Leading Man Joel Kinnaman On Authenticity, Facing Fear & Honoring Your Creative Calling

Storytelling is our most powerful device to better understand the human condition. The creativity required to craft and share a story well told is both an art and a way of being. Joel Kinnaman is one such being. A star ascendant on screens big and small whose Hollywood career was born with his incendiary turn in 2011's The Killing, kickstarting leading roles in films like The Suicide Squad and RoboCop, and television shows like House of Cards, Hanna, and For All Mankind. The occasion for this conversation is Silent Night. Featuring Joel as a grief-stricken father hell-bent on revenge, it's an absolutely unhinged, John Woo-helmed vigilante actioner with a unique twist: zero dialogue—a conceit that showcases Joel's physicality as a performer. This conversation canvasses Joel's unique path from a wayward youth in Stockholm to one of Hollywood's most in-demand leading men. It's about his creative process, the importance of authenticity, and how his relationship with fear frames the success he enjoys today. Plus: an insane Nicholas Cage story and more. This is a fun hang—I hope you enjoy it. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: LMNT: DrinkLMNT.com/RICHROLL AG1: DrinkAg1.com/RICHROLL Faherty: FahertyBrand.com/RICHROLL Timeline: Timeline.com/RICHROLL Squarespace: Squarespace.com/RICHROLL Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  Don't have a plan B. Go all in. There's no other alternative.

• 1:10Rich Roll?

  Please welcome Joel Kinnaman.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  I'm gonna be the president. You're gonna flip me those motherfucking controls.

• 1:17Rich Roll?

  What have you done to me? There's your pep talk. Like, most people in America, my introduction to you was in The Killing. Yo, Beth. How's it hanging? And then, now, here you are, like, the hardest-working man in Hollywood. Like, you're all over the place.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  You have to fall in love with the craft. Finding acting gave me this whole purpose in life. And then I would start getting panic attacks. I would throw up every time before I went onstage. It's like, these fucking demons that are in my head, like, these voices that cripple me, that ruin everything. Like, what is the worst thing that they could experience? That's where everything changed.

• 1:59Rich Roll?

  If you have that facility to not shy away from those things, then you're in this sort of curious-growth mindset way of approaching your life, right?

• 2:07Speaker 01

  This was a very good conversation. Did I find my therapist?

• 2:14Rich Roll?

  So nice to meet you. Thanks for coming out here, dude.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Nice to meet you too, yeah.

• 2:19Rich Roll?

  I remember, this must have been maybe three or four years ago, I saw a video of you like doing some cold plunging with Wim Hof.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 2:31Rich Roll?

  And I think that was up at, was that up at Jeff Krasnow's place, commune, up in Topanga Canyon?

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Well, yeah, cuz I did it a couple of times. We did it at my house once, on my rooftop. But then I think that you might have seen.

• 2:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cuz I was invited to that. I know Jeff and he was like, "Wim's here, come on up, we're gonna hang out." And for some reason, I couldn't go. And then I saw those videos. Louis Howes was there. And I was like, "Damn, man." Cuz I was really wanting to meet you and took a couple more years. But here we are, so. This is cool, dude. I know that you recently just got back from Jeddah, right?

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, just came back from Saudi Arabia.

• 3:09Rich Roll?

  From the Red Sea Film Festival, out promoting the movie.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  I was promoting the movie. I was also in the jury for the film festival there.

• 3:18Rich Roll?

  With Baz Luhrmann.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Baz Luhrmann, yeah. Epic, epic man.

• 3:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What's that guy like in real, in real life? Is he, he just seems like such a genius artist, but also, you know, that his presentation is almost a caricature of like himself, you know?

• 3:33Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 3:34Rich Roll?

  He's like a living embodiment of his movies.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  But he's like, he's always on the move. He's always doing, you know, and like extremely fashionable, like, you know, like the latest fashion. He's a, he's a cool cat.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  But I really enjoyed spending the time with him and the time that we got to spend in the jury there. Cuz we saw some incredible films. It was actually a really, really good experience being there. It was a, like, it's a country where, you know, movies and music were illegal six years ago. Six years ago, women couldn't drive. And we were sitting in a movie theater, like an open theater with, you know, it was a hardcore, like Pakistani feminist movie with like a trans lead. And we were in the audience with maybe 30 women that were wearing like niqab, you know, where you only see the eyes.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  And people were like cheering at the end of the movie. And you're just looking around and it's like.

• 4:32Rich Roll?

  Times are changing.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  This is cool, yeah. Like a really, really special energy among like young people and, you know, women artists. Yeah, it was, it was, um, it was a pretty profound experience being there, I gotta say.

• 4:46Rich Roll?

  I've been to Jeddah, I've been to a couple of places in Saudi Arabia and there's few places that you can travel to where you're like, wow. Like I'm far from home. Like it is different here, you know? I mean, that was a number of years ago. It was probably like 2015, 16, something like that.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, but I mean, that then it was, you know, that was closed.

• 5:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Closed Saudi Arabia, very different place now.

• 5:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And there's like a thriving, like growing film, like industry there? Cause I know, weren't, aren't you, weren't you supposed to do this Neil Blumkamp movie?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:19Rich Roll?

  Like NEOM?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was supposed to be shooting it right now, actually.

• 5:22Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  So it got bumped. I mean, hopefully they'll put it together, but, uh, for, for next year, but we'll see. Yeah.

• 5:29Rich Roll?

  The NEOM thing is wild.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  The, I mean, the whole, their whole, like, their whole thing is pretty wild, you know? Also what they're doing, that they're putting so much into education. I mean, that kind of what sets them apart. I mean, I don't wanna sound like I'm a part of the Saudi.

• 5:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like tourism bureau, like, you know, spawn con here.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. They have to pay me a lot more for that, but, um, no, but it's, uh, you know, they have the population base to really have these, to have a domestic industry that kind of clashes with the, the outside, uh, world that's coming in. And, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's pretty cool. Yeah.

• 6:12Rich Roll?

  Um, so you're here mainly cause Silent Night is out.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:17Rich Roll?

  This movie is fucking unhinged, dude.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:20Rich Roll?

  It must've been a trip, uh, to shoot that movie. And I think it's, um, I mean, the movie's great. It like fires on all cylinders. It is, you know, just this sort of straight revenge, vigilante, you know, story about this guy with the special twist of there being like zero dialogue.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:41Rich Roll?

  With the great John Woo, who hasn't made a movie in the US in like 20 years, right? Um, how did that come together? I mean, the invitation to like star in a movie by John Woo must've been a cool experience for you.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it definitely was.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  And then it being paired with, you know, sort of being in some ways like a cinematic experiment, you know, that there's not a single line of dialogue in the movie. So I wanted to, you know, take a, you know, I started out and as a theater actor and sort of in Swedish cinema and then I moved over here and, and over the course of my career here, I've done more and more action or, you know, I've done some action and I enjoy that, that part of it, but I always want to find some action thing that is also paired with like real drama and, and then, you know, a real acting challenge. So I don't feel like that part of it sort of stagnates. And so this, you know, on its face really had

• 7:42Speaker 01

  both of those elements to get to work with one of the, you know, legendary directors of, of film and then also having that element of there's no dialogue in it and you have to, it's just a, I mean, it actually, it, it was one of those things that, that really taught me to be, you know, taught me new things about my craft.

• 8:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  And that's, that's kind of hard to find when you've been doing it for as long as I have.

• 8:08Rich Roll?

  You would think that not having any dialogue that you would have to internalize and memorize would make it easier, but it's actually the opposite, right? Like you have to be super aware of all of your like sort of micro expressions and everything because you can't fall back or rely upon words to convey anything.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  But it's also, you know, I, I realized that, you know, sometimes you use your voice to, to sort of get away with maybe not having quite the emotional charge that you need for a scene, you know, you know, and it's like, and you kind of bullshit your way through it. You see the, you see that expressed best in like American TV, you know, like shitty TV. I call it American whisper acting where it's like, how could you do this to me, man? And it's it's sort of like what actors do and you know I've been guilty of that as well where you sort of you put an effect in your voice to make it sound more emotional. But you don't really have the emotional charge there.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  And when you tell the story with no dialogue and you have to do that, but it's just your eyes and your face. It just becomes flat if you don't have that. So I I I realized that the sort of the process of. You know, spinning up my emotion and and the inner dialogue and the the pace of my thoughts. Uh, had to be much, much more higher and intense where it had to be the sort of pure. Uh, for the the expression in the face and the eyes to to come out and tell the story. Because I I didn't have that crutch of a.

• 9:40Rich Roll?

  Did you did you recognize that in the process of doing it? Or did you have that awareness like going in that you were gonna have to deliver on that level in order to convey some level of authenticity?

• 9:51Speaker 01

  No, it was like day one where I was like, oh shit.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  I really gotta work here. Yeah, I'm not I'm not gonna get away with anything.

• 10:00Rich Roll?

  But you went into it with a with a sort of plan to go full method on the whole thing, right? And not talk at all and that kind of fell apart.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it it it did fall apart pretty quickly. I am. Yeah, it was a it was sort of a funny story with with me and my my fiance. I was like prepping her. I I told the story on Fallon. I was like, I was I was prepping her, you know, like I'm I'm I think I'm gonna go like full method on this. It's an opportunity to to really like go in deep and then, you know, because I've been. I I play I play around with that kind of concentration, not not like the idea of method where you're. We in character the whole time and you sort of force the whole crew to call you like Mr. President like I I've never done that. But to sort of stay in the concentration of the character for the duration of the shoot.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  And it's it's more to just kind of. Spend time in the, you know, the physicality and the voice of the character. You get more practice of it. I, I have done that sort of for, for, for some projects and it has its pros and its cons.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  So I was like, this, I think this one, I'm gonna go like even deeper. I'm just gonna be, you know, silent for the whole shoot to just like really harness that energy. And, and I was like, and that means that, you know, I'm gonna do it for the whole shoot, you know? So I'm not gonna be able to talk to you. We're, we're not gonna talk on the phone. And she's like, what, what the fuck are you talking about? You're not gonna talk to me? Do you mean you're not gonna call me for two months? I'm like, yeah, I am an artist. Yeah. This is what I do. And we had our talk with my, with our, our relationship coach, Mark. Everyone needs a mark. Yeah. And so I, I had her all prepped up and she was like, okay, like I, you know, I wanna be there for you and,

• 11:48Speaker 01

  and for your process and you know, this is gonna be really tough for our relationship, but let's do this. And then, and then, like, I didn't even last, like, I landed in Mexico City and like called her before I went through immigration.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  This'll start when I get to set. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So, but it's, it's also like the, the real of the story is I also

• 12:16Speaker 01

  very early realized that if I step back and, and have like sort of a singular process where I'm only focused on my performance, I was, I, I was quickly convinced that the movie would suffer from that because like, especially when you have a role that, where the narrative of the film is the character arc, you're so integral in the whole storytelling apparatus and there's so much that you can add. And, and also, you know, film is a collaborative process. And, and if you have a singular process like that, you're gonna cut out all the other artists that are on set,

• 13:00Speaker 01

  all the other artists that are behind the, the scenes that are also there and ready to sort of contribute with their art to make this collective art piece. And and then you just make it about yourself. And so it's it's a it's a it's a it's a loss in that sense. You know, you lose a lot. And and I realized that like, no, I need to really be a leader on on this set.

