Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen is no stranger to big budget Hollywood productions with his seven U.S. credits to date including Clash Of The Titans, Hannibal and Doctor Strange.
This did not stop him from feeling in awe of the scale and legacy of Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny on his first day on set, in the role of Indy’s nemesis, the former Nazi turned scientist Jürgen Voller.
“It felt gigantic. No spoilers but we are in 1944 in the beginning, and there was just a ton of extras and treasures and a big train. And there was the mist and the moon. It was just enormous and fantastic,”
“There’s no way around it. You’re wearing a fanboy hat in the beginning, but you’ve got to throw it off and start doing what you’re being asked to do which is bring life to this character. But you’re pinching yourself a little.”
Mikkelsen was talking to the Deadline Studio at the Taormina Film Festival this weekend where the film makes its Italian premiere on Sunday as part of it red carpet tour ahead of its June 30 release.
Voller marks the sixth Hollywood “baddie” role for Mikkelsen, who rarely plays the antagonist back home in Denmark. The actor says he relishes roles.
“The baddies is something that is kind of concentrated in America. I don’t think we’ve ever made a film in Denmark, where we have like villains,” he said.
“I embrace it. I’m lucky that it’s different genres, different frameworks and I get a chance to play some different villains… I have a career back home and in Europe, where I get the chance to play variations of real human beings.”
Mikkelsen said he had not gotten hung up on the Nazi backstory in Voller’s past because of the cinematic context within which he was playing the character.
“If we were doing a different kind of film and diving down into the darkness of what that ideology meant to the world, it would be a very different approach. This is obviously an Indiana Jones film, and they’re [the baddies] are there for a purpose. They’re very easy to read. They’re the bad guys for a reason.”
He revealed his approach to playing a character like Voller.
“I believe my characters are the heroes of their own story in their own world,” he said. “It’s no secret that this is based loosely on the real-life Nazi and later NASA engineer Wernher von Braun, a notable German scientist among the hundreds who worked for NASA right after the war.
“Tons of people did that and tons of people went to the Soviet Union as well. Everybody apparently decided to close their eyes and say that nothing happened in the past. So, I look at him as a scientist who has a higher vision for the world, a better place… it can be a better place if he had a chance.”
Talking about villain characters in the Taormina press conference on Saturday, Mikkelsen revealed his fascination with the figure of the Mongolian warrior Genghis Khan.
He explained to Deadline afterwards: “Somehow he managed to pull off the people kind of lean back and go, ‘It was a cool period. They look cool. They were cool.’ Like how did he you manage that? Because he did kill a lot of people and raped a lot of people.
So I say that more as a jokey thing but it’s also it’s it’s interesting to see who who turns out after committing such atrocities to be not doomed as a complete person, which is very interesting.”
Mikkelsen’s will next be on big screen after Indiana Jones in Nikolaj Arcel’s mid-18th century drama The Bastard.
He plays the real life figure of Ludvig von Kahlen, a former soldier who tries to make his fortune by taming the then wild and lawless heath of the Danish Jutland peninsula, so it could be turned over to cultivation following a declaration by King Frederik V.
“We’re just finishing the edit as we speak. It’s the second film I’ve done with Nikolaj Arcel, after A Royal Affair. It takes place at the same time, the 1700s. It’s a fascinating part of Danish history, a very brutal story and also beautiful, if we get lucky,” he explains.
Mikkelsen says its important for him to keep working at home as well as in the U.S.
“It’s my native tongue. Those are my stories and those are my friends back home. So of course, it’s special and I will always go back home,” he says.
“The scale is the most obvious thing that’s different. When I come onto a set in Denmark, I say good morning to ten people. On Indiana Jones, you say good morning to 300 people, he adds.
Mikkelsen heads to Budapest to reunite with Hannibal showrunner Bryan Fuller on his feature debut Dust Bunny.
According to previous reports, he will play the intriguing neighbor of an eight-year-old girl who enlists his help to kill the monster under her bed that she believes ate her family.
“And as you probably would have guessed, this will be a very beautiful but very crazy film. I don’t think I can say anything. But it’s about kids and if we’re lucky kids can also watch it.”
Quizzed on other films that he would liked to do in the future in the press conference, Mikkelsen revealed that he had always wanted to do a zombie movie
“I love zombies,” he told Deadline afterwards. “I don’t know why.I’ve watched so many films since I was a kid, and it has always been fascinated. There’s something interesting about an enemy that moves so slow that you can actually picture yourself in that universe and get away from them and still get the thrill of being chased. Except for the World War Z, where they’re fast zombies.”
