22/11/2022 - The Danish auteur chats to us about his first Netflix series, entailing six intense hours of viewing, and about keeping it a family affair

(© Johan Bergmark)

Netflix and Nicolas Winding Refn have made a series together, called Copenhagen Cowboy [+see also:
series review
trailer
interview: Nicolas Winding Refn
series profile], set to air in December and shown on a few select festival screens beforehand. After six intense hours of viewing, we sat down with the Danish auteur during this year’s edition of the Stockholm International Film Festival and talked of pasts as well as futures.

Cineuropa: Copenhagen Cowboy marks your return to directing on Danish soil for the first time since Pusher III [+see also:
trailer
film profile], back in 2005. What led to this choice?
Nicolas Winding Refn: Several things. First, I was stuck at home in Denmark owing to the pandemic. Then, I started to think about some kind of development, an extension of where I left off the last time I filmed here, with the Pusher saga. A little later, Netflix got in touch and asked if I had any ideas. And here we are.

Miu, your main protagonist, also feels like an extension of some of your earlier ones: silent, solitary, deadly, like The Driver in Drive or One-Eye in Valhalla Rising… [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nicolas Winding Refn
film profile]
She is indeed of the very same very dim, mysterious family as One-Eye, The Driver and lieutenant Chang in Only God Forgives [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
interview: Nicolas Winding Refn
film profile] – a kind of alter ego I like to revisit from time to time. And as I greatly enjoyed working with Elle Fanning in The Neon Demon [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Nicolas Winding Refn
film profile], it felt like it was high time to introduce a female-centric constellation this time around, to this specific universe. My team of writers also consists mainly of female scribes.

Quite “big name” ones, at that, from a fresh generation: Sara Isabella Jønsson worked on Lisa Jespersen’s Persona Non Grata [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lisa Jespersen
film profile] and Johanne Algren on Isabella Eklöf’s Holiday [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Victoria Carmen Sonne
film profile]. How important was their gender here?
Very important. First, and on the whole, I really like working with women – I have two daughters and no sons, a wife, and I’m a real mummy’s boy, which probably has conditioned me, and it’s all for the best. Also, to have your visions put in a perspective other than your initial one, in this case a female perspective, was deeply interesting to me. Sara and Johanne, the two main writers, provided many of the angles and requirements of this female main character, seen from their point of view. It was great fun, and we were very much in agreement regarding different solutions. To create a kind of superhero character from an original concept was very seductive.

You have relied on the services of quite a lot of your own family as well, so even more females. How many are on board?
Well, Lola Winding Refn, my eldest, plays Rakel, the second main part, and my other daughter, Lizzielou, who is 13, also has a part. My wife Liv is the executive producer. It’s a real family affair, and the first time we have all got together in this particular context, which is again very fulfilling. It also led directly to our joint participation in the 30-minute Touch of Crude that I recently directed for Prada.

Several “professional” family members also turn up. We see Leif Sylvester, the father in Pusher II [+see also:
trailer
film profile], and the ever-loveable Zlatko Buric, your Milo character from the Pusher films. Almost like a “best of” cavalcade, isn’t it?
We could really call this series my “Greatest Hits” from my yesteryears – a very nice revisiting of the past after being away for some time. I sat down and looked back on how I started out, and my gradual development as a filmmaker and storyteller through the years, in order to find out where I come from and where I am today – and to create something brand-new from this process, a future, if you will. To deconstruct and to create a whole new screen, a new canvas.

These days, your films start with the “NWR” signature – almost a logo of some kind. What has been your thinking behind this concept?
It turned up on The Neon Demon, a film in which the branding concept is at the forefront. And I’ve kept on using it – a little like a perfume bottle. I’ve always been interested in creating my own brand of creativity.

The title Copenhagen Cowboy also feels quite “brandy”. Without spoiling things, exactly how many cowboys are there here, and how much of Copenhagen do we actually get to see?
Let’s just say that it was a really good title that cropped up before any of the writing had started; it’s one that triggers some nice images inside the mind’s eye. I just like the two words together.

Will there be a second season?
We’ve written a treatment, so let’s see. I wouldn’t mind one bit.