• 13:22Rich Roll?

  Well, you're a producer on the movie also, right?

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, that that's not so important for this. Um, but but but yeah. But but it's also, you know, the John is sort of, he's like a quiet, reserved, you know, like he he he speaks with a very low voice. And um, so then there becomes other, you know, voices that are strong. It can be like the first, the the first assistant director that sort of runs the show. And and overall, the tone of the set can shift and and become something else. And that tone can seep into the film as well. So for me to like, kind of step out of it, then I I can't add my. For me, it's really important like to to create a good vibe on set. And then to to have as many people sort of feeling creative as possible.

• 14:10Rich Roll?

  Well, when you're the lead, you set the tone for everybody, right? And if you're brooding in the corner and not talking to anyone, like, what does that do to the like, you know, the esprit de corps of everybody else? And then also, if you want to get feedback from Woo on your performance, you're gonna have to talk to the guy.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  I know. It was the dumbest idea to be quiet. I don't know why, like, I'm glad I came to my senses really quick. It would have been an absolute disaster.

• 14:37Rich Roll?

  Um, there's a lot of like sort of shared DNA with this movie with like, you know, the Wick series. There's and there, look, there's no, there's no Wick without Woo. Like John Woo, you know, sets the stage and the template for everything that we love about John Wick.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 14:51Rich Roll?

  Um, but in that kind of shared sensibility, these fight sequences are are like really grounded in reality. You know, like, they're not, you're not a superhero, you know, like, you're actually fighting. The choreography feels realistic. It doesn't feel, you know, maybe it's heightened a little bit, but it doesn't feel like it's not something that wouldn't actually happen because you're not intended to be, you know, any kind of superhuman person. You're just an average dude doing it. Um, but the training had to be intense. I mean, you get this great montage and you get, you know, like the whole, the whole, the whole rocky thing and like, you know.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  I saw it more as Team America.

• 15:29Rich Roll?

  But like, what was that like getting ready to like, you know, be able to? Show up with your shirt off like that.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, the key is you take all the steroids and then you do three pushups every morning, you know, but really strong.

• 15:42Rich Roll?

  Lots of videos, is Joel Natty or not? Like, you know, every time there's some guy, there's videos like, what's the protocol?

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:50Rich Roll?

  What's the reality of like the Hollywood trainer culture?

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, um, you definitely, uh, you know, vitamin T and then, uh.

• 16:00Rich Roll?

  Okay, you heard it here.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I've sort of figured out how I like to train and when you've done it a couple of times, it's sort of, it's kind of, it becomes kind of silly, the whole sort of shirtless scene, you know, I feel silly, you know, putting so much.

• 16:21Rich Roll?

  Get the arm butter out.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  But, you know, for this, it was an important, um, you know, it's important to show that, you know, the transformation because he is this sort of, but in reality, you know, nobody would look like that, you know, from training in your garage, you know, that because that's mostly diet and, you know, vitamin T.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  But yeah, it's, um, you know, when you've done it a few times, I know how to just, you know, kind of train and eat.

• 16:56Rich Roll?

  You look like that for like 24 hours.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly, that's what it is. And, um, but then when it comes to all the stunt training and, and that work, you know, that's sort of an accumulation of skills, I guess, because I've done a few action movies over the course of the years and, and I ended up working with the same people a lot.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  So, you know, because we've been working for several years for this one and this was sort of when my producer's side sort of came into it, I was able to, you know, bring this whole sort of stunt team into this and the fight team at least and, um.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  And because, you know, the guy that I was playing wasn't any kind of specialist or martial artist or didn't have any skills. The way that we wanted to make it exciting was to make the fights like really frenetic and messy. And so me and Jeremy, Jeremy Marina, who was the fight coordinator on this, who was also a fight coordinator on the WIC movies. And he's gonna, you know, be a great action director in his own right. We had this idea that we were gonna, we were gonna create the fights and we really didn't want it to look choreographed. And the way that we wanted to get away from that was to sort of, to create these sort

• 18:23Speaker 01

  of anchor points of choreography where, you know, like a couple of moves, you know, that this gets slammed up against the wall, but then, you know, then he gets loose and gets all the way over there. And then the way that we get there is sort of improvised and it is frenetic. And the hard thing that can be with doing that is that most stunt performers, they're trained to be very careful with the actor and that's where it can look a little soft. And so I, like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is one of my passions in life. So I would train a lot with the, with the guys I was, you know, working with and we

• 19:06Speaker 01

  would do some light Muay Thai sparring as well. So we became really comfortable with, you know, training with each other. So when it came to the more improvised parts of the fights, we were sort of comfortable with enough with each other to sort of turn up the intensity in those moments and, you know. And you have these scenes where I was working with this guy, Vinny, we did this fight sequence with, in the script, it's like the suited man, it's the guy that I take captor and take captive in the beginning. And we have, we had a really cool fight scene in there. But, you know, it was one scene where he was like, you know, like pushing my face up and I looked at the monitor, I was like, Vinny, look, like your fingertips are not

• 19:49Speaker 01

  like, they're sparing my face, you know? You can see it, like you gotta like, you gotta dig. So it was a lot of me sort of pushing the stunt guys to like not go easy on me.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:03Rich Roll?

  But if you're grappling with them, then they know where that edge is, how far they can push you.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I took many unconscious on occasion.

• 20:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And then on top of that, there's all the driving stuff, like, so you're doing, it, it looks like it's you in the car doing all that.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  And not all of it. I had a-

• 20:22Rich Roll?

  All the, all the drifting and all that kind of stuff?

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I was, they, they taught me how to drift. And so I can do some shit, but, but then I had, you know, Jeff, who was my, my driving double, who was like a wizard on the wheel. He was doing, you know, some of the wider shots and, and, um, yeah, so it, there, there's a combination, you know, there, there's, there's a level to what, what I can do, but I, well, I was doing quite a bit. I, I, I have some funny videos where, where, you know, because we, we were practicing for, for a long time. And so, uh, yeah, we put John in the car once while we were rehearsing and, uh, we thought it would be funny and, uh, and I drove John around and, uh-

• 21:08Rich Roll?

  Just spinning out with him, so?

• 21:10Speaker 01

  I did. I started drifting a little bit and he was like, okay, good. Go back.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  He was like-

• 21:18Rich Roll?

  That's wild.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Not fun. You don't like that at all.

• 21:22Rich Roll?

  Um, on the day to day, like, jiu jitsu is your jam? Like, what's the, what's the, like, wellness, fitness routine, just on a normal day when you're not prepping for a movie? What does that look like?

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Well, for me, it, it depends. You know, there's sort of one routine that I have when it's just me living life. Um, and then it's one routine when I'm sort of gearing up for something. And usually it depends on how I want the character to look like, um, uh, you know, for example, when I was sort of preparing for Sympathy for the Devil with, with Nick Cage and then, and then right after that, I was, I was preparing for the fourth season of For All Mankind. I was, uh-

• 22:09Speaker 01

  For for for season of For All Mankind, I'm playing seventy two years old.

• 22:12Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  So I had this idea that I need to lose a lot of weight. Um, so my goal was to lose thirty five pounds. Um, it's just the the sort of the neck and the shoulders, you know, just that's what kind of goes on on older men.

• 22:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  And um, and I was gonna wear this sort of like, you know, fake belly on that one, but I just did, I wanted to get the the top part of my, you know, from my sort of the ribs and up to just look skinnier. Um, so I wanted to lose weight for that and then and then the character uh in in Sympathy for the Devil, I was, you know, Nick was sort of holding me hostage there and uh I the skinnier, smaller I got, I think the better it was for the dynamic. Um, you know, if you felt like that we were at least sort of similar size, it was uh because I'm thinking I'm a little bit bigger than Nick, so you know, the the smaller I got, the better it would be for the dynamic of the film. So there I was on a mission to like lose weight.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Um, but I'm trying to do it, but still be able to train uh just for my mental health.

• 23:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  And uh so so then I'll just be training jujitsu. Uh, because nothing makes me lose weight more than if I just trained. If I just trained jujitsu and do nothing else, then I lose weight. Um, uh, so if if I want to maintain weight or or then I gotta lift weights and train.

• 23:41Rich Roll?

  But you're not doing any crazy fasting?

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I was.

• 23:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was.

• 23:46Rich Roll?

  Did you you so you were able to lose that much weight? Thirty five pounds?

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was I was fasting eighteen to twenty hours.

• 23:52Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:53Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  For almost eight months. It was, yeah, I was.

• 23:58Rich Roll?

  And then you go into For All Mankind and you're sitting in the makeup chair for hours, making you look like an old man.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and then and then I felt like it didn't do as much as I wanted it to do. Um.

• 24:10Rich Roll?

  All that effort?

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like I saw it, it did give a difference, but um.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  But yeah, it was, yeah, I was down to one sixty six. And I'm usually like one ninety five.

• 24:24Rich Roll?

  And you're like six three, right?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's pretty.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  So I'm usually like between, uh, between one ninety five and two hundred. That's where I.

• 24:32Rich Roll?

