[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Promised Land.]

The Big Picture

Mads Mikkelsen believes his responsibility as an actor is to make the best film, not to feel personal pressure. Mikkelsen tries not to be nervous when starting a project, as it can be paralyzing and unhelpful. The atmosphere on the set of ‘The Promised Land’ was kept light to ensure the comfort of a child actor and to balance out the heavy subject matter.

From director Nikolaj Arcel and written with Anders Thomas Jensen, the historical drama The Promised Land follows Captain Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) in 18th century Denmark, as he sets out to build a colony in the name of the King. But by choosing to do so on seemingly uninhabitable land where nothing can grow, he catches the attention of a nobleman who sees Kahlen as a threat. The more Kahlen’s small community expands, the more of a threat he becomes and Frederik De Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg) lets his own insecurities feed his desire for vengeance.

During this interview with Collider, Mikkelsen talked about how feeling butterfly dust in the stomach on a project is a good thing, wanting to keep the atmosphere on set as light as they could, the fun of exploring the complicated dynamic between Kahlen and De Schinkel, the most challenging aspect of the shoot, and what was it was like to do the film’s most brutal scene. He also talked about reunited with Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller for Dust Bunny, why he doesn’t see himself doing another rom-com, and the reason he doesn’t feel the need to direct.

The Promised Land The story of Ludvig Kahlen who pursued his lifelong dream: To make the heath bring him wealth and honor. Release Date February 2, 2024 Runtime 127 minutes Main Genre Drama

Mads Mikkelsen Says the Goal of Any Film is to Make it the Absolute Best
Image via Magnolia Pictures

Collider: Your director on this, Nikolaj Arcel, said this was the most personal movie he’s made. When you sign on for a project like that, do you feel more of a sense of responsibility or do you feel like you had the same connection to and understanding of the material?

MADS MIKKELSEN: I don’t think he mentioned that it was his most personal film until maybe very late in the shoot. And if he had mentioned it in the beginning, it wouldn’t have been more responsibility. I think we have a responsibility every time we start out, to make the absolute best film in history. Luckily, we’re never gonna achieve that, so we will try it again next time. That’s the goal. I don’t run around feeling responsibility, and responsibility is only on behalf of the film. If you’re talking about having responsibility, then driving a school bus is a little bit more up there. If we really do a bad job here, some people lose some money and nobody likes the film. If you don’t do a good job as a school bus driver, it’s a different story.

Do you ever get nervous when you start a project? Are you someone that wants to get nervous about every project that you do?

MIKKELSEN: I can be a little nervous on the project. I try not to be nervous in the room when we start doing stuff. Very early in my career, I experienced that a few times and that was not a helpful thing. It was a paralyzing thing and that doesn’t give you anything. Being a little curious and having what you call butterfly dust in the stomach, that’s good. That’s healthy. That means you’re vibrant and alive. But the nervous thing is just not healthy. Doubt is good when you sit and talk about things. Once you go into the room, you have to be the character and that character is part of the story and he can’t be nervous, unless the scene is about a man who’s nervous, of course.

Related ‘The Promised Land’ Review: Mads Mikkelsen Makes a Meal out of Epic Danish Western In Mikkelsen we trust.

This is a pretty heavy and brutal movie, especially considering that this was a pretty heavy and brutal time period. What was the mood and atmosphere like on set? Are you someone who likes to try to keep things light? What was the atmosphere of this shoot?

MIKKELSEN: We try to keep it light, to a degree, for a number of reasons. We also had a little kid with us, so we couldn’t go around in this somber atmosphere all the time. We needed her to feel at home and to feel comfortable, meaning that she had to understand that I would be talking with very rough words to her. I might even hit her in the scene, but it’s not a real hit, it’s a fake hit. I might be screaming at her, and then she had to understand that when they say, “Cut,” I’m back again and I’m gonna be funny again. We’re gonna have fun. That is very important when you’re dealing with a kid in a scene. There were days that it was just me and the character of Ann Barbara. If we were the only ones and we had a heavy scene, we might just want to stay in that emotion and that feeling for the entire take. But then, when we’re done with that, we’ll get out of it and somebody will eventually crack a joke. You can go in and out of the moods in a film. Sometimes you wanna stay in the mood, and sometimes you wanna swap it out because it is too much to stay there.

