Alicia Vikander tackled playing 2 'distinctly different' characters in 'The Green Knight' with help from the film's costuming and makeup departments

• Alicia Vikander opened up about playing two separate roles in a new interview with Insider.
• In "The Green Knight" (out Friday), Vikander plays both a peasant woman and a seductive lady.
• She said part of what drew her to the film was the "mirror aspect between the characters."

Alicia Vikander opened up about what went into playing two contrasting roles in the new A24 fantasy drama "The Green Knight."

In the David Lowery film, out Friday, Vikander plays Esel, the on-again, off-again lover of Sir Gawain (Dev Patel), as well as the mysterious, seductive Lady who Gawain encounters during his quest to find the titular knight.

"A lot of prep went into finding out what bridges these two characters," Vikander told Insider in a recent interview. "But also making sure that I made two very distinctly different roles."

The "Ex Machina" actress credited the costume design and makeup for each of her characters with helping her to create two separate personas.

"From quite early on, I came in and started to see the way these characters could look differently. I was amazed to see the costumes, the references that they had started to work on, and the makeup," she said.

"The physicality and the way these characters spoke, and hold themselves - it's something that I also worked on quite early," Vikander added.

Although Esel and Gawain spend lots of time together, he's drawn to the elusive Lady upon meeting her.

And while Vikander said she wasn't given a specific reason why she'd be playing the two characters, she did praise Lowery's script for helping her to discover the similarities between them.

"It felt like every time we read [the script], you made new discoveries and could see more in depth - more levels," the actress explained. "And one of the things was that it had this mirror aspect between the characters, beyond the page."

The way Vikander interpreted the story, she suggested that it might be Gawain's thirst for adventure - highlighted in the late 14th-century poem that served as the film's source material - that blinded him to the love offered by Esel, and made him more attracted to the mysterious woman (even though, as evidenced by Vikander's dual casting, they share physical similarities).

"Maybe Gawain chooses not to - or he can't see - the resemblance, that the woman that he later admires looks very much like the woman that was already there, back home," Vikander told Insider.

The "Danish Girl" actress also had a lot of praise for her costar Patel, saying he made everyone on set feel "at ease."

"He's really funny and has an amazing spirit," Vikander said. "So even though we spent a lot of our days filming in very rainy, very cold landscapes... it always felt like it was a lot of warm and joy around."

"The Green Knight" premieres Friday in theaters. You can watch the trailer below.