  Um, I haven't seen the Nick Cage movie yet. I saw the trailer for it.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:37Rich Roll?

  And for some reason, it escaped me like I'm like, when did this come out? Did it come out this summer?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, uh, it was one of those unfortunate things that happened with the strike. So they'd set a release date and we were supposed to do press. We had the press day set. And then, and then the strike got announced and, uh, we were, we, there was an opportunity to do the press right before the, the strike kicked in, like literally like two hours before the strike kicked in. And then Nick felt that it was not being.

• 25:07Rich Roll?

  Not a good look.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Uh, solidarity.

• 25:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  You know, not showing solidarity to it. I was, uh, very open to doing the interview, say, uh, cause, uh, I mean, the strike hadn't started yet. We had two hours, like, I'm very pragmatic with those kind of things. Um, but, um, yeah, so, so we, we, we didn't, we did no press for it.

• 25:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I heard nothing about it.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  And then, uh, and it kind of just got released into the void.

• 25:31Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna watch it now though, cause it looks, it looks pretty wild.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Like it's a tiny movie, uh, but it's basically me and Cage in a car, you know? I got, I had to, I got to experience a lot of cage rage, you know, directly at my face.

• 25:45Rich Roll?

  I can't decide whether that guy is a lunatic or a genius or both, but.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  It's both.

• 25:50Rich Roll?

  There's a pretty strong argument that he's the greatest living movie star that we have. I mean, that guy is like unique in every way. Like, what is he like, what is that like working with him in person?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Uh, it's like just as advertised, you know, like the first day that we rehearse, you know, I, I, we go to his house, me and Yuval, the director, and knock on his door. This is a house in Vegas and he opens up.

• 26:14Rich Roll?

  Is that where he lives? He lives in Vegas?

• 26:15Speaker 01

  In Vegas, yeah. And he opens the door and he's like, hi. And I'm like, hey, and he's got pink hair and then he's like, fuck. I'm like, what? He's like, my cat, my cat ran away. It's my wild cat. It's the third time he does it. And I'm like, oh, okay. And he's like, come in. And then, and then we walk in and, and his house is like, uh, uh, it, it's a little Gothic and, and, and the living room's got this big birdcage and, uh,

• 26:44Speaker 01

  And he's like, here's Hoagie, Hoagie, Hoagie. And he starts yelling at his bird. I'm like, shit, this is so good. He's like, that's Miles. He's my reptile manager. I'm like, OK, what's up, Miles? And then we go down in the basement and then we start rehearsing. And on the first day of rehearsal, he's completely off book on the entire script. He's on his feet rehearsing like full patty. And, you know, it's, we're like 10 days away from shooting a movie. And he's, he has the whole script memorized and just really has a, has a very clear idea of what he's doing with this character. And it's like a wild, you know, it's a wild take on the character.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  And, and it's, I got to, I got to give him an award. And when I was in Saudi, they, they gave him some sort of appreciation award. And, and I had this sort of speech written that I handed in to the producers where I was talking about his acting balls. But apparently they, they didn't want that on Saudi TV. So I had to cut, had to cut that line. But I was like, I was talking, we talked about acting balls and Nick's acting balls are like fucking watermelons. Cause it's like, you know, he never plays it safe, you know?

• 27:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  And, and.

• 28:00Rich Roll?

  He goes for it every time and it doesn't matter what movie it is. He's like balls to the wall.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:06Rich Roll?

  Hundred percent.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  And it's, like the kind of, like he always has such a fascinating, like his, his, his choices are always so extreme, you know? And it, and it, you know, it's risky. It means you can miss, of course, you know, there, there's a bigger likelihood that you can miss. But also that's when you, that's how you create the most memorable characters that have ever been made. And, and, you know, where it's pure genius. And I, like, that's not my approach. I, I'm, I try to find the more.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  You know, subtle way to to tell the I I tried to sort of meld the character with some something of my own. You know, I created a new body language and way of talking and stuff like that, but um but it's a sort of a more subtle way. I I tried to, you know, find the the most subtle way to tell the story. And he's not interested in naturalism and and he says that. So I was I was so fascinated to work with him. I was actually chasing a project to to do with him. Because I I really wanted the experience to to see how he works and like just as advertised and.

• 29:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but he has his own internal logic for all for all of those choices. Like when presser asked, he can tell you exactly why he's doing what he's doing.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:27Rich Roll?

  As extreme as it may be, um but I'm just envisioning you like, you know, in the car with him or whatever take. And he's throwing something insane at you and you've got to figure out how to, you know.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Not laugh.

• 29:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, in real in real time to some unexpected thing that's like off the script.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  He did so many crazy things while we're shooting that movie. It was he had this like improvisations that was like, officer.

• 29:56Rich Roll?

  Now I have to watch it. Is it streaming? Where can you see this?

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I think it's on Hulu. I think it might be on Hulu. He is the best. Uh, I love Nick so much and and I'm so happy that like he exists and and that, I mean, I was pinching myself many times. He he made it like impossible to to to act sometimes, you know, because he would just go into these like really absurd improvisations of him like, you know. Yeah, it's he was like jerking off his like massive uh imaginary dick while the police had just pulled him off. He was like, officer, officer. He was like doing this.

• 30:42Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  This is impossible to have in a movie. And and I think he was a lot of the things he was doing kind of to entertain himself as well. But yeah, he's a he's a genius. Yeah.

• 31:00Rich Roll?

  Speaking of, you know, making more nuanced choices or kind of being intentional about how you inhabit a role, I mean, I think like most people in America, my introduction to you was in The Killing. That was your first truly American kind of introduction.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  No, that wasn't my first job in the US.

• 31:19Rich Roll?

  It wasn't?

• 31:20Speaker 01

  No, it was.

• 31:20Rich Roll?

  It was. Yeah, that's what I thought, right? That's what brought you here from Sweden?

• 31:24Speaker 01

  No, I'd already come here. I came here to sort of to try it out and then I was, you know, doing auditions and...

• 31:32Rich Roll?

  So you were already living here when you got that?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you had done that, what was the other movie that you did that kind of came out right around the same time, the Weinstein Company movie? Where you won, it was a Swedish movie.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:45Rich Roll?

  You got like a best actor.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, Snabba Cash, Easy Money.

• 31:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that was a Swedish movie.

• 31:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  No, so I had, I was working in Sweden and then, and then I moved to the States.

• 31:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  And then I was doing auditions and...

• 32:00Rich Roll?

  You did a shitload of stuff in Sweden before you, before The Killing. I mean, your IMDb is like 10 miles long of all the Swedish stuff that you did before you came here.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  I had an intense, intense career in Sweden. I finished acting school in 2007 and I was on stage for a couple of years in the National Theatre. And then at the same time, I did, I did nine features in 16 months.

• 32:31Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  And I played the lead in six of them. So, so it was like a very intense, and then, and then I moved to the States.

• 32:39Rich Roll?

  And The Killing was sort of the first, it was sort of the introduction to an American audience of like this Scandi noir like genre that now we can all enjoy on Netflix. Like I just, I love watching all the, you know, all these like crime noirs that are all from that part of the world. So dark and, you know, not interested in happy endings and...

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Not at all.

• 33:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and, and The Killing, you know, was definitely that, but your character was almost, on some level, like comedic relief, like the choices that you were making about that guy. It was, it was really riveting, like... You made an indelible impression. You're like, who is that dude? You know, and then now here you are like the hardest working man in Hollywood. You're all over the place, but that must have been, the reception to that must have been pretty cool at the time because that show was a big deal when it aired.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was, it was a weird show because it was, um, you know, it's such a long time ago now.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  And the sort of TV space was so different than, it was like right in the beginning still of the sort of golden era of TV where audiences were, audiences were still sort of steeped in an older, uh, older tradition and had expectations that were different because like the, the first season, the, the, the season finale of the first season of, of that show, uh, created an outrage and people were furious.

• 34:11Rich Roll?

  I don't remember that.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  And abandoned the show because it was a whole season where, you know, you're gonna, they were sort of, they felt that they were promised that they were gonna find out who the killer was in the end of the first season. And then they didn't, you didn't find out.

• 34:24Rich Roll?

  Didn't deliver on that.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  And, um, and people were furious and, and like abandoned the show and it was like, uh, and, and then the second season, uh, was, you know, in the first season, we were sort of like, Marek got nominated and it was, there was sort of like good, and then the second season, it was like just abandoned by critics and, um,

• 34:46Speaker 01

  and, and then, and then it got canceled after two seasons. Um, and then, and then the third season got picked up again. It was actually Netflix's second show that they produced. It was a co-production with Netflix. They'd only done House of Cards.

• 35:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  And then they co-produced the third season of, uh, of, of The Killing together with AMC. And then it got canceled again. AMC canceled it. And then Netflix ended up picking up like an abbreviated uh fourth season of it. So it was a show that sort of really found an intense audience, um but it was canceled twice.

• 35:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  And then and then sort of after the fact on streaming, it really um it it it, you know. I I still like people that sort of know me from that show, they always they're always friendlier to me than than people that know me from other things. There's something with that character.

• 35:42Rich Roll?

  Because well, there was something very endearing about him, as fucked up as he was.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:47Rich Roll?

  You know, like you you were he was he seemed like a good hang, even though he was like chaotic and unstable.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:53Rich Roll?

  And like, you know, in his own weird fucked up way.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I love playing Holder.

• 35:57Rich Roll?

  And that was sort of an interesting transition because that's a remake of a Swedish show.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  A Danish show, Danish show.

• 36:03Rich Roll?

  Oh, it's Danish.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, we used to we owned them for a while, so it's okay, but uh yeah.

• 36:07Rich Roll?

  Okay. Um, but I assume that that then led to, you know, all of these opportunities, like getting noticed in that um opened up the door for you.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I was uh pretty arrogant and uh full of myself there for a while.

• 36:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  And uh, yeah, I uh, cause I there was a while when I was like, just like, just fucking cancel the show already. I want to go make big movies and be a movie star. I don't have time for this shit anymore. And then and then and then but I was glad that at least while I was shooting the show, I I kind of when it came back, I I I did really appreciate um that it was something special. And and also like me and Maray, uh, we got along so well. And I mean, we're we're close friends to this day. And um, and then what was really special with that show too was. I mean, we had so many great directors. There's so many like feature film directors that came in and did episodes.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  But Jonathan Demme, um, the, the, you know, the Silence of the Lam and the legend, he, he fell in love with the show and then, you know, called Vina and asked if he could come direct. And then he directed an episode in the third season and then he ended up directing the series finale.

