Michael spoke with Vulture and discussed his latest film, The Snowman, race-car driving, doing a rom-com, and kissing himself in Alien: Covenant.
Harry’s a drunk and an iffy father figure and a misanthrope who pushes chairs away in his office cafeteria so he doesn’t have to talk to people. What did you like about him?
A detective is a genre that I wanted to do. Then reading the books, I just really like the character. Jo had such an investment in this character. He’s really human, and I could imagine him as somebody who is living and breathing and existing. I love the fact that he’s not an action hero. When he goes into a scuffle, he usually comes out the worse for wear. And the drinking thing is just him self-medicating. I think he hates his job. He’s brilliant at it, and he can’t step away from it. There’s an obsessiveness that is part of his personality and part of his relationship to the job. So there’s a lot going on there, and then some of the stuff is in contradiction, which is interesting to play with.Do you think you’d make a good detective?
No.Why not?
Cause I don’t have an interest in it. I think if you want to be good at something — to find happiness in it — you have to have a passion for it.You’ve read all the books in the Harry Hole series except The Snowman, which you avoided so it wouldn’t interfere with how you interpreted the script. How do you make time to read?
You know, you sit around set a lot. There’s a lot of time in between setups when I just read. I read in the evenings, whenever I have free time.Would you want this to turn into a movie franchise like the Jack Reacher books?
Yes, I would, yeah.Is there a limit to how many series you can handle?
As long as I feel like I want to do them, I’ll participate.Harry has some weird quirks. Can you explain them? First, he carries his files in a plastic grocery bag.
It just felt right. He doesn’t carry things on him a lot. We felt that it was interesting. What he has, he has on him. And I just thought there’s something interesting and temporary about a plastic bag, something very naff, not organized, but in a way still just very practical. It’s unusual. But it was just something that happened on the day. I was like, “Maybe the plastic bag?” I just like those quirks, you know.When he takes a nap, he sleeps on a pillow made of record albums.
I think he’s just listening to music. For me, if I’m lying on my back resting, I always like to have something under my head.No matter how cold it gets, he never zips up his jacket.
That’s right. That’s just to make him look like a tough guy.You really did shoot this in Norway in the winter. How cold did it get?
You know, it’s funny because Tomas talked about not putting on the jacket. He said he was on a bus trip one time and the bus driver stood outside the bus having a cigarette in short sleeves. That non-awareness of the cold that that guy seemed to have, he wanted to incorporate that into Harry, as well. It was cold, but not really that bad. It’s a very dry cold there, so it was quite refreshing. I enjoyed it, actually — it was invigorating. The air was so clean. I liked it because before I went out there, I was thinking, “Ugh, it’s going to be brutal.” But it wasn’t that bad.
