulling a ring out of his pocket, gets down on one knee and holds Shannon's hand.]

MS: Oh my God! Wow! This is the best day of my life.

AS: [Kisses Shannon’s neck.]

MS: Thank you, honey. Thank you.

What’s a favorite movie that you’ve rewatched recently?
MS: I went to Film Forum a little bit ago because they were showing Raging Bull, which I hadn’t seen since I was a teenager. They show it on the big screen, and I just walked out of there in a state of shock. It’s just one of the most incredible works of cinema ever. You know, everybody loves Scorsese, but those movies ...

So after I saw Raging Bull, I went back and watched Taxi Driver again. King of Comedy’s one of my favorite movies so I’ve seen that, like, twenty times, but I hadn’t seen Raging Bull or Taxi Driver in years. That trio of performances from [Robert] De Niro is astonishing … He’s obviously much older now—a sweet, mild-mannered older man—and to see that period again after all these years just really took my breath away. [To Alexander] Did you think of something?

AS: They sound great. I wanna check out all those movies. They sound really interesting.

MS: You recently rewatched Paddington, right?

AS: Paddington 2 is one of the few sequels that is actually better than the first, I would say. Do you agree?

Yeah, I’ve seen it seven times.
AS: It’s a remarkable film. I did watch—slightly more high-brow than your movies—Romancing the Stone recently. When I was a kid in Stockholm, Sweden, we had something called ‘mysig kväll’. ‘Mysig’ means ‘cozy’, ‘kväll’ means ‘evening’, so it’s like you have a ‘cozy evening’. We would do that every Friday, me and my two brothers, and that would entail going to Number One Video Store and spending two hours picking the movie.

It was hard to reach consensus, ‘cause there’s three of us and we’d have different opinions. Every other week, we’d come home with Romancing the Stone, ‘cause it was the movie where we’re all like, ‘It’s funny and it’s action-packed and it’s cool and it’s in the jungle and it’s Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner—it’s awesome.’ We’d be like, ‘Shall we just? Yeah, Romancing the Stone.’ I don’t think I’d seen it since I was a kid, and it was two hours of pure nostalgia.”

MS: You should remake Romancing the Stone.

AS: It’s impossible because it’s a perfect piece of cinema. You don’t wanna touch that.

It’s still exciting—parts of it are a little dated maybe, but it’s still a good ride. It’s obviously hard for me to objectively say whether it’s good or not because watching it, I felt like I was ten years old hanging out with my brothers again.

Alexander, we’ve interviewed you twice for Letterboxd and you brought up Tootsie both times. That’s one of my favorite movies, so from one Tootsie Pop to another, this is your time to talk Tootsie—I wanna know what interests you about it.
AS: Jessica Lange was my interest in [Tootsie]. What really stood out was it was the first time I was attracted to a woman, and I was very, very young, so I didn’t understand what was happening. I watching it and feeling something in my tummy when I saw her on screen. I couldn’t stop watching her; I’d be like, ‘Dad, can we rewind and watch it again? ‘Cause I really like this movie.’ It’s an amazing film; it’s gorgeous and I regularly rewatch it, not only because of Jessica Lange. Primarily when I was a kid I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, and then years later I realized, ‘Oh, I probably had a little crush on Jessica Lange.’

MS: She played my mom.

AS: I had a crush on your mom.

MS: I had that feeling when I would watch the Julia Child show [The French Chef]. That’s the first time I feeling that feeling in my stomach. When she’s chopping up the meat with that big cleaver… This woman, there’s something about her.

AS: [Laughs.] Close-up of the meat being chopped and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I feel something.’ Maternal.

MS: I know it’s not a movie. Although, Meryl Streep made the movie. Julie & Julia.

AS: It’s not a movie, but it’s a crush.

MS: It’s a crush.