• 37:30Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  And, uh, and yeah, and he was just a, he was one of those sort of, um, a, a bright genius. Like he was, he was, uh, he had, he, he was like a friendly, friendly genius, you know? He would, every, he was like a son, you know, that like when, when he looked at people, they just kind of like warmed up and, and like blossomed, you know? He, he just had this, he engaged everyone, everyone just, uh, he was a beautiful man.

• 37:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  He died way too soon.

• 38:00Rich Roll?

  Legend. Obviously, when you're early in your career, you're auditioning, you just wanna get jobs or whatever. But now, in the position that you're in now, what is the process? Like, how do you, how do you choose what to get involved with? Like, what are the variables or the parameters that are most important to you when you're looking at a project to decide? Like, is this something I wanna be in or invest in?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, uh, the, the most important thing, I mean, the two most important things are the, the director and the character. Um, I think before I would actually put the director further down and I would put the character first. Um, now though, they're sort of equal and I, and I realize that. I, I think it's also, it's a different, um, it's a different thinking when you're coming up. And, uh, and when you're trying to make a, make a name for yourself than when you're sort of at a level and you wanna make great things. Cause like coming up, it can even be good to, to, you know, have a great role in this sort of semi shitty project because you, you have a chance to shine, you know?

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Um, and you can, like, if, if you're great and everyone else is mediocre or, or, then, um, you know, you'll get noticed. So I think that's sort of how I looked at things when I was coming up. I was, I was like, like if I, if I saw a role, like I know I can make something out of that. And, and it doesn't matter who the director is, like as long as they stay out of my way.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  But then, but then now it's like, it doesn't matter if you're gonna do a great performance in something that is a piece of shit.

• 39:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Because nobody's gonna see it. And so, so now for me, it's a, it's like director, character story. I mean, they're all really, and it kind of has to check all the boxes.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  And then I think, you know, money is number four.

• 39:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. I mean, but the thing is like, you're in an industry where there isn't a ton of agency over what you get to do. But now that you're like this leading man and you're in all these movies and you've established that you can, you know, do the thing and you're bankable in that regard. When you look at the careers of, of so many actors, you know, maybe great and not so great, their legacy or how we perceive them or how we think of them as artists and what their careers mean boils down to the choices that they've made.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:34Rich Roll?

  And some are really good at choosing the right projects. And then they have this extraordinary legacy and this, this like catalog of amazing work. And others who are perhaps equally as talented or as bankable, for some reason their picker isn't as good, or who knows what's going on, or maybe it's just luck. And, you know, look, nobody goes into a movie thinking, you know, trying to make a bad movie. Like, it's almost a miracle when, when a movie gets made, let alone is good. But at this, and there's only so much control you have over that. But you see these people and you're like, oh, if they'd just done this or this, or they hadn't done that or whatever. And then suddenly they're out of the game and their career is on a very different

• 41:16Rich Roll?

  arc or trajectory. So those choices that you make become like really mission critical in terms of, of how you think about your career and the longevity of what you want to do and what you want to stand for as an artist.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, you, you nailed it. It's.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially it's exactly that when you get to that position where you have built up an audience and and people are sort of, you know, you want to create a feeling that, oh, we can go see, you know, a Joel Kinnaman movie and and and it's going to have a certain amount of quality. Like, it might not, it might not always be like a hit, but there's going to be a certain level, like, there's a certain kind of taste that that is, that, you know, that you can deliver in some way. And it comes down to taste and how you pick. But then, you know, there's a lot of variables, of course, so you can't control it all.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  And and at my level, I I I can't control it all. But but, yeah, it's a, and, you know, you also, I work with people as well and and I get their input. And, you know, of course, the decision comes down, it's, I make the decision, of course. But I'm very happy with, like, my manager and my agents. And so, you know, we discuss these things and and you try to, you know, limit the the the probability of of it not being good, you know?

• 42:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  But then, for me, it's also really important that the character scares me a little bit, you know? It's a, because I'm also always focusing on avoiding stagnation, you know, both as a person and as an artist. And so it, you know, that's why I really try to stay away from, you know, playing the same kind of character over and over again. And and it's sort of the the artistic tradition that I come from in Europe, where the highest is always to, as an actor, to, you know, do the most different kind of characters, you know? That's why Nick Cage is like the the the most incredible expression of that. But but but that is that is sort of in me the whole time.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  I'm trying to stay like, you know, 10% outside of my comfort zone in everything that I do.

• 43:40Rich Roll?

  Who's the director that you most want to work with? Who are the, who are, who is like at the top of the list of the people? Like, if you had your druthers?

• 43:51Speaker 01

  You know, of course, Tarantino, you know, it's a he's, you know, been behind so many iconic characters, say the Safdie brothers.

• 44:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Are they, are they still gonna be directing together? I think they're kind of doing their own separate things right now.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Okay. So probably.

• 44:13Rich Roll?

  They're exciting filmmakers though.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, really, really exciting.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  And you see the kind of performance that they get from their actors and they choose, you know, act, you know, they get, what's, what's so fascinating with them and you see that they, they help the actor immerse themselves into the world that they are portraying. So, you know, they get someone like Rob Pattinson or.

• 44:39Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah. What they got out of him in Good Time is insane. That movie is unreal. Yeah.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  I mean, Rob is, you know, becoming one of the, the, you know, he's one of the greatest of our generation for sure, you know, and.

• 44:53Rich Roll?

  And he makes really interesting choices that are counterintuitive.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  I, I've, I've always like really commended him, you know, cause he got super famous with, and was like really, you know, hounded paparazzi famous after the, the whole, his vampire movies. And because he also got, you know, mixed into, you know, tabloid city with, with the girlfriend that he had at the time.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  So he, he, he had that like really high level of fame. So, you know, the, the studios were throwing every spandex suit they could find on him. And he just would not put them on, you know, he, he, he didn't do any, you know, superhero stuff or any, any, anything that would, you know, that other actors would like kind of jump on because you know, it's a, it's this kind of a straight ticket to. A-list level where you can really be bankable for for bigger projects. And um. And he just, he instead went off and did a bunch of strange movies with really interesting directors. So he basically went to film school, yeah.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  And you know Cronenberg and you know all these films that he did and he went to film school and and started working with really interesting artists. And then became a very interesting artist himself, so.

• 46:08Rich Roll?

  And then put on the Batman suit.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  And then he comes back and does Batman. I mean, that's like, that's how you do it. He won, like Rob won.

• 46:15Rich Roll?

  I know, that's pretty funny.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:17Rich Roll?

  Uh, speaking of great directors, I watched um. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo like two weeks ago. I was like revisiting all these Fincher movies, getting ready to watch The Killer. And hilariously, like you're. You're like a staffer at Millennium Magazine in that movie, like in the background. You have like no lines.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  I know.

• 46:35Rich Roll?

  Do you have a single line in that movie?

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Uh. I think I whisper something.

• 46:39Rich Roll?

  Was that before the killing?

• 46:42Speaker 01

  No, it was during.

• 46:44Rich Roll?

  Did you have, did you get edited out? Did you have lines that got edited out of that or whatever?

• 46:47Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I was I was cast for the second and third movie. Um, so that character became a bigger character in the second and third movies. Um, but then they never ended up happening. And then and then Fincher decided that he wanted to introduce the character in that in those scenes, just, you know, just wanted to play some.

• 47:06Rich Roll?

  You're just kind of around. I know, it's pretty funny.

• 47:10Rich Roll?

  Coming from Sweden and living here, uh. What are the kind of cultural differences between the Swedish perspective on, I don't know, life and lifestyle? Versus United States? Like, one of the things, like, we opened this with talking about Wim Hof a little bit, like, it's all about. Cold plunging in sauna here and it's like, well, this goes back thousands of years in Sweden. It must be hilarious to you that everyone's like losing their minds over this?

• 47:36Speaker 01

  I mean, it's great, you know, it's. Also now, when there's so much literature around it and and people understand how good it is for your health. You know, and I, in both in Sweden and Finland, you know. The Swedish and Finnish traditions of also drinking vodka in the sauna, you know, I don't know if that is a real like longevity measure. Um, but um, I mean, I think we have a more sort of stoic um. Approach to life and. And I think, you know, it's really like an east and west thing where

• 48:15Speaker 01

  where I think Sweden is also, you know, pretty far east and and when when someone asks you, you know, like, how you doing and then, you know, it's a very reasonable thing to say like, bad, you know, not good today, you know, just heavy. You know, I just feel like I have a heavy day, you know, just woke up feeling really melancholy. And then that's that, okay. And then and that can be a conversation where so that was like an issue for me when I moved here and I was sort of going to the meetings with Hollywood producers and casting agents and

• 48:54Speaker 01

  in, you know, like bright California and and and, you know, you you sit down in these meetings and to get to know each other and sort of you're intended to like show your personality. And my my approach to that was like, I'm gonna like be who I am, you know, that's that's that's the personality that I have. So that's the only one I'm gonna show. And so when I woke up feeling melancholy on a day and I would go into one of these meetings with, you know, these like bright faced casting agents and they were like, hi, how how you feeling today? How you doing? And I would be like, it's it's okay, you know, I just kind of woke up and and I, you know, I just feel pretty heavy today. I just felt like, you know, you know, I don't know what I'm doing here, you know, what what's what what is this all about? And I'd just be quiet.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  And you just see that their faces just fell, you know, and and I'm like, you know, it's okay, I'm fine, you know, I'm not gonna kill myself, but I'm just you know, just heavy today. How you doing? And then and then it'd be and and then I learned later, like, you know, I I get the feedback like, is is he okay? And and my my manager would be like, you know, you might wanna like brighten it up a little bit. And so I I learned I learned that the the hard way that when they ask, you know, how you doing? It's not it's not a real question.

• 50:15Rich Roll?

  There's a is there a bit? Is this true or false? Like, there's a bit of a tall poppy syndrome thing in in Sweden, right? Like?

