In the series The Danish Woman [+lee también:
crítica
entrevista: Benedikt Erlingsson y Ólaf…
ficha de la serie], now on show at Series Mania, Trine Dyrholm plays Ditte Jensen, a lovely lady who has just moved to Iceland. But Ditte has a past, and that past is called the Danish Secret Service. She can’t help but use her lethal skills once again – this time, on her neighbours. Created by Benedikt Erlingsson, known for Woman at War [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Benedikt Erlingsson
entrevista: Benedikt Erlingsson
ficha de la película] and Of Horses and Men [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Benedikt Erlingsson
ficha de la película], the show was written by Erlingsson and Ólafur Egill Egilsson.

Cineuropa: Recently, I was talking to someone about the Yellowstone phenomenon, and we came to the conclusion that we like seeing characters who refuse to back down. We all have, say, noisy neighbours – usually, we don’t react. Ditte does.
Benedikt Erlingsson: You are right – it’s a play on that figure of “the capable person”. Someone who does what we don’t dare to do. An action hero, a superhero – they are in the same business. We should contact Marvel. She tries to turn it into something positive. She’s changing people and helping them, but can you help someone who doesn’t want to be helped? It’s an issue we are dealing with on an everyday basis, also on a global scale.

She operates within this one block of flats. Did you find it funny that she can only use her skills in a restricted way like this?
Ólafur Egill Egilsson: It makes it more nuanced. It brings more depth to her relationships with these people because they are not just some strangers.

BE: We were wondering how we could categorise her. How would it feel if Pippi Longstocking or Rambo were your neighbours? Or Putin, or some other evil, powerful person? I was also thinking about Voltaire’s Candide, this eternal optimist who sees a world full of misery and tries to do something about it.

She could be seen as a doer, or she could be seen as a “Karen” [an upper-middle-class woman perceived as entitled].
BE: That was the challenge: to introduce a protagonist you want to follow, but whom you are also scared of. There is this idea that main characters need to be sympathetic. But when you look at Icelandic sagas, it’s really not the case! They do terrible things, and you still learn from them. When we tell stories about “bad guys”, we cast charming actors to help us do it. Or we add some childhood trauma because they need an excuse. When we were writing, people would tell us: “We need more insight into her trauma.”

ÓEE: Or: “We need to understand her more.” Instead, we took a chance and decided she’d just have to win the sympathy of the audience. We live in a world of complex problems and complex solutions, and they require negotiation and patience. But maybe people are running out of patience and want to see some results? We have noticed that with this show. They love to see someone who, instead of being civilised and diplomatic, finally tells off the guy who always leaves the rubbish bin open.

BE: They say this in the business environment: “A leader comes in with a good strategy, but culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Maybe that’s the hard lesson in this show: it’s difficult to unite people around one idea. Her warrior methods suddenly don’t work any more.

The first episode is funny because we all know that screenwriting textbook called Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder. Saving a pet makes you root for the character; you go in the opposite direction.
BE: Usually, when someone does something bad to a cat, he or she is a psychopath. But a cat is not an innocent creature!

ÓEE: We also wanted to be completely honest: this is an anti-hero, so maybe don’t trust this person [laughs]. Still, to our surprise, people agree with her a lot, even though she doesn’t stop at the cat.

BE: It’s interesting to see how little we need to be on somebody’s side, even when they commit horrible crimes. Then again, there are so many things about her that I like: she’s a liberal, an environmentalist…

ÓEE: …A feminist, she stands up for equal rights, she’s anti-racist…

BE: …She hates Americans. She has all the right opinions [laughs].

She keeps telling everyone they should speak Danish. There are many local jokes here, although they are clear enough for everyone to understand. Why did you want to add them?
ÓEE: We wanted to be honest about what we see in our local environment, but when she keeps saying Icelandic people should speak Danish, it’s also a take on all these demands for assimilation that all empires have. They say: “Everyone is equal, but we are a little more equal.”

BE: We are not thinking globally when we write, but that’s what they say: local is global. We were a Danish colony, and when I was growing up, I was told that Danish was spoken in “good homes”. Then I was married to a Danish woman for 22 years, and my father-in-law would always tell me what we “owed” the Danes. There is this sense of superiority, but we also respect them. We’re always playing this game.

Trine Dyrholm has a musical past – as a teenager, she came third in the Danish qualifier for Eurovision. Was it her idea to sing and dance at the beginning and end of each episode?
BE: Why wouldn’t we use all of her talents? We would take well-known pop songs and translate them into Danish because Ditte is a cultural cannibal. We have two different ones in each episode: we shot so many musicals! People reveal something so vulnerable about themselves when they dance. We don’t usually get to see that in action heroes.

ÓEE: We always knew she was going to be dancing – the singing came later. She’s a difficult protagonist, but we add all of this, as if to say: “Do you like her now? She’s fun, but just you wait.” We all have a way of expressing ourselves, so what’s yours? How do you dance?