Mads Mikkelsen Is Not Aware the Internet Loves Him. And That's Why the Internet Loves Him.
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Everyone loves Mads Mikkelsen, and for proof of that fact, just spend a few minutes on social media. Or just revisit the recent acclaim for Another Round, the Danish star’s 2020 drama (about four teachers striving to get themselves out of a middle-aged rut via alcohol) that just won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. It’s the latest in a string of triumphs for the 55-year-old Copenhagen native, who over the past fifteen years has moved freely between daring and unconventional dramas abroad, and franchise tentpoles here in the States. Whether dealing drugs in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy, dueling with James Bond over cards in Casino Royale, fighting mythic creatures in Clash of the Titans, designing the Death Star in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, battling Marvel’s finest in Doctor Strange, braving the elements in Arctic, or having friends over for dinner on NBC’s Hannibal, Mikkelsen is always the intense—and intensely charismatic—center of attention, bringing a ferocity to roles that veer, on a dime, between violence, humor and pathos.
That versatility is once again on display in Riders of Justice, a Danish genre hybrid (in NY/LA theaters May 14, and on VOD May 21) that reunites him with his Men & Chicken director Anders Thomas Jensen. Mikkelsen plays Markus, a soldier whose life is torn apart by the train-crash death of his wife, which leaves him as the sole guardian of his teen daughter. When a trio of idiosyncratic geniuses (including a survivor of that calamity) inform him that, far from an accident, the tragedy was actually a carefully executed hit, Markus joins them in a quest for revenge—a scheme that involves tricking his kid into thinking he’s actually in therapy for his anguish. It’s a saga about grief, vengeance and the question of whether the universe is random or guided by a divine plan, and Jensen deftly balances his material’s disparate modes while delivering carnage and comedy in equal measure.
For Mikkelsen, Riders of Justice is a best-of-both-worlds vehicle. Markus is a frighteningly imposing military man of action as well as a wounded husband and father, and the actor straddles those lines with a naturalness that helps sell the film’s wilder twists. In doing so, he reconfirms his standing as one of international cinema’s most exciting headliners—a status that’s contributed to his upcoming participation in two more iconic film series entries: Fantastic Beasts 3 (replacing Johnny Depp as evil wizard Grindelwald) and Indiana Jones 5 (alongside Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge). There’s simply no one on a hotter streak than Mikkelsen, which is why ahead of Riders of Justice’s theatrical premiere, we sat down with him to discuss his newest film’s unique tone, the strangeness of becoming an online sensation, Leonardo DiCaprio’s plans to remake Another Round in English, and his upcoming Harry Potter and Indiana Jones blockbusters.
With all your recent success, you’ve become something of an Internet sensation—virtually everyone online seems to love you. Is that something you engage with? Or is it just a strange phenomenon?
It’s very hard for me to comprehend, because I’m a child of the prior millennium. I’m not tech savvy at all. I have some people running [my accounts] for me, and sometimes I will do something for the social media platforms that I am on. It might be way too little, but it’s what I can do, because I always see people around me who spend so much time on these platforms, and they’ve become addicted to it. When you make a film, you shoot it, and then a year later it has a premiere, and then somebody writes in the newspaper what they think about it—either we’re great or we suck. We get some critique. So that day of the year is a brutal day. But if every single day you’re looking at the platform and getting thousands of critiques, you must be out of breath as a human being! [laughs] You can’t spend your life that way.
But I’m not aware that I’m a sensation on there! I know I have a platform, and I’ll have to go dive into that.
You’d be amazed at the memes and GIFs floating around. I also think Another Round helped it flourish, thanks to the closing dance scene.
Sure. The dance sequence travelled a lot, for a number of reasons. One small reason is the band, Scarlet Pleasure, their music is so catchy—and that music is such a heavy part of the film now. We’re so thankful that they let us borrow that number.
Are you surprised at how much Another Round caught on around the world?
It’s one of these situations where it’s hard for us to figure out exactly what happened. And if you want to recreate that success next time, you’re obviously going to have a failure, because that’s what everybody in Hollywood wants—they want to find the formula. We don’t know exactly what happened. It was in the middle of the lockdown. We came out with a very life-affirming film, and people are actually watching things they used to do a year ago: hugging each other, drinking from the same bottle, laughing, inches apart without being thrown in jail [laughs]. It was not illegal! So I think that played a part. It was like, whoa, real life, on the screen. We were a little nervous that there could be a backlash, because we were so openly not caring about any rules—because we shot it before the shutdown. But the backlash did not happen.