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We call it the the law of Yanta, the Yanta law.

• 50:26Rich Roll?

  Yanta?

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know why it's called that, it's just the name.

• 50:29Rich Roll?

  So how does that work with you saying, I'm gonna go to America and be a movie star with your buddies back home?

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, so I think my personality is probably like pretty un-Swedish. And I think I my, I really looked up to the sort of American spirit and of, you know, and I loved how people here kind of celebrates others, other people's success, you know? It's a, it's much less of a sort of like jealous snipiness of like cutting someone down that's trying something different. And so I sort of acknowledged and saw that existing here and I loved that. I thought that this is so much more positive.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  For me, the whole thing of like feeling shitty or being disappointed in someone else's success was always like such a sign of weakness to me. It was like, I don't understand, like, I don't, I'm not like, my house isn't getting, you know, smaller because his house is getting bigger, you know? It's a, so to not be inspired by other people's success and then feeling like shitty and then talking shit about it is like such a, I thought it was such a sign of weakness and sort of that you didn't have the insight that you were kind of embarrassing yourself while in behaving that way.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  So I think I had that analysis down pretty quickly in Sweden. And I, and I remember like, in my group of friends, it was, it was a lot of competition and, and I had a whole group of friends where I felt that, you know, they weren't on my team, you know? They weren't celebrating my success. And I was celebrating theirs and, and I wasn't threatened by them doing well.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  But it wasn't the other way around. So it came to a point where I actually had a, like I broke up with a whole, my whole like older group of friends in Sweden and just like focused on like three or four of those friends.

• 52:48Rich Roll?

  You had done a lot of work in Sweden as a young person. I'm sure, you know, in that country, people knew who you were. And then at some point you like took a break, right? And just traveled like, I don't know if you quit acting, but you're like, I'm done for a while. And you went and did a whole bunch of different things and had weird jobs and stuff like that. Was that like an intentional way of like just getting perspective on, on what you wanted to do? And who, who you wanted to be or what was that all about?

• 53:16Speaker 01

  That was actually before I, I started acting.

• 53:18Rich Roll?

  Oh, it was?

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so it was, I finished, you know, high school or the equivalent in Sweden. And, and then I went to Norway and just had a bunch of odd jobs to save money to go travel. And I, I hadn't made up my mind of what I wanted to do. So I had this idea that I was gonna, I was gonna work and travel for seven years before I made up my mind of what I want to do with my life.

• 53:47Rich Roll?

  Seven years?

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Seven years.

• 53:49Rich Roll?

  Why seven? I mean, it must be like, I'll take a year or something.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I don't know. It was a, that, that's just something I had in my mind. Like my, my whole family is sort of travelers.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Everyone's like been sort of a backpacker. My, my dad is, is a crazy story. But, but even my mom and all my sisters, we've all been, you know, going traveling around the world. And that's been a, you know, a big part of our family culture.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  So, so it was just something I wanted to see the world and, and I had no idea what, what I wanted to do with my life. And I wasn't very confident in anything. I wasn't particularly good at anything. I didn't have any sort of academic. Prospect like cuz I I I kind of fucked up school. So so it was just I just want I was just gonna make money. I was pretty good at like hustling, making money. And and then I was gonna go travel. That was sort of my idea.

• 54:48Rich Roll?

  And how did the acting thing come about then?

• 54:50Speaker 01

  So I'd actually done a TV series when I was ten years old. I had like a childhood acting experience. And my oldest sister, she was an actor, so she sort of introduced that it was a profession. And and then I got this opportunity to do this like TV series in Sweden. So I had I'd had a childhood experience of it when I was ten and then sort of forgot about that. And and then some of my friends were actors. They were like they were going to acting school. There was a couple of them. So I was I had this I had this like childhood experience of it. And and then, you know, I had these friends that were doing it.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  And then after like a year and a half of traveling, I just had this idea like, you know, maybe I'll try that. You know, maybe I'll try that. And then I started working with my friend Gustav Skarsgård. He's Alex Skarsgård's younger brother and Stelle Skarsgård's son as well. And I started working with him. And and he was kind of shaking his head, but but I didn't give up. And then he gave me enough confidence to kind of continue. And then I decided that I was gonna try out for the National Theatre School. And and I worked with this actor.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  With an older actor, I got a hold of an older actor that agreed to like work with me. And and I was working on this this monologue from Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill. And it was this text.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Where like Edmund just finally like goes against his dad and just lets him hear every, every like, you know, all of his, he lets out all of his frustration and anger and sadness at his dad's, you know, failures and not being there or not caring. And, and I'd had my own issues with my dad. And, and it was like, and it was in one of the rehearsals when I was, was working with this text and then something clicked in and the text just like kind of came alive. And it just took over and I got filled with emotion and the words just came flying out in a, in a way that I wasn't really planning them.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  And, and I understood later, like this was the first time I'd gotten flow.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  And, and you know, after the scene was done, I was kind of like panting and just quiet. And, and, and, and you know, of course I understood in some way that like, this is probably not bad. And, and then that actor, Thomas, he was like, okay, listen, you can, you can do this as a profession. But you know, it's gonna be a lot of work, but, but you, you, you can do this as a profession.

• 57:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you got locked in.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That's gotta be an intoxicating feeling though, to know that you can connect with the material in that way and channel something from a flow state based on your experience and some facility for inhabiting a character.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a high, you know, it was a real natural high. And, yeah, and then I got really addicted to that feeling and like was chasing that. And, and then I just became obsessed. And, and it was also, I hadn't really experienced being good at anything before. Like I've been okay, you know, but I was okay at sports.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  But I was never like great at anything. So it was the first time where I like, there's something that just kind of caught me and I felt like I could maybe be good at something. And, and that just changed my whole outlook and view on the possibility of my life. And, yeah, I like started looking at myself with a different.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Like level of potential and respect in a way. And and then I just and then that feeling just it just started like vibrating and then and it just made me be become completely obsessed and I did nothing but it but but focusing on acting and and trying to get as good as possible and.

• 59:10Rich Roll?

  That's super interesting. I you know, to have like a peak experience like that, but also to have the self-awareness, the presence of mind to like recognize that that was a special moment and could perhaps lead your entire life in a different direction.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:26Rich Roll?

  And it makes me wonder, like, you can't, you can't have those experiences unless you're putting yourself out there and trying lots of things. So many people go through life and maybe they never have an experience like that because they keep their lives sort of contained in a certain way. But then of the people that are lucky enough to, you know, trip upon their version of that type of experience, what is the quality within an individual to like help them lock onto that and realize like the gravity of it or the importance or like the potential? It's like potential energy, right? Like, oh, here's something, if I nurture this, maybe I can have a different kind of life.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know. I think it's a it's gonna it's gonna it has to be so individual, right? It's it has to sort of collide with your history and your life. And then the more I started working and then, you know, deeper in, I started seeing that sort of my life experience and and the different experiences that I've had and in many ways, like all the the problems that I'd had and and all the trauma, all the trauma that I had experienced in my life, all of a sudden weren't like something that was dragging me down, but it was actually like my greatest asset.

• 1:00:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like fertile soil.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And and I was like, fuck, I I have all these pieces and all these experiences that I can like put into characters that I don't think that most people can. And so it.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Rich Roll?

  And then you just have a bunch of Sars guards around you.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Rich Roll?

  Cause everybody in Sweden knows everyone, right?

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:18Rich Roll?

  And there's one high school.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  The crazy thing is.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Me, Gustav Skarsgård, I think Bill Skarsgård too. Nomi Rapas, who plays the girl with the black tattoo. Uh, we all went to the same high school.

• 1:01:36Rich Roll?

  What, and Alexander also?

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Alex lived right next door to that, that high school.

• 1:01:42Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  Because that's where the Skarsgård's lived, but, but I think he went to another school, actually.

• 1:01:47Rich Roll?

  That's a pretty high hit rate, you know, like per capita.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Crazy.

• 1:01:51Rich Roll?

  There needs to be like a plaque or something like that. Have you gone back to, to your high school or, or like revisited, you know, that, that, you know, place to kind of marinate and?

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  No, I actually didn't really fully graduate.

• 1:02:09Rich Roll?

  They'll give you an honorary degree though, you can go back there at some point.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  They, they, it's called like, uh, Swedish is called sam lat betyggs dokument. It's like, uh, uh, it's like a, a, a collection of your grades, but it's not like a diploma because I actually didn't get enough points.

• 1:02:33Rich Roll?

  You have a place in Sweden now, right?

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, we have sort of a family place.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  So a few years ago, I bought a plot of land in the archipelago. And, um, and we've just been adding little houses. So I built like a family village.

• 1:02:50Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Which island?

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Uh, it's in the archipelago. It's, it's called Vedda. Um, it's like an hour and a half from Stockholm.

• 1:02:57Rich Roll?

  I've traversed the archipelago.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:02:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  There's 40,000 islands in the Stockholm archipelago, so.

• 1:03:02Rich Roll?

  I did the, uh, I'm gonna butcher this pronunciation. So you tell me how bad this is. Er tala. Do you know what that is?

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Utalo.

• 1:03:13Rich Roll?

  Utalo. The Swim Run World Championships.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Ah, okay.

• 1:03:17Rich Roll?

  Which is the swim, it's a 75 kilometer race. Where you, you start in Santam and you go to Uto, it's like 75 kilometers and you go, you swim and run across all the islands.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  Brutal.

• 1:03:29Rich Roll?

  You're in like a modified wetsuit with your running shoes on and so you're swimming with your running shoes on and you climb up the rocks and you run across these islands and you jump back in the water and you basically go.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Is that the sort of Ironman?

• 1:03:41Rich Roll?

  It's like north to south. It's like its own thing that started there and now there's a series of these races all over the world.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  Have you done an Ironman or are you in that sort of?

• 1:03:49Rich Roll?

  I did, yeah, I do a bunch of endurance stuff.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I did, I think it was 2017 that I did that race.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:03:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so it was pretty cool. So I got to see up close and personal what those islands are like. It's so beautiful.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  What's the most challenging thing that you've done?

• 1:04:05Rich Roll?

  That was the hardest one day thing that I've ever done.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  How many hours does it take?

• 1:04:09Rich Roll?