The dynamic between you and the child is so interesting. Kahlen is a character that’s so emotionally closed off to everyone and that’s the one dynamic that lets the audience see those cracks a little bit. What was it like to explore that relationship, especially with someone so young playing such an emotionally adult type of role?

MIKKELSEN: It was wonderful. She was a little gem. She’s a fantastic little person. She’d never worked as an actress before, and that’s what we were looking for. That also, of course, gave us some challenges. I’ve worked with little kids quite a few times and the secret rule is to roll with them. Something will happen, and you might forget yourself and become even better. So, I just made sure that she was feeling comfortable. Sometimes she would remember her words and sometimes not, and we would get something cool out of that. We would guide her, but we’d also try to follow her.

Mads Mikkelsen’s ‘The Promised Land’ Co-Star Simon Bennebjerg Wouldn’t Let Him Win a Scene
Image via Magnolia Pictures

There’s also such an interesting dynamic between your character and Schinkel. Your character is meant to be the hero of the story and Schinkel is meant to be the villain, but their actions and their behavior toward each other is very unexpected.

MIKKELSEN: They come from the same breed, in many ways. I wanna be part of something I hate, which is nobility. He is part of it, but he bought himself that. He’s not a noble man. I had a great time with Simon [Bennebjerg]. He’s a young man, and he grew up watching my films and Nikolaj’s films. But he was able to take off that fanboy hat really fast and just become a really annoying character. He would never let me win a scene. That takes some balls to do and he was really good at it, but I had a great time with him. We had a lot of fun, though.

There’s something so fun about a character like that, where he’s just so horrible, but at the same time, there’s something entertaining about watching someone so petulant get so upset.

MIKKELSEN: I think he did a very, very brilliant thing. He managed to feel sorry for himself throughout the film. If you notice, he will often cheer up a little when he’s doing the most horrible things, but he feels pity for himself. In a way, then he becomes that little boy who has all the toys, but nobody wants to play with him and he knows it. I think that was brilliant because it’s heartbreaking to see somebody desperate for love, as much as he is.

Mads Mikkelsen Is Honored Bryan Fuller Chose Him to Be in ‘Dust Bunny’
Image via Magnolia Pictures

We’ve spoken many times about Hannibal over the years. You recently reunited with Bryan Fuller for Dust Bunny. How did that particular project come about? Had you guys been talking about working together again since the end of Hannibal?

MIKKELSEN: A couple years ago, he started talking about it. Right after Hannibal, we didn’t think about working on something else. We thought we were gonna work on Hannibal. Obviously, that didn’t happen. And then, there was a couple of years where people were trying to find a home for it, but that didn’t happen. And then, this thing came along and it was so wonderful to get back with him. Now, he was sitting in a different chair as the director. I’m very honored that he chose me to be part of that journey for him. It was a fantastic experience.

What is that movie about? How do you fit into things?

MIKKELSEN: I don’t know what I can say about it. It’s Bryan Fuller. It’s insane. It’s crazy. Once again, there is a little girl in the film and she is the lead role. I’m her neighbor. She believes she has something under the bed that doesn’t belong there, and I don’t think she does. And then, the film takes off from there.

That sounds like my own worst childhood nightmare.

MIKKELSEN: I think it’s everybody’s.

What are you going to be shooting next? Do you know what’s up next for you?

MIKKELSEN: The strike had an impact, but I still have Danish stuff that was not influenced by the strike. We’re still working on the dates, but I think the next one will be with a fellow friend of mine, who also co-wrote The Promised Land, Anders Thomas Jensen. He is doing his sixth film in his crazy, insane universe. I think that’s what we’re jumping into next.

Riders of Justice is one of my favorite movies of yours.

MIKKELSEN: This one is as crazy, or even more so.

Mads Mikkelsen Believes His Dark Humor Would Likely Keep Him From Making a Rom-Com
Image via TrustNordisk

You are so good at playing a villain, but we also need to see you do a romantic comedy. Is that something you would be interested in?

