.png){kind=logo}
Grant Hermanns is a TV News Editor, Interview Host and Reviewer for ScreenRant, having joined the team in early 2021. He got his start in the industry with Moviepilot, followed by working at ComingSoon.net. When not indulging in his love of film/TV, Grant is making his way through his gaming backlog and exploring the world of Dungeons & Dragons with friends.
Sign in to your ScreenRant account
Bill Skarsgård was ready to commit fully to the true-life inspiration of Dead Man's Wire, but director Gus Van Sant had other plans for the star. The IT franchise vet stars in the new crime biopic as Tony Kiritsis, a man in 1977 Indianapolis who took hostage a mortgage broker believing him and his father's company to have defrauded him and cheated him out of wealth on a piece of property. Strapping a shotgun to the broker's head with the eponymous trick device, Kiritsis sparks a media frenzy with his demands and the police's efforts to de-escalate the situation.
Alongside Skarsgård, Dead Man's Wire features a star-studded cast that includes Stranger Things' Dacre Montgomery as Kiritsis' hostage, Richard Hall, Cary Elwes as Detective Michael Grable, Industry's Myha'la as aspiring TV journalist Linda Page, Oscar nominee Colman Domingo as Fred Temple, based on real radio newscaster Fred Heckman, and Al Pacino as M.L. Hall. Having made its world premiere at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival, the film has garnered widespread acclaim from critics, currently sitting at a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Now, as the film gears up for its wide release, ScreenRant's Grant Hermanns interviewed Bill Skarsgård to discuss Dead Man's Wire. The star opened up about his initial reservations about how best to play Kiritsis, why director Gus Van Sant had him throw out the deep preparation he did to accurately play the figure, and playing the sheer range of emotions he experienced during the 63-hour situation.
Gus Van Sant "Implored" Skarsgård To Let Kiritsis Go While Filming Dead Man's Wire
When he was approached to play Kiritsis for Dead Man's Wire, Skarsgård found himself in a unique position as it wasn't the first film to chronicle his infamous hostage situation. The 2018 true-crime documentary, Dead Man's Line, also took a deep dive into the 63-hour event, utilizing archival news footage, crime-scene recordings and interviews with some of the detectives and journalists involved at the time.
Even more notable is that Dead Man's Wire writer Austin Kolodney turned to his predecessors, documentarians Alan Berry and Mark Enochs, for help in researching and compiling the various information needed for the film's script. This all ended up coming in handy for Skarsgård, who recalled "Austin put in links" in the script so Skarsgård could watch videos of "the real incident and how it happened" while reading the material.
However, even as the IT star found himself presented with a wealth of archival footage and information to pull from, Skarsgård confessed "I just didn't really see myself as the real guy," which put a slight damper on his excitement about getting to work with Van Sant and his love for the script.
"He was so much shorter and looked so different and looked older," Skarsgård explained. "I'm like, 'Okay, this is the reality of it. It feels very distracting in my process.' He was so idiosyncratic that it was like I wanted to capture the real guy as much as I could, but I was like, 'Oh man, it just feels so different, and I'm not sure if I'm right for it.'"
As he found himself "going back and forth" on the role and revisiting the recordings of the real Kiritsis in order to "find his cadence and his rhythm," Skarsgård had a conversation with the Good Will Hunting director about some of his doubts. Van Sant assured Skarsgård that he was still confident in his ability to play the part while also telling him to "forget the real guy and make your own Tony," wanting his star to do away with the fairly obsessive preparation he was taking.
The two-time Oscar nominee also went on to point out to Skarsgård that the goal of the film was not to be a "recreation of events," but instead to be making a movie offering an artistic look at the situation. This, in turn, let the actor start "getting ownership of Tony" and how he could play the figure.
Even still, Skarsgård admitted "it was kind of distracting" trying to put aside his research, particularly noting the real Kiritsis' physical appearance as being "so different than mine" and leaving him to wonder if he could play him. However, with Van Sant's words in mind, the star turned to "the real care of the real Tony" for his performance, looking to "channel as much as possible" into his intense range of emotions in the 63-hour hostage situation.
The way he spoke and a lot of the dialogue is verbatim, the things that he said, you could literally listen to him saying the lines that you're prepping. [Chuckles] I've never really quite had that before. Closest to it is a show [titled Clark], in which I played Clark Olofsson, who was a bank robber in Sweden. There were a couple of interviews that we had in that where Clark was being interviewed, and there were actual sort of verbatim things that he had said. So I did do it for that one, as well.
Skarsgård went on to explain that one of the biggest challenges for him in playing Kiritsis was the very specific cadence he had, which was even more "particular" than a general Midwest accent would be. Feeling there was "something about that that you needed to channel," that also opened the door to play his Dead Man's Wire character and "do justice to the real guy" and use him as "an inspiration and guide through it all."
Given the film serves as a two-hander for him and Montgomery's characters and aims to offer a very nuanced take on Kiritsis' actions, Skarsgård definitely sought to maintain his character's motivations without turning him into a villain. Acknowledging that he's "done very abstract horror monsters" — referring to his time as IT's Pennywise the Clown, Hemlock Grove's Roman and Nosferatu's Count Orlok — the star expressed feeling Kiritsis was "incredibly human to me" and one that has "a lot to relate to."
Recognizing his character is "angry" and being pretty sure he was "in some sort of manic state" during the hostage situation, Skarsgård also felt that Kiritsis is "someone that has never been taken seriously" in his life. Therefore, Kiritsis looked to be taking advantage of his "63 hours of fame" to utilize his "access to this huge audience" to get his side of his life's story out to the world, which would also be his downfall.
Ultimately, that led to the end of the whole hostage drama, where they just figured out, "Let's build this guy a stage, and he won't be able to resist it." And sure enough, that was the case. So everything from that to the anger, to feeling like someone that's just gone through a pressure cooker their entire life, and then this is their sort of moment of exploding. I'm pretty sure he did not sleep much, if at all, those three days that he had Richard captured. So, that plays into it too.
Reflecting on playing the "very agitated" headspace Kiritsis is in over the course of Dead Man's Wire's plot, Skarsgård found it to be "really fun as an actor" getting to tap into the ever-changing moods of the figure. Denoting how people in Kiritsis' state "tend to jump from emotions real quickly," he even pointed to the scenes involving Domingo's Fred Temple, in which "he can go from happy to almost happy, to crying the next second, to full-on rage the third."
Though adding a layer of "unpredictability" for the film's plot, Skarsgård also acknowledged that it is "scary if you view it from the perspective" of Montgomery's character, "who has the shotgun around his neck" and never knows what his fate may be by the end of the tense hostage situation.
Dead Man's Wire is now in theaters!
Release Date January 9, 2026
Runtime 105 minutes
Director Gus Van Sant
Writers Austin Kolodney
English (US) ·