  Oh, I think it was like nine or 10 hours or something like that. But the guys that, that are, so first of all, on that day, it was like the world's worst weather. There was like sideways rain.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we got a lot of that.

• 1:04:22Rich Roll?

  Four to six foot like chop. It was banana, like all day. It was like the most miserable experience ever. And then you're freezing in the water and then you're running across these islands and you're in like a wetsuit. So you start to get overheated. And just when you start to warm up, then you're back in the water. You're like uncomfortable the entire time.

• 1:04:41Rich Roll?

  So that, yeah, as a one day thing, I was probably the hardest, but I've done, I've done this race called Ultraman. It's a three day double Ironman around the big island of Hawaii and I've done that a bunch of times.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Jesus.

• 1:04:51Rich Roll?

  Done well in that race. And then I did five Ironmans.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  So an Ironman wasn't enough?

• 1:04:57Rich Roll?

  I never did just an Ironman. I went to the longer stuff.

• 1:05:02Rich Roll?

  It's a whole other thing, but this is not about me, this is about you. But my point being.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I'm curious.

• 1:05:07Rich Roll?

  My point being, I know the archipelago better than most. And what's interesting about that race is when the gun goes off, like, I'm a good swimmer. So I was like near, you know, I was in good position. The first swim is like a kilometer crossing. And then you get to this island on the other side. And I've been training around here in the mountains and desert and whatever. Going to the pool and then doing trail running. And I thought that would be good. And these like Swedish special forces guys who train year round on this course to win this race, climb out of the water and they're dancing on these rocks like ballet dancers. And everybody's falling and some guy cracked his head open immediately.

• 1:05:49Rich Roll?

  You know, it's not like, it's like an obstacle course as much as anything else.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was wild.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:05:56Rich Roll?

  So maybe we ran across your island, I don't know. Or your compound there. But, you know, midsummer, like that time of year in that part of the world is just the greatest thing.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's pretty epic. We have, like on our property, we have this, we have a sauna that's, it's legally a boat. So it's like on a raft. It was initially, it was to get away from having to apply for building permits. It's hard to get building permits close to the coast.

• 1:06:28Rich Roll?

  And all the dwellings on all those islands look like, it definitely looks like it's controlled. Like you can't just build whatever you want.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's very, it's very much about how it blends into the nature. And like, we have all of our houses, when you, it's like, it's like six houses now on the property. But when you come from the ocean, you almost can't see them. Because they're all like, they're all colored like the wood. It's like wood colored and with like blue, so it kind of blends into the sky. And that's very much a sort of Swedish aesthetic to. Like you, you, you, you sort of raise, nature is the highest and, and you want to leave as little of a footprint as possible. So that's also the laws, like you can't have too much glass because that creates glare and um.

• 1:07:18Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:20Rich Roll?

  Um, it's often said that the Scandinavian countries have like the highest happy quotient, like people are just happier there than they are in other parts of the world, despite the fact that the winter is like endless and it's, you know, dark most of the time. Like when you reflect upon your upbringing there, your Swedish heritage, like what, what, why do you think that is? What is the, what is the sensibility of those cultures that lead to a greater degree of happiness than we experience here?

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, I don't know how much you can actually like if, if those are true, those like sort of how people, I mean.

• 1:07:56Rich Roll?

  If you watch Scandi Noir, it doesn't look like everyone's very happy.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  It doesn't look like you're right. I, I think that there, you know, there is a general sense of, you know, I think more people in general are sort of in contact with nature and in nature, spend time in nature. Um, I think we have things like, you know, we sauna, uh, get in the ocean even when it's colder. Um, I think those things are probably very good. Um, but I mean, I know a lot of depressed Swedes too, and I think the suicide rate is pretty high as well, so, um, and, and the level of like alcoholism, especially in the north is, is pretty high as well.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  But, um, the Danes seem to be happier than, than the Swedes.

• 1:08:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Finland?

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the, the Finns are definitely not happy. I mean, they're definitely not happy. Um, I mean, they're almost Russian, you know, it's, the, the Finns are their own thing. They're, they're, I don't know, I, I think, uh, I think that there, there is sort of a, some level of stoicism in, in society that, um, you sort of like accept the way things are and, and uh.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  I think that's, I think people don't have too much expectation either, you know? I think, um, I think Swedes are pretty good at managing their expectations. So they won't get that disappointed.

• 1:09:34Rich Roll?

  There's also a safety net. Everyone kind of knows they can only fall so far before they'll be caught. And my sense is just that everybody's out moving all the time. It doesn't matter how dark or cold it is. Like they're, they're skating on the frozen waters or they're cross country skiing or they're swimming or they're, you know, jumping in freezing water. And like in a way that isn't, is, does feel different than here.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, for sure. And that's sort of what I was, was getting to with like people being in nature. People, I think, exercise much more in general. The level of obesity is, uh, is very different than here and.

• 1:10:12Rich Roll?

  They feel like they're working to live more than we, we, we, we sort of live to work here.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, uh, the, the general work week is, you know, 40 hours. Uh, so I think that's probably a lot less than, uh, than here. And, and then we have a lot, the normal Swede has six weeks vacation, six to eight weeks a year.

• 1:10:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  So, so there's, there's definitely that.

• 1:10:41Rich Roll?

  When you look back on your career, I mean, you came here to, you know, plant your flag in Hollywood and you've certainly done that, right? And feels like, didn't take that long. I'm sure maybe it feels like it was longer than maybe you would have liked. But on some level, like you've realized your dreams and your ambitions. And I'm sure there's plenty of more things that you want to do and goals that you have and all of that. But when you reflect upon that, like, what do you think? Like certainly talent, luck, like a lot of things have to coincide for this, this type of success. But do you think that you have a certain strength or quality that has allowed you to succeed?

• 1:11:24Rich Roll?

  Like what is it, what is your, what is your superpower?

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  I think, you know, I have a grind in me. And I, like, I, I, I wouldn't take, uh, failure as, you know, I wouldn't accept failure. And, and I think when I, when I've met, when I've come across like real.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Real adversity, I I found a method in me. I I used to have, um, I've told this story before, but it's it's one of my most, most important things that happened to me and and sort of how what I grew out of it. I used to have really punishing stage fright where I would throw up every time before I went on stage.

• 1:12:15Rich Roll?

  It's hard, it's hard to believe that.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  And, um,

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  and then I would start getting panic attacks on stage. And

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  and it was just, it was just an accumulation where, and I was still in acting school when when this was happening. And it was like, I was, I had these like voices in my head that were, you know, it was, of course, it was like insecurity and

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  and it was like, I was faced with the with the reality that like, maybe I'm not equipped to do this. Because it's clear, like, I'm, I'm, I'm going up on stage and I'm not being able to do it because I'm because of what's happening inside my head. And so, so I was, I was about three years into acting school and I just had this horrendous breakdown in front of the whole school and an audience with people from the outside where I just so completely lost it. And I couldn't recover.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  And and I was just felt humiliated and and embarrassed. And I had this like long talk with myself where I was like, I, maybe this is me telling myself that, you know, this is it. So, but then the idea to quit was, you know, it was like to quit. It was, it felt like killing myself. Because I hadn't.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  You know, finding acting was the, it just gave me this whole purpose in life. It, I, I felt like my identity before acting was just like a little thug that was, you know, just a hustler, kind of living a pretty ugly life where, you know, I would do a lot of different things to just get money and, you know. I mean, I was, I was like robbing people.

• 1:14:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, wow. Like the, like the character in The Killing a little bit. A little, little bit of light dusting about it.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  You know, and I really didn't have any moral compass. I mean, uh, selling shit and just not living a positive, like, it was, it was like, I don't think that I would have ended up being a career criminal at all, but, but, but it was just, I was just living a, a negative life and with shitty people around. And then, and then this acting thing just really like opened up something for me. It was like a possibility that was like a window into a different life and feeling, and I understood later, it, it opened up a, a window of like feeling differently about myself. So when I was sort of confronted with this,

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  it was so devastating and, and, and it was, and I couldn't accept it, but I didn't know what to do. Like, like I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  So then I, in, in, in that darkness, I sort of came up with this, like hail Mary of an idea. I was like, these fucking demons that are in my head, like these voices that like cripple me, that ruin everything. Like, what is the worst thing that they could experience? Like, what is the worst thing? And then, and then I figured out it would be to do like a monologue on stage, where I'm like, just, just me, nothing, and I, and I just,

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  and I was like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna challenge these. And, and the next project that we had in school was, we had our own projects. And it was like a, a three week deal where we got to do our own thing for three weeks. And most people took it as sort of a break. They did like one scene together, like four people did one scene. And I found this play called Howie the Rookie. It was like this play from Northern Ireland. And it's written for two people. Where the first person is then featured in the second storytellers. And I did both. And I ended up doing this play. I ended up creating sixteen different characters.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  That all had like a different body and a different voice. And I started rehearsing this play like I was obsessed. Like I was possessed. And it was like an hour. It ended up being like about an hour and forty minutes long. I knew it by heart after ten days. Like I was off because it was all I did. And then we presented it for the school. And I don't know, there was something I was like just overcome with. Like I was so obsessed with with with kind of defeating this. Like, I guess it was fear or I don't know what it was.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  But not accepting myself as a success. Or, you know, I don't know what it was. Like what those voices actually are, that sort of insecurity. But I played it and didn't trip on a word. Like just smashed it and ended up doing five performances of that. And then that play got picked up by the National Theatre. So I actually ended up continued playing it professionally. And after that, because that's actually like really high difficulty level. You know, because I had so many different characters.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  And I was sort of playing it in the format of like I watched. I wanted to sort of make it feel like Richard Pryor. Like a stand up one man show. It was that sort of way of like talking, you know, where where the characters would talk with each other. And, you know, and of course, I didn't have the pressure of needing to be funny. But it had funny elements in it. But after that, then the first job that I got after I finished acting school.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  Was to play Roskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. And it was also the opening play of a new national theater with one of the best Swedish, maybe the best Swedish playwright that did a whole new revamp of. And I was on the stage for three hours and forty minutes doing Roskolnikov. And I think that would have been like really crippling for me before this for sure. And but for anyone, it was like a lot of pressure for that to be your first job. But after had done this, this monologue, it felt like nothing. Like I had so much, it felt like so much easier. And, and that's sort of, that was the inflection point in my career.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  That's where everything changed. And I, and I found a way to like create real confidence by facing my fears and, and like, and going, going at it head on. And, and it, that I found that solution in that darkness, it changed everything for me. And it also became sort of a metric of how I dealt with difficult times ahead.