Secondly, the theme of the film—it’s a life-affirming film. The alcohol theme can travel very differently between cultures, and we were also a bit nervous about that—maybe it’s going to work in Scotland, and not so much in France, etc. But it didn’t seem to be a problem. I also think a lot of people watched it because people normally go to the movie theaters but were instead sitting back home, and they heard some whispers about it and then just had to press that button and watch it. In many ways, it was luck in an unlucky situation.
What are your thoughts about Leonardo DiCaprio’s recently announced plans to remake Another Round? And does this mean you get to remake one of his movies?
[laughs] Hmmm. Which one? Romeo and Juliet, I’ve done that already, when I was young, in the theater.
It’s always tricky to remake a film, especially when it’s still warm. But I get it. There are still a lot of people who’d run to the theater if Leonardo was playing it—of course they would. Good luck! As long as they catch the life-affirming part of the film—people reclaiming their lives—I think they’re in good waters. Then they can deal with the alcohol philosophy, and the way that’s appropriate in America. But to catch the essence of the film, I think Leonardo is a fantastic actor and I think they can pull off something fantastic.
Riders of Justice is a mix of comedy, action and revenge drama, and your turn is both deadpan and deadly serious. How did you approach playing Markus?
He’s a PTSD guy, and a man who has to carry the world upon his shoulders—that’s his task in life. That he has a very hard time communicating with other people is a different topic—and it doesn’t come in too handy when he has to help his daughter. So the character, I approached him the way he’s portrayed, but we did spend a lot of time figuring out how to build a bridge between the universe I was in and the universe the other guys were in. Because my universe is much more like the one Anders writes for other people, like for Susanne Bier plenty of times, masterfully. And these guys over there, it’s much more what he normally does in his own films—and I’ve always been part of that crazy gang. You know, the rhetorically insane people. We spent a lot of time figuring out how to build that bridge.
We came up with a few ideas, but then we also just read it again and again, and once I saw the film, I realized that at the beginning of the film, we have a hunch when they knock on his door that he should stay away from these guys, because this is bad, this is just insane. But ten minutes later, after I’ve done something terrible, we have a feeling that they should run away from me [laughs]. That was insane enough for them to be in the same world, all of a sudden.
So the primary appeal of the film wasn’t just to whack a teenage boy in the face, right?
No. But that was one of them, though! Very annoying kid [laughs].
Much of your performance’s humor comes from stoically playing off of your weird co-stars. That looks easy, but I assume it’s a far harder job than it appears.
We had to find a way, because they could spin out sometimes and go somewhat crazy, and I would have to stay on track and say, back to the scene! We did cut out a few crazy things because it was just taking some detours that we could not get back to the scenes. But we also let it flow once in a while. It’s tricky. Straight guys are the ones who always crack up laughing, and I haven’t been doing that before on Anders’ films, so I did have a few times where it was hard not to laugh because they were just so way out there doing their riffs.
As I said, all of a sudden, they are in the same boat, and Markus is so focused. As a man who can shut out God, and shut out helping his daughter, and just go, no, we just wake up tomorrow and we will continue with our lives, it’s going to be fine, let’s not talk about God anymore—a man who can do that can also stand and watch people go crazy and talk about crazy stuff, and then call them back on the mission. He’s definitely a man who’s constantly about to explode in the film, and eventually he does that at the end of the film—not just killing other people, but imploding on himself. When he realizes his mistake, it’s not just this one—it’s everything in his life, and he can’t breathe. It’s important for us to have a scene where he became self-destructive, because he’s not a man of many straightforward, interesting words; he’s a man of action.
Whose idea was Markus’ shaved head-with-beard look?
It’s part of the uniform. When you’re stationed like these guys are in Afghanistan and Iraq, they get uniform in their looks—not only in their clothing, but also in their beard, and the hair. Sometimes it mirrors their enemy, or it’s kind of a mix of that. It feels like some kind of protection from the outer world to look like that. It’s very brutal to look at. And I’m sure it is a helping hand for these guys when they’re waking up every day facing death.
