The world of right-wing extremism comes to the surface in a Norwegian thriller series fury. Ine Marie Wilmann (Troll) plays Ragna, an employee at a refugee center in a small town in Norway who hides a dark secret from her colleagues. Ragna unexpectedly meets Asgeir (Kon-Tiki’s Pål Sverre Hagen), a policeman who moves to the city with his daughter to escape a past life he would like to forget.
When a shocking murder turns the city upside down, Ragna and Asgeir find themselves in the crosshairs of a larger conspiracy that spans Europe. He takes them to Berlin, where they discover a plot by a terrorist organization described as “Europe’s 9/11”. Available to stream on Viaplay, fury is Nordic noir at its best, as the thought-provoking series explores far-right terrorism and its potential impact on the world.
In an interview with Digital Trends, Wilmann and Hagen discuss their characters’ motivations in the furyto share his excitement about the show’s global reach and explain how the show’s conflicts mirror real-life events.
Furia, Pål Sverre Hagen as Asgeir and Henrik Mestad as Siem exclusively on Viaplay
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Digital Trends: First I want to get into each of your characters. We’ll start with yours, Ine. Your character is this dark, mysterious woman driven by a rage that you don’t often see. What was your approach to playing these types of characters?
Ine Marie Wilmann: I found it very interesting and fascinating from the first point. I think there are several themes. She is a very nuanced and very layered character. Her job and what she does throughout the series is layered at all points because she’s dealing with so many things at once. You also have this very deep connection to this personal trauma that she’s driven by, but it’s very much connected to this national trauma and this ideology that drives her to rebuild a world that she can live in.
She is very motivated. At first I thought, is this a revenge story? I think it is also a story about how far you will go to do good. How much destruction will occur? When she [gets what she wants], will she then be able to live with herself? So, apart from this work with the character, the theme of the entire series was very fascinating and inspiring to me. It’s a weird way to describe it because it’s so dark and disturbing, but it also influenced the way I worked with the character. The character went so deep into all these topics, into all these online worlds, and it was really fascinating and scary.
Pål, your character is a policeman trying to start a new life with his daughter. You see in the first episode that he has a past life as a special operations officer. What did you see in your character that appealed to you?
Pål Sverre Hagen: I think, as Ine said, it both made sense that the series tries to somehow get into a real situation that affects not only Scandinavians and Europeans, but also Americans, as well as many other places in the world. I’m trying to create a thriller that will entertain you, but maybe also spark a new thought or discussion about extremism in all its forms, how it works and how it affects us every day.
When it comes to the character, I think my main focus there was really the relationship with his daughter and that kind of basic need to protect your child. And of course, he struggles a bit with the fact that it’s not just others who are to blame for being in this situation. He made some mistakes himself, and he continues to make them. I think it’s an interesting thing for a character when you have a lot of problems, and some of them are your own fault.
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
Did any of you model your character after anyone in particular? Have you looked to someone in your life or another movie/TV show for inspiration?
Wilmann: Not in detail, but I followed the work of the Austrian journalist Julia Ebner. From a very early age, she worked undercover in both right-wing extremist environments and extreme Islam, trying to awaken the world to how these different environments feed and influence each other, and how a culture war is going on that I am blind to. I followed her work and tried to emulate her determination to be right. You can see in her face when she talks about these things, that she’s looking at these scary things all the time.
He can’t block them out and live a normal life because he’s looking at this horror all the time. I picked up different things from different people during the research process. I think both Pål and I had to do a lot of physical work which also affected the way we carried our bodies. We tried to find out how a person working in it would behave or look like on world.
You touched on physical preparation. Your characters meet briefly in the first episode, where one defeats the other. If there is a rematch, which character wins the fight?
Hagen: [Laughs] What do you think?
It must be a fair fight next time.
Hagen: Yes, we’ll see. We’ll see what happens.
This must be a unique experience as the first season was filmed several years ago. Usually, when you do a project, you record it, it goes out and then you move on. But this is going into new markets with a new global audience, especially in America. What has this experience been like, living with this project for so long, especially with the next new season?
Hagen: Yeah, like you said, there’s another season coming up. Season 1 seems to be a bit behind us now. I think that both Ine and I were very interested in Gjermund Eriksen, the creator of the series. He had the ambition to somehow dig into this very complex, difficult situation and story [with] all these mechanisms to create a fictional thriller out of it.
Gjermund wants the series to include not only Scandinavia and Europe, but also the US. He opens up so much more in Season 2 because the themes the show runs on are universal. Europe and the USA are very affected by this. Sometimes it’s hard for us to keep up with him because he’s expanding the world of the show all the time.
We made this series before the war in Ukraine, and I think the first scripts for season 2 actually took place in Ukraine, so we had to change that. Now things are moving a lot faster than he could have predicted, although it was pretty interestingly close to reality, and we’re seeing some events taking place in reality that we touch on in the first season.
Wilmann: During the filming of the first season, we were in several locations where things happened in the real world that were also in the script. We said, “This is our script. I can read about [this real-life event] in our scenario.”
Fury | Official Trailer (text)
That’s crazy.
Wilmann: It’s very scary, of course, but it also gives a deeper meaning to what we’re doing, to feel that we’re presenting these themes with the smell of popcorn for them, but still accessible, these thoughts and these themes.
fury is inspired by true events, but may have to be changed to “based on true events” because right-wing extremism seems to be happening as we speak.
Wilmann: It’s so international, all this radicalization. They feed off each other and there are no limits. It doesn’t stop at borders. It moves around the world at all times. In that sense, it is not a Scandinavian story.
Ine, I watched the video before this interview and you said that you knew you wanted to be an actor since kindergarten when you did a fairy tale, Widow fox. Then you have to make a fairy tale/mythological story Trollso you have manifested your entire career in the realm of fairy tales.
Wilmann: [Laughs] That.
Hagen: Now it’s full circle for Ine.
Wilmann: But it doesn’t stop here! You can’t say it’s full circle. There’s still somewhere to go.
Hagen: It’s still open.
Troll became a huge hit on Netflix. It reached number one on the weekly streaming chart.
Wilmann: I think the last I heard, I think it’s about 170,000,000 hours.
That’s crazy.
Wilmann: Yeah, that’s crazy. Pål and I are actually in this miniseries that will also be released on Netflix in early April War sailor. So, very different projects are coming out into the world these days.
Hagen: And it’s fantastic that we can now share those stories with this streaming. It has some challenges for us as an industry, but it also has some incredible opportunities. I think it’s great that we can share our stories no matter where we live. It is very very an inspiring time to work in storytelling.
Furia, Ina Marie Wilmann as Ragna, exclusively on Viaplay
Pål, maybe it wasn’t in kindergarten, but did you have a moment when you knew you wanted to be an actor?
Hagen: Well, I still don’t know.
You’re doing pretty well.
Hagen: I don’t actually know how I ended up [doing what I do], but I enjoy it, I must say. Not always, but sometimes. I really really do it every time it works. It’s hard to make a good TV series or a good movie. There are so many components that have to work together to make it work, but when it does, it’s amazing and such a great experience.
After fans watch the first season, what can they expect from the second season?
Wilmann: Without spoiling too much, there will be travel across borders. Let’s go deeper into Asgeir for your story, Pål. They have different assignments in Season 2 than they did in Season 1. We’re still holding ideologically [themes]they still fight.
Hagen: They sure are.
The first season fury now streaming on Viaplay. Visit the Viaplay site to sign up.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn