From The Killing and House of Cards to Altered Carbon and Suicide Squad, Joel Kinnaman has notched up an array of prolific roles in movies and television. Most recently, the Swedish-born actor can be seen in Apple TV+’s alternate timeline drama For All Mankind, in which he plays an astronaut named Edward Baldwin. Up next, he returns to the role of Colonel Rick Flag for the DC Comics superhero sequel, The Suicide Squad.

Speaking by phone from LA, here he talks about his career, his experience with fame and his life in Hollywood.

When did you decide you wanted to become an actor?

I was drawn to acting for a variety of reasons. My sister was an actor, so I felt this sense of curiosity about it – but my first endeavor in this field involved an application for theater school. I remember working on a monologue for the theater school and it was an incredibly enlightening moment of my life.

Take us back to those early days.

This particular monologue was a scene from Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill and it involved a scene where Edmund lets his anger at his father rip. As many of us do, I had a difficult relationship with my father when I was growing up. I was working on the scene with this one actor, who was helping me prepare, but it felt really strange to say the written words out loud. However, there was this moment a couple of weeks into it where something grabbed hold of me, and everything changed. I experienced this feeling where something reminded me of an experience I went through with my dad. At that point, the text came alive in me for the very first time and I was filled with emotion. All the words came flying out of my mouth and I realized later that it was the first time I had connected with text. It was the first time I experienced flow.

How did that make you feel?

After I’d finished the text, I sat there panting. I was exhausted and I was trying to regain composure. I knew that I was probably good on some level, but I was still trying to process what I had experienced. The other actor sat quietly in the room for a while before saying to me, “You know, this could easily be your profession. This could be your life. If you want it, you have the talent to do this as a profession.” He gave me this little speech about how it was going to take a lot of work, but that I could be part of this little club if I wanted it.

What did you think of the prospect of an acting career?

To be honest, I think that was the first time I had an inkling that there was something in life that I was good at. I hadn’t really felt that before. I’d been okay at a lot of things, but I wasn’t great at anything. I was decent at sports, but not great. I was not doing great in school. I’d gotten into a lot of trouble and I’d flirted with things I shouldn’t be doing. At the age of 20, acting became my obsession. It became a window into a real life; a life that meant something, so I became absolutely obsessed with it. It was as if my life literally depended on it.

What was your first taste of Hollywood?

They cast a really wide net when they were casting for the 2011 Kenneth Branagh-directed Thor. They were auditioning people all over the world, so I sent in a tape. I’d never put myself on tape before, but my Swedish agent said to me, “Here’s the text. Just film yourself.” I had no idea how to do it, but I shot it in my kitchen, and I ended up sending in this tape for Thor. To be honest, I felt like I nailed it. It felt really good, but I sent it off and I didn’t expect to hear anything. I also heard about a bunch of other Swedish actors who’d sent in tapes, so I realized that the team must be looking at thousands of auditions. I didn’t think anything of it.

Did you get a callback for the role?

At the time, my sister was working in London. Two weeks after I sent in the tape, she said to me, “Hey, Joel. There’s a picture of you in The Guardian.” I was like, “What’s The Guardian?” She replied, “The Guardian is a British newspaper and there’s a picture of you with three other guys.” Apparently, an article said that the hunt for Thor had come down to four actors: me, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Hemsworth and one other person. I was like, “Okay, what does this mean?” I waited until I heard back.

Did you do a screen test for Thor?

They were trying to get me to fly to New York to do a screen test with Natalie Portman, but I didn’t have a day off in the upcoming two months. At that time, I was in a play in Sweden and I was also shooting my first lead role, which was a movie called Snabba Cash (Easy Money). Unfortunately, I couldn’t do any screen test in New York, so I had to send in another tape instead and that was the end of Thor. But that was my first foray into Hollywood. That’s where it all started for me.

When did you feel like you’d arrived in Hollywood?