Riders of Justice hinges on a question about fate—whether things can be predicted because there’s a master plan to everything, or if the universe is fundamentally random and chaotic. Where do you fall on that issue with regards to your own career?
It’s a good question. I don’t go blindfolded through life and go, oh, this happened! At the same time, I don’t have a master plan that I want to achieve a certain thing, or that is my goal in life—I don’t have that either. I think it’s a fine mix of what I’ve done before, I’ve learned from it, and let’s not make that same mistake. But at the same time, trying to keep your door open and be curious enough to say yes to certain things that you’re not absolutely 100 percent sure what it is. That’s a fine balance, that you want to shut a door sometimes, but you’re also curious. I don’t know exactly what part of that is faith and what is hard work and what is decisions, but I think it’s all a mix of that when it comes to your destiny, and how much a part God plays in history.
I tend to lean into the quote—and I can’t remember who said this—that in an airplane that’s about to crash, you will find no atheists. There’s something very true in that, even for an atheist.
Speaking of fate and chance, both Riders of Justice and Another Round, are ensembles about men banding together on missions, and forging close familial bonds. Was that deliberate, or just a coincidence?
That’s just a coincidence. I think they have very little in common. I mean, if you look at it through that lens, you can find that. I would say that Anders’ films are often, if not always, about family. Meaning that, it doesn’t matter how ill-fitted you are in the world, it doesn’t matter how you don’t click any boxes, there is a family for you somewhere. It might be a weird family, but there’s one for you. He often ends his films with that topic—some ideal-looking scenario. It’s obviously never ideal when you have these crazy people in the same room. But it’s a family. It’s the best they could do. And that will do.
Do both of these films confirm that there is—and can be—an international market for Danish cinema?
Yes. Danish films have been doing really well since the mid-‘90s, with the wave of Dogme films and then other people came and ran with it. We’ve been on the map for at least 25 years. Whether a lot of people who are not in the business are watching the films is a different thing. That is a point we would like to get to eventually.
Little things like me being in big Hollywood blockbuster films, or a TV show like Hannibal, might make other people curious about what else I’ve done. What are they doing back home in his country? That can open some doors. Susanne Bier making big American films, they can get curious about what she’s done before in Denmark. Any little thing coming our way to make people watch our films is very appreciated. And these two films together are going to give a really nice boost for Danish cinema, I’m sure.
You’ve been in Star Wars, James Bond and Marvel movies, and you’re now joining Fantastic Beasts 3 and Indiana Jones 5. Does this prove that, for franchises to be truly successful, they need you?
[laughs] It looks like it, eh? We just need the zombie franchises to give me a call.
But it is really funny and absurd, especially for a Danish actor who never dreamt of working over there, and then all of a sudden, I’m in one thing, and then I’m in four or five different franchises that are some of the biggest ones. It’s surreal for me. But I think it would be for any actor, British and American as well. It’s really a thrill.
Can you tell me anything about Indiana Jones 5?
I can tell you a lot, but then somebody has to shoot me [laughs]. We will start rehearsing this week, and then we’ll start shooting in 4-5 weeks. It’s starting up now. And Fantastic Beasts is already over. Ask me about the franchises, I know everything [laughs].
Do you seek these franchises out, or do they find you?
It’s hard for me to answer that question. I personally don’t seek them out, but I have an agent, and I’m sure she’s doing a lot of work. Some of it will land in her lap, and some of it she knows something is happening and she’ll put the word in. It’s a combination of that. I never ask specifically—did you call them, did they call you? I never ask. But we’ve found each other, that’s the important part.
What’s the next movie frontier to conquer? Is it horror?
I love horror. I’ve been watching horror since I was way too small a kid. And I do love zombie films and shows—luckily, it’s not over yet, we still have The Walking Dead season ten. There’s just something wonderful about it. But my problem is, I really want to be one of the zombies, and they tend not to survive that much.
But at least they’re easy roles, in that they don’t have many lines.
I can be the really, really bad zombie!
Lastly, is there any movement on Hannibal? Fans don’t seem to have given up yet on a possible fourth season.
I think people are still trying to drum up interest, and you’re not alone in that regard. I wouldn’t mind it if it comes our way. Obviously, Netflix picked it up and it found a new home, and got some new attention. If they can keep putting the pressure on, maybe one day. It would be fun. I would join it in the blink of an eye.
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