• 1:19:47Rich Roll?

  To run towards them.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, to face it and, and to, and to like challenge it. And it's like, okay.

• 1:19:55Rich Roll?

  Let's fucking go. Right, yeah, I mean, there's so much in what you just shared. I mean, this idea that you're this aimless person who is perhaps on a not so great trajectory, who's lacking self-esteem, stumbles into this situation where you found something that is truly meaningful to you. And then struggling to be able to kind of master your own vehicle to do it is almost like an existential crisis, right? Like the stakes are very high for you because you're like, I finally found this thing and now I can't do it.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Rich Roll?

  Like, that's terrifying. How do you resolve that? And to have the instinct to move towards it rather than away from it.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:37Rich Roll?

  Is almost like your own form of exposure therapy. Like, the only way I can like get over this is to. Like de-stigmatize it by upping the ante and putting my forcing myself to be in that situation. And walk through the fear to get to the other side. But to do that with a project of such a high degree of difficulty like, yeah, that's a that. It's almost like an instinctual thing that you came up with that probably wasn't even on some level conscious.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  No, it definitely wasn't conscious. It just, uh. Yeah, I mean, it was kind of out of desperation. Um.

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  It like, I don't have it in me to like kill myself.

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Um, but to sort of give up would be to.

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  It would be to kill the the the potential of any life that I actually wanted to live. Um, so to sort of give up on that was so depressing. So I think that's the. Why I found the courage in a way to sort of.

• 1:21:45Rich Roll?

  But then to have that muscle memory around running towards something that scares you. I mean, the question that I asked you is like, what, you know, if you have a superpower, what is it? You said you know how to grind, but beneath that it's that instinct to go towards the scary thing. That spills over into every aspect of your life. Like if you have that facility to not shy away from those things. Then you're in this sort of curious growth mindset way of approaching your life, right?

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Conversation. I actually haven't put the I hadn't put those things together before. Uh, yeah.

• 1:22:21Rich Roll?

  Do you find yourself doing that in other areas of your life? I mean, you mentioned that you have a relationship coach like that's another like. You have to seek out like you have to be willing to go into an uncomfortable place. If you want to have greater intimacy in your relationships, if you want to advance your career, like every category. The solution is always moving towards the thing that you wish you didn't have to do.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  And I think also like the great things in life, uh, you get by putting in a lot of work like it's. So like the relationship that I have, you know, with the woman that I it's. We don't have an easy relationship like we not long ago, we were throwing smoothies at each other in public, you know.

• 1:23:10Rich Roll?

  What's the, where's the, the, the differential? Like, what do you, where's the tension? Like, what's the, what's the issue that you run up against?

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  I mean, it's all her fault, you know, it's all.

• 1:23:22Rich Roll?

  Tell it to the relationship guys.

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  No, we're both pretty stubborn people and we both like to get it our way and

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  and, you know, it's like, sometimes it's like fire, fire meets fire.

• 1:23:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  And we have a lot of passion and a lot of fun.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  But find it hard to compromise and it's like,

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  we're gonna figure it out and we're gonna have like a great big life. And, and, but it's gonna.

• 1:24:00Rich Roll?

  You need a little outside intervention.

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  Oh, like.

• 1:24:03Rich Roll?

  From going off the rails.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  It's like, it's, it's, it's Mark, it's MDMA, it's, you know, it's, it's all of those things.

• 1:24:12Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. So psychedelics is part of that protocol?

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:24:17Rich Roll?

  Wow. Interesting.

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:24:19Rich Roll?

  Your mom's a therapist though, right?

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Rich Roll?

  So it's not like therapy is a foreign concept.

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  No, but actually I haven't like, I've been trying to find a, a good therapist for myself. Uh, I, um,

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  I haven't done much therapy, actually. Like, I, I don't have like someone that I talk with on an individual level and I, I really need it. But I've struggled finding someone. But yeah, I, I think I grew up with, my mom definitely

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  always instilled a way of dealing with problems, you know, talking about problems, like trying to getting to the bottom of like, what's really going on? Like, why, why did you, you know, throw this thing at the teacher?

• 1:25:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You were like a hyperactive kid who was getting in trouble.

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I was, I was, I think I was a bit of a nightmare.

• 1:25:16Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And how are things with dad?

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  Uh, great now.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  We definitely had our volatile period and also he was, you know, raised in an American way where, you know, he got his fair share of licks. And, you know, a little bit of that translated into our relationship.

• 1:25:44Rich Roll?

  So rocky during your turbulent adolescence.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, you know, it was, he didn't know how to deal with me. He had a bad, he responded poorly and, and he, you know, problems with his anger, controlling his anger. And, yeah, so, but, you know, we got, we got through it. And, you know, when I was, I think in my early twenties, we had, you know, this couple of really deep conversations where, you know, he apologized for some of the things that he had done. And, and we have, we have a really beautiful and close relationship now.

• 1:26:32Rich Roll?

  That's good. How do you stay grounded and right sized with all the nonsense and bullshit that comes with the fame part of what you do?

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, I don't find it so hard, but, you know, for me, my, my level of fame, it's a little different in Sweden. It can get a little intense still, even though it's not as intense as it was, you know, maybe five years ago.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  For me, it's, it's really important to have like really good people around you that, that you have real friendships with. I mean, one big key is to not sort of play the fame game and just hang out with people that you.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  Hang out with because how they reflect on you.

• 1:27:21Rich Roll?

  Do you have like a solid group of friends here that aren't afraid to tell you what's what?

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you have to have that, but also like I don't need that really, you know, I know what's what and.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  I think that I had a period of my life where I got lost in that. I didn't realize it until a few years ago, but where I was really concerned. I was thinking a lot about how I was perceived and I was really focused on how I was being perceived. And and I would even choose friends on how they would sort of reflect on me. And like, you know, I want to be, you know, this guy, you know, the comes with a big crew and. And and then I think social media really doesn't help.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  But actually, this was like more before that, but.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  But yeah, and then I realized that, you know, like that is such a.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  That it's such a hollow pursuit, you know, or it's so it's so it's so shallow to to look at life and. And people around you and and and like so I sort of kind of figured that out and and then I.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  You know, chose. Stay away from all that kind of stuff. I really haven't been chasing any of those sort of. I had it was a couple of years when I got a little bit lost in it and and I wanted to be seen with. You know, other famous people and, you know, I wanted to be seen as someone that had a big crew that, you know.

• 1:29:08Rich Roll?

  Rolling deep, entourage, the whole thing. Well, I noticed that you've you've stepped back from social media. I mean, you used to share videos and stuff like that, and I went to your Instagram and there's just like one picture and you're like, you're like. Clearly, you're not participating in this anymore.

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that was that was a great realization.

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  How bad it was for me. And it just put my mind in the wrong place. For me, uh, social media just made me look at my life. Uh, and made me feel like I wasn't doing enough that, you know, I should have all these other things. I should be doing this, I should be doing that. Uh, it just gave me a bunch of anxiety. I, I, and I realized like, I'm a pretty happy person. And, uh, and I was just realizing that

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  the, the anxiety that I was feeling, a lot of it was like coming from that. And then when I cut it out and when I removed all social media, um,

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  man, it really changed me.

• 1:30:09Rich Roll?

  Talk more about that.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. It, um,

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  first of all, it's like, it's so much noise. You just care and think about so much bullshit. That's just, it's like gossip. It's basically gossip. You're looking at other people's lives and, and seeing, you know, the fake version that they're holding up to the world. And, uh, so it's, it's a bunch of noise. But then it also like makes you feel shitty about yourself. And, and it makes me feel like, man, I should be doing this, I should be doing that. Why don't I have this? Why don't I have friends like that? Oh, you know, all these like stupid thoughts that aren't based in reality and, and, and have zero value. But they're, and this, these algorithms are just like kind of feeding on insecurity.

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  And, uh, and as soon as I cut it out, like, it just like all faded away. And I, and I, you know, I realized I wasn't missing out on anything. I mean, I miss out on some economic opportunities of, you know, endorsement deals and stuff like that. But it's okay. I, I, I make money in other ways.

• 1:31:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, you're, you're legit established. Like, it's really not necessary for you. I can imagine for somebody who's coming up, like, this is what you have to do and you have to be active here. And this is how you, you know, unless you develop or cultivate some level of following, it's more difficult to get cast or whatnot.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:32Rich Roll?

  You're kind of past that, so you don't have to worry about that. But On some level, as an actor, it doesn't serve you for the public to know so much about you, right? Like, your job is to be subsumed into a character. And there's something about the mystique of like, not knowing what this person's private life is all about, that I think makes you more potent as a performer. But the incentives of our modern culture are all moving in the other direction.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:02Rich Roll?

  But when we look at somebody like Quentin Tarantino or Daniel Day-Lewis, like, we don't know anything about them. Like, they're incredible artists who go away and disappear for however long, and then return to treat us all to their gift, and we celebrate them, and it's all we think and talk about culturally for a moment, because they're just in their art. You know, like, they don't have to participate in this, whatever you want to call it, like, fucking bullshit influencer economy, or whatever it is that's now sort of part of, it's sort of considered part of the job for somebody like you. So do you have pressure? Like, are there, like, do you have team members who are like,

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  "You sure you want to do that?"

• 1:32:46Rich Roll?

  Like, you know?

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  No, actually not, like, because my team is so old school. And it's also, I think, because acting is still pretty, like, shielded from it. So it's really, you know, of course, there are a bunch of these sort of stars that have social media, and, you know, they have businesses, and all this is sort of intertwined, and they, you know, you know, the Rocks and the Ryan Reynolds of the world, that are also really good at it.

• 1:33:15Rich Roll?

  They're good at, I mean, that, that just feels like their talent, it feels natural for them to do it. You know, it doesn't feel forced.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  I mean, Ryan is the best, you know?

• 1:33:23Rich Roll?

