‘Copenhagen Cowboy’: Nicolas Winding Refn Says Netflix Series Is A “Female Evolution” Of Characters From ‘Valhalla Rising,’ Drive’ And ‘Only God Forgives’ — Venice

Diana Lodderhose
·3 min read
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Nicolas Winding Refn says that the characters in his upcoming Netflix series Copenhagen Cowboy, are a “female evolution” of characters from previous projects such as Valhalla Rising, Drive and Only God Forgives.

Speaking at a press conference at the Venice Film Festival today, the Danish helmer said, “I’ve done films in the past with a certain type of character that was first played by Mads Mikkelsen in Valhalla Rising on one hand and then Ryan Gosling played him as a driver in Drive and then Vithaya [Pansringarm] played him as a lieutenant in Only God Forgives.

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“So, I was working with Robert Wade and Neal Purvis, or Purvis and Wade as they are called, on a larger female evolution of that character and then suddenly one night, I was like, ‘maybe I should try to do a version of it as female and not just one but many.’ So, I said, ‘I’m going to make my version of a superhero show.’ And that was the kind of aspiration to do it.”

The series, which premieres in Venice today, revolves around a young heroine called Miu (Angela Bundalovic). After a lifetime of servitude and on the verge of a new beginning, she traverses the ominous landscape of the eponymous city’s criminal netherworld. Searching for justice and enacting vengeance, she encounters her nemesis, Rakel, as they embark on an odyssey through the natural and the supernatural. The past ultimately transforms and defines their future, as the two women discover they are not alone, they are many.

Refn was joined by Bundalovic, his wife Liv Corfixen (who produces the series), his daughter Lola Corfixen (who stars in the series) and longtime editor Matthew Newman at the presser in Venice on Friday. When asked about returning to Denmark to shoot the series for the first time and working with his family, the director said it was “a bit like putting the band back together.”

“I hadn’t worked in Denmark for so many years, so I didn’t really know what to expect but it ended up being a wonderful experience. We had a great crew and, in a way, there is something very easy about working in the Scandinavian model because we are not so many people and I like that kind of smaller components of productions and so forth. It was just very pleasant.”

He added, “When you work in art, you can live in separate worlds and I always wanted to try to include my family in what I do because, in a way, they are kind of the inspiration for many things, or at least how I see myself.”

Lola Corfixen remarked that working with her father was “incredibly weird” but was “a fun thing as a new bonding mechanism to be thrown into the way he thinks and everything.”

Commenting on the comeback of genre on episodic television, Winding Refn told Venice delegates that he believes genre “is one of the saviors of mass media.”

“It’s a very interesting medium to work with and I’ve always loved it since the beginning when I started making films,” said the director. “I think that genre-like fairy tales, or whatever you can combine it with, it’s a reflection of us as a society and it mirrors our desires and it’s our fantasies and it’s everything that’s really interesting because it’s heightened reality.”

Netflix will release Copenhagen Cowboy globally later this year.

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