MIKKELSEN: You can download a film I did, very early in my career, called Shake It All About (En Kort En Lang). That is a rom-com. It’s a little twisted rom-com, but it’s quite cute. I was very young, so everything is cute about it.

Would you do that again, if it came your way?

MIKKELSEN: My sense of humor is dark, Anders Thomas Jensen sarcastic humor. I think my rom-com days are gone. Unless you want it to be in a nursery home. We’ll see about that.

They seem to be working on a Death Stranding movie, which is a video game that you were involved with. Are you a part of that movie? Is that something that you’ve talked about or heard about, at all?

MIKKELSEN: I haven’t heard about it. It sounds good. I’m ready.

You’ve never tried your hand at directing. Has that been a conscious choice? Are you not interested in doing that?

MIKKELSEN: My hunger for directing is being fulfilled by working with people like [Nikolaj Arcel], or Anders Thomas Jensen, or Thomas Vinterberg. They invite me into the process very early, even in the middle of the script writing, so I have my input there. My hunger is not there because I’m fulfilled being part of it. I feel like I’m a tiny director on the films and I’m a tiny writer on the films, and that’s all I need. As long as they want to listen to me a little, once in a while, I’m happy. It’s a very big different thing to start out with your own story, the first word on a piece of paper, then to come in and join something. It’s easy to come in and shake them out of that tunnel vision sometimes than it is to just write the whole thing yourself. So, so far, so good. I don’t have any plans to be a director yet, until everybody gets really fed up with this face, and then I might have to be.

Mads Mikkelsen Says the Horse Scene in ‘The Promised Land’ was Brutal But Beautiful
Image via Magnolia Pictures

What was the most challenging scene to shoot for The Promised Land and what made it challenging?

MIKKELSEN: I speak a lot of German in the film, and I don’t speak German, at least not fluently, so that was a challenge. I really had to work on that. There’s a scene where I had to shoot my horse. We could have done all kind of technical stuff and CGI, but we had the horse there and it was behaving really well. But every time I shot, even though we were not shooting with anything and it was gonna be added later, there was a little click in the gun and the horse freaked out. After doing that a few times, I learned that maybe we could use it for something, and then it ended up in the film. So, when I click it, the horse jumps as its last death move and his head goes up, and then he goes down. It’s that last little shake. That was challenging, but it became quite beautiful and emotional, what we did. But the horse is fine. Nothing happened to him.

The scene where you’re tied down with rope and you’re getting whipped and you’re screaming, I kept wondering what that must have been like to shoot and how long you shot that for. Did you have to do that for multiple takes?

MIKKELSEN: We did multiple takes because he needed multiple takes and different angles to see different people, and sometimes they want you in the foreground and the background, so you have to do the whole thing, again and again. It was tough It was tough on my voice. Apparently, I skipped the screaming classes in drama school because I can only scream five or six times, and then I lose my voice for the next couple of days. That was one of those days. It comes easily. When you go into a zone of that kind of desperation physically, something happens to you emotionally. When you’re physically so desperate, it comes naturally, if you go and immerse yourself in the situation. It was a long day and it was also super cold.

38:33 Related Mads Mikkelsen Reveals Why Oscar-Contender ‘The Promised Land’ Means So Much to Him Mikkelsen and director Nikolaj Arcel discuss the behind-the-scenes of making their Danish film and their 10-year friendship.

It feels like everyone gets to a point in life when they realize that things aren’t always going to turn out the way we’d like them to. That’s a very relatable throughline of this story.

MIKKELSEN: Yeah, it’s a beautiful line. It’s so heavy, what he says, but he says it in an optimistic way. It’s an interesting line for the film, for sure.

Have you had a moment in your own life where you realized that’s just how life is? Do you just let things roll off you?

MIKKELSEN: I think that is what life is about. That is exactly what it is. We have tons of those realizations throughout our life. Many things roll off now, even things that might have been important before. I wanted to play fútbol for Barcelona. That didn’t happen, but I don’t cry about it anymore.

The Promised Land is now playing in theaters. Check out the trailer:

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