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“I wasn’t familiar with Martha’s novellas, so I just heard the title and I heard ‘sci-fi,’ ” Skarsgård says, speaking over the phone from Los Angeles.

She wasn’t convinced by the initial pitch at first because sci-fi hasn’t traditionally had a lot of major roles for actors of color.

“I love to watch sci-fi. But I wondered: Who am I going to be in this sci-fi world?”

“What works is that it has this instant combination of being a big, action-packed sci-fi show, but it’s also a workplace comedy.”

He is due to play the lead in the Apple TV sci-fi series Neuromancer, adapted from William Gibson's 1984 novel.