Thursday 1 September 2011

Sofie Gråbøl on the writer of The Killing

200th POST

In July I was lucky enough to interview Danish actress Sofie Gråbøl in Copenhagen for an article in this month's Voyager. The conversation revolved around the hit series in which she stars, The Killing, including some lovely jumper philosophy. When we met, shooting was about to start on a third series in Denmark; The Killing II (pictured) is set to screen on BBC4 after the current repeated run of the first series.

After the rigours of the original, 20-episode season she said she'd mainly been tempted to revisit her character, detective inspector Sarah Lund, by the collaboration with writer Søren Sveistrup. Gråbøl was great company; here's what she said about working with Sveistrup, with whom she'd also previously worked on an Emmy award-winning romantic comedy called Nikolaj and Julie:

'I enjoy acting and the basic work but I also enjoy the whole skeleton of the character. Those meetings we have - the collaboration I have with the writer - are really interesting, they’re just as interesting as the actual acting. I like the construction of the character and the script, building the whole skeleton of emotions and he allows me to be involved in that.

'It works in the way that he writes a script that's almost finished and then we gather and we read it and the actors have meetings with him afterwards and you can say whatever you want, you can comment on whatever you want. It allows him to be in a constant dialogue with the project and to me that's extremely fulfilling.

'To me it's a sign of great self-confidence that you are so confident in yourself that you allow other people to influence [you]. You pick the good ideas. People who aren't confident, if you're insecure, it's very easy to say no. To say yes, to be open is frightening at times - also in my work, to throw yourself into a direction you’re not sure of. To me he's very good at that.'

UPDATE The Killing II screens on BBC4 from 19 November 2011.

Related: tracking down Danish band Gangway (100th post)

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