Trending:
Alicia Vikander tapped into her own experience with fertility struggles while preparing for her role in The Assessment.
The new sci-fi thriller, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024, focuses on a couple — Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) — in the dystopian near future, as they endure a weeklong visit from an “assessor” named Virginia (Vikander, 36), who puts them through a series of tests to determine whether they are fit to be parents.
But Virginia has a past of her own. And speaking with PEOPLE, Vikander says that one of her “first conversations” with director by Fleur Fortuné, who also had a long road to motherhood, “was about my struggle to get pregnant.”
“That lasted for quite a long time before I had my first son,” remembers the actress, who shares two boys with husband Michael Fassbender, born in 2021 and 2024.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human-interest stories.
The Academy Award winner tells PEOPLE that she remembers “both pressure that I put on myself and the hard times I went through, but also the kind of dedication” to having a child.
“It was almost like an obsession by the end, which I think, after speaking to a lot of other people [who went through it], is something that we all share,” she adds. “So I think even though, of course, this film and story is taking itself to a far extent when it comes to its imagination, it’s still at its core, feelings that I think a lot of people can relate to.”
In a 2022 conversation with The Sunday Times, Vikander spoke about her journey to parenthood with Fassbender, 47, revealing that she previously suffered an “extreme and painful” miscarriage.
“We have a child now, but it took us time,” she told the outlet.
The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!
Vikander’s costar Patel, who is also a dad in real life, tells PEOPLE that the “privilege” of fatherhood and “how wonderful it is” to have kids “made it easier to track backwards” from his own character in The Assessment, who is longing to have a child.
“Imagine if that choice wasn’t yours to make and how painful that is,” says the actor, 34.
Olsen, 36, tells PEOPLE that her experience making The Assessment “opened up a conversation that felt so easy for us all to have these open dialogues of very personal, difficult things that have come up, whether it’s trying to conceive, having a child, how you parent.”
“Also for Fleur, to have her little girl May with us, was really special, as well,” she continues. “Because for Fleur, this was such a personal story, and it almost took her as long to make this movie as it did for her to have a child. I think it was about five years for both.”
“It made me feel many, many things, I think, because of the personal experience we all had together,” Olsen adds.
The Assessment is in theaters Friday, March 21.
Read the full article here
