If you haven’t been watching the Apple TV+ series Murderbot, in which Alexander Skarsgård plays a rogue android who’d always rather be watching its favorite TV shows than doing its job protecting incompetent humans, it’s time to catch up on it right now, please. If you don’t, you won’t be able to fully appreciate the scene-stealing addition to its cast, Anna Konkle, who plays a survivor of a doomed planetary reconnaissance mission (or so she claims) named Leebeebee. Konkle is best known for Pen15, the show where she and her best friend, Maya Erskine, both then 20-something, played 13-year-olds living in the year 2000. It’s great to see her onscreen again in a role that makes full use of her comedic talents. Co-star Skarsgård told Vanity Fair that he “ruined so many takes because Anna is just liquid funny.” We spoke over Zoom last week, before her first episode aired.
In the meeting where I pitched this interview, I started laughing so hard I couldn’t talk because I was thinking about the scene where your character Leebeebee asks, “Does it have a pee-pee?” I wondered how much of that was scripted and how much you were able to improvise.
Creators Chris and Paul Weitz were of the mindset, “Let’s do a few takes that are totally as scripted and then you can kind of throw in what you want as we go … Do what you want on this last take or whatever.” The pee-pee part was fun because they just let me go on forever. In the script it said something like, “Leebeebee says something about his penis,” and then there was going to be a fast-forward from Murderbot’s perspective of what she’s saying because he doesn’t want to hear about that. I just started going on and on about everything sexual with him and how they would have sex together.
So it wasn’t scripted, but it was so funny that they had to keep it in.
They’re really great at making everyone feel ownership of their character and what they bring to the table, and there’s absolutely no micromanaging. It’s the ideal situation, especially when you’re playing something a little off, so you’re not in your head like, Well, was that too fucked up? So that was fun. I got to be my full freak.
Welcome back to being your full freak!
I know. I did think, after doing this, How do I tell my team that I only want to do really freaky characters? It’s a hard thing to define. You just don’t get to play a lot of eccentric characters these days, or I don’t.
Walk me through a little bit what the sets are like. I couldn’t tell. It didn’t seem like you were just with a green screen and everything was CGI. It seemed like there was some built environment there.
A lot of the sets were on stages, but it was definitely the first time for me that I’d been in a built spaceship that’s moving when you’re acting. I was like, Oh my God, luxury. A lot of the outdoor spaces were in granite quarries in Canada, so it was really otherworldly. There’s a scene where Noma Dumezweni is crawling up a hill of a granite quarry, and it was pouring rain, and she was doing that for five hours, and it was really superhero status. Those were the main two locations that I was there for. In one of those locations, I actually broke my ankle.
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Oh my God, what?
It’s the scene where they find Leebeebee for the first time, and I’m asking for help and running. So I was supposed to fall down the rock. I kept falling down the rock, and then I really fell down the rock. It was the last scene of the last day of my shooting. It was a very slight break. I was like, “I’m good. Let’s do it again.” I hope they used the take where I broke it.
Let’s talk about the scene where Leebeebee kisses Murderbot. It’s such an amazing moment in the show, and I think especially for fans of the books who just have this really, really deep understanding of the fact that to Murderbot the most disgusting and off-putting thing in the world is human sexuality.
The kiss felt like … Leebeebee has a wandering mind and a fascination with Murderbot. Perhaps in her day-to-day life, she never really gets to be outside her indentured-servant role. She doesn’t get to be impulsive. Here, she gets to act on that.
It was the first scene I shot. I get on set and I’m trying to be a professional actor about it. Several people that I had not met before were like, “Yeah, you get to kiss Alex, are you nervous?” And I was like, “No. I mean, we’re acting,” trying to make a joke. I meet him for the first time and I’m trying to be cool, and we’re on set, and he’s so nice and so kind and funny and just making me feel so comfortable. So I’m in the middle of talking to him and I’m thinking, I am cool, I guess. Then the makeup artist came over and started working on my character, and I guess she just has residual boogers at all times. I’m mid-talking to him and she starts just putting mucus here and here. It was humiliating the whole time because it was just always there, and the crew wasn’t aware of it, so I was constantly like, “This isn’t real. Just so you know.”
Well, that kiss is pretty close to how I would behave if I was ever left unattended in a room with Alex. Why not? Shoot your shot.
Yeah, why not? I mean, there’s a childlike quality to her. I don’t know what that says about me. I just always need something very childlike in my characters. I’m like an unhinged baby in an adult body.