  He's incredible.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  But he's also, he's so funny, and it's like,

• 1:33:26Rich Roll?

  And you could tell he's enjoying it.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. For me, I was just, I sucked at it, and and it just, it just made me, it just made me a more nervous, insecure person in general, and

• 1:33:43Speaker 01

  You know, it's, you know, if you, if you, if you figure it out, it's, it's great. You know, like there's, there's, if, if you enjoy it and, and, and you're good at it, you know, it's great. I'm, I think there's a lot of professional benefits to it. But for me, the, the, the benefits of staying off way outweighed the benefits I was getting from, from like trying to participate in that, in that whole game. And, um, and then, you know, even though I, I sort of came up old school in the way that, you know, just like you were saying, that you wanna, you want the audience to know as little about you as, as possible for then it would be easier for them to suspend their

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  disbelief when they see you in a, in a character. I don't know if that really matters that much.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  But, um, I just don't wanna, I don't wanna play that game.

• 1:34:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:43Rich Roll?

  I'm sure you get asked all the time by young actors, aspiring actors, uh, you know, for advice for a young artist that's at the inception of their career. And they're staring down the barrel of all the obstacles and challenges that are inevitably going to come in their direction. What is the advice that you give to somebody who has an artistic aspiration?

• 1:35:10Speaker 01

  Don't have a plan B.

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  Go all in. There's no, no other alternative.

• 1:35:18Rich Roll?

  If you have a plan B, as soon as it gets tough.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:21Rich Roll?

  That will weed out all the pretenders.

• 1:35:23Speaker 01

  You got, and it's like, uh, and, and that's the scary part, you know? But it, it is a high risk, high reward endeavor and, and, uh, the competition's so high. There's so many talented people that want it, you know? There is a great life at the other end of it, uh, with both artistic and monetary rewards. So. You know, of course, it's a it's a really attractive uh best case outcome. But um if you want to get there, it's like just being talented is not going to be enough. Um, so you gotta, you gotta become, I mean, that's, I'm just speaking from what my my experience and uh uh my experience is you have to become obsessed.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  Um, and uh and and you, I think you have to have a singular focus. So uh so that means, you know, at least for a part of your life, being prepared to sacrifice everything else. And um and just do that. I think that's the only way. But, you know, if there if there's another way, that's great. But but that's, that was sort of what worked for me. And when I've talked to other friends that uh

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  that also have kind of gotten through that sort of needle or been able to thread that needle, it's a.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:48Rich Roll?

  Patience, persistence.

• 1:36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and uh like, I mean, my goal was, when I started out, I didn't have like Hollywood in mind at all. For me, success looked like

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  being an actor that, you know, is on stage and sometimes gets to do like TV and film, you know, in Sweden. That was like success. But I also saw that you have to be like top ten, top fifteen percent of of the most successful. Cause you know, I remember I would go to, you know, in my acting school, you know, the the National Theatre School, we'd have these sort of parties and uh on the weekends. And then, you know, these actors would come and hang out. And you'd have these sort of actors in their forties, fifties that were not successful and they would hang out at these these school parties

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  because they were hoping that some theatre director was going to show up and they and and and they had this, you know, this desperate stench.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  And I saw that like that life, because it's such a, it's a tricky profession where you're always like looking for the next gig, you know, there's

• 1:38:09Rich Roll?

  You have to be comfortable with a lot of uncertainty.

• 1:38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, very, very, very uncomfortable, very comfortable with that, but, but it's also, you're always like in pursuit, you know, of, of another gig. So if you're not, if people are not wanting to, if they're not asking you to dance, you know, you're gonna be standing there on the dance floor and, and if you do that too long, I think it does something to you that's not good. You become insecure and, and also because it's so paired with who you are. It's a difficult profession to be unsuccessful in.

• 1:38:46Rich Roll?

  That also becomes repellent to other people. So it's a cycle, right?

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:51Rich Roll?

  Because the more desperate you are, the less people, people can read that energy.

• 1:38:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:56Rich Roll?

  And there, it moves them in a direction opposite to where you are.

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I actually, even though I had this like, this sort of enormous, you know, I felt this gratitude and I found this, you know, this passion for this and, and it created a positive identity for myself for the first time. I also saw this and, and I actually vowed to myself that if like, if I'm not in the top 10% of my generation, after three years, I'm gonna quit and I'm gonna do something else. And, and that's something I told myself. I don't know if I would have.

• 1:39:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was wondering like if, if that had occurred, do you think you would have done that?

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:39:34Rich Roll?

  Because the other piece here that I think is really important is that lights on moment where you locked in and you had that flow state experience and the lights went on and you realized like, this was something that you could fall in love with. Like, that's not about a career, it's not about, you know, paychecks or anything like that. That's about like something inside of you that needed to be nourished. And I think that, that is, that speaks to like the authenticity of the journey that, that you went on. Like, what does this mean? What is the why behind it, I think? Because the why's the only thing that's gonna sustain you, especially if you don't have a plan B.

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  That's true. Yeah, I think maybe that was a, maybe that was something that I was telling myself, you know, to push myself, um, because it is, it is a tricky thing that, you know, but, but, but it is also what I, to, to, to really like, when, when, when people ask, you know, me, um, like how, how to do it and how to, um, you know, like, like, how do you, how do I get famous and how do I, you know, and, and I'm like, if you start in that end of fame, then, then you're, then you're done. You have to fall in love with the craft and, and you have to become obsessed with the craft and, and continue to hone

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  that and then like the success will come. Um, and I think, I, I, I think that's it too, but, but, but it is, it is a tricky profession to, to, uh, to get stuck in, you know, if you don't, but, but, but I think the, the, the only, the only way is to go all out and to, and to just, uh, and, and be relentless.

• 1:41:22Rich Roll?

  The crazy thing about it is that it's one of the only career paths where your entire life could change overnight, like audition, audition, audition, audition, and then, you know, pilot or whatever it is and like everything changes. So it's almost like this weird slot machine. Not that it's all about luck. Like obviously there's preparation and talent. There's a lot that goes into it, but I think that that, um, sensibility that as dark as it is, or as hard as it is, that it could literally change tomorrow because you got a callback.

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:56Rich Roll?

  Can keep people in it maybe longer than they should. I don't know. Like, but I, I would imagine that you can create an unhealthy relationship with that fantasy of what a life could be, um, that detracts from the craft piece of it.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  But the thing is that when I look at like fellow actors and, and people that I've known over the years.

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  The people, it's very rare where you see someone that is really talented and also works really hard

• 1:42:42Speaker 01

  that doesn't eventually, you know, get their due.

• 1:42:47Rich Roll?

  That's good to hear.

• 1:42:48Speaker 01

  It's, um.

• 1:42:49Rich Roll?

  Because I would have thought, maybe it's not quite the case. Like, it's not a meritocracy. Like, I'm sure you know lots of super talented performers who, you know, don't get the break, or the breaks don't come as easily as perhaps fairness would say they should.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  I feel like a lot of the time, you know, and then, of course, success can look in different ways, but

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  the hard thing is to kind of stay strong and to, and to nourish your confidence

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  while being rejected when you're sort of in this audition game.

• 1:43:30Speaker 01

  And I think you have to find other ways to, to, to practice your craft, to like, just do a play and

• 1:43:37Speaker 01

  to get on stage and, and, you know, put something together yourself where, where you're actually practicing your craft and, and where you're, where you can showcase it and, and not just, you know, do these, you know, 100 auditions.

• 1:43:53Rich Roll?

  Right, right. Are you gonna get back on the stage?

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  Man, I've been saying that for so long and it's, uh, I was, I've been actively looking. And I'm trying, but, uh.

• 1:44:05Rich Roll?

  What's next? What do you got coming up?

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  Well, who knows? It's, uh, this whole, this fall has been very frustrating with strikes and projects moving. It, it kind of, the whole business got shook up, so I've had a couple of projects push and fall apart and I'm supposed to go shoot something. I was supposed to go shoot something in, in January. I think now it's pushing to March and, and, yeah. I, I, I had my whole year booked up. My whole, my whole year was kind of set and then. Things fell apart and then I had it set again and so I'm not 100% sure.

• 1:44:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  The things that I have lined up are, half of them are sort of independent and they're more vulnerable to change.

• 1:44:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I'm a fan, dude. I appreciate you coming to talk to me today. It's cool to get a glimpse into your life.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  Thanks, man. I really enjoyed this conversation. This is the longest.

• 1:45:04Rich Roll?

  Is it? We can keep going. I got, we can go for hours more if you want.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  No, but it's like, I love, I love podcasts and I love listening to podcasts. So it's really valuable to have these like long form conversations.

• 1:45:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool, man.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Like, I got some insights into myself here.

• 1:45:22Rich Roll?

  Good.

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  This was like.

• 1:45:23Rich Roll?

  Glad to give you something.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  Did I find my therapist?

• 1:45:27Rich Roll?

  I'll serve that role for you. And yeah, come back when you have something more to talk about.

• 1:45:33Speaker 01

  I'd love to, man.

• 1:45:34Rich Roll?

  I really enjoyed talking to you. I appreciate it.

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  So did I, yeah.

• 1:45:36Rich Roll?

  So, everybody check out Silent Night. I think it's coming out on VOD like December.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  It's playing in theaters.

• 1:45:44Rich Roll?

  It's in theaters now. Yeah, this isn't going up right away, I think, but it will be, it will be available for streaming.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:45:50Rich Roll?

  Soon, too, I think.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  I think on the 19th of December, it's available on VOD.

• 1:45:54Rich Roll?

  And for all mankind, dude.

• 1:45:56Speaker 01

  For all mankind, streaming.

• 1:45:57Rich Roll?

  There's so many things I wanted to talk to you about. We didn't even get to go deep into all of that. So, yeah, I'd love to have you back, man.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:04Rich Roll?

  If you'll come back.

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  I'll be back, for sure.

• 1:46:05Rich Roll?

  Peace, dude, bro.

• 1:46:06Speaker 01

  Peace.

• 1:46:07Rich Roll?

  Cheers.

• 1:46:13Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voice of Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment.

• 1:46:58Rich Roll?

  Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Kale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Salis.

• 1:47:41Rich Roll?

  Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, the theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Tractor Pyatt, and Harry Mavas. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.