When I compare notes with other friends and people who have tried to establish themselves in Hollywood, I’ve realized that it went pretty quickly – but on a personal level, it felt like it took a really long time. I moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 2009. By January 2010, I had booked The Killing, which was my first American series. I spent five months getting rejected, which was one of the most difficult times in my life. I remember thinking, ‘This is taking forever.’ Before I left Sweden, I intentionally said in interviews that I was going to Hollywood to try and make it there. I wanted to put that pressure on myself so that I wouldn’t come home empty-handed, but it all started rolling pretty quickly thereafter.

Currently, audiences can see you on the small screen in the Apple TV+ show, For All Mankind. What’s been your personal highlight to the second season?

A big challenge of this role has involved portraying the effects of the loss of a child on a parent. For me, that was one of the reasons why I wanted to play this character in the first place. We played out the shock of that storyline at the end of the first season, but it continues into season two and I thought the writers had a beautiful way of telling this story. They have a really beautiful way of describing how the wounds and the pain are not going to heal, even though we are now 10 years after the tragedy. We discover how the wounds and the pain are never going to go away, but they are not quite on the surface. However, when they come out, they come out and are triggered by something that you wouldn’t necessarily expect. At the end of the third episode [of season two], there’s a long scene where we go really deep. Honestly, I think that scene is one of the highlights of my career.

 

What research did you tackle in order to delve into the emotional and challenging mindset of your character?

I watched a lot of interview videos and documentaries about people that have lost children. I spent hours watching people talk about how they try to cope with the situation. You come away with this really strong sense of responsibility that you need to honor the people that have gone through this experience by giving them truthful performances. In portraying that pain and grief, I feel like I carried a little bit of all the people I’d watched.

How do you switch off after completing a complex and emotional scene?

Over the course of my career, I’ve created pathways in my psyche and in my emotional life. When I started out, I would engulf myself in the emotion that I was trying to portray. I would listen to music and I would force myself to think the thoughts of my character for hours on end to try and make the performance ring true. I don’t have to do that now because I’ve created those pathways. Today, I just try to put myself into their position and it goes pretty quickly. I’ve found that I can be one of those sociopathic creatures on set where I will be laughing and talking shit one second, but it will just take me 10 seconds to breakdown in a scene and go on that emotional ride with a character.

As an actor, what scenes do you find the most challenging to shoot?

I find it most difficult to move on from the scenes where you’re holding everything in. It’s difficult when you’re working on scenes where you hold on to a pain, or you’re holding on to some anger or sadness, and you don’t let it out. That’s difficult for the rest of the day because you have all these feelings pent up inside of you. However, if you’re playing a scene like we did in episode three, where it all comes out, then you actually feel the catharsis of your character. You actually feel it and you walk away from a scene feeling moved. It’s the same feeling you have in real life when you have a good, big cry about something, and you feel like you’ve had a little cleanse. You feel lighter and more honest. I certainly felt the levity after working through that scene.

Season three of the show is about to start shooting. What can you tease about its storyline?

The third season of For All Mankind follows the same trajectory as season two in the sense that we continue to jump close to a decade in time between the seasons. What else can I tease about the third season? I guess I can reveal that it’s going to be very good and we’re going deeper into space, as you can imagine.

Later this year, you will appear in the superhero sequel, The Suicide Squad. What can audiences expect from the James Gunn-directed movie?

If you want to know what to expect from the movie then just think about what James Gunn would do with a Suicide Squad movie and you’ll have a good idea. It’s a bloody mess! I think it’s the biggest budget R-rated movie ever made. It’s very gory, but it’s also a comedy. Every page of the script made me laugh. James Gunn has a singular handle on this genre. He intuitively knows his way around this world.

Is this your first comedy project?

That’s right. This movie very much feels like my first comedy and it was such a good experience to have a guide like James Gunn chaperone me through it all. There’s a fantastic cast and I honestly can’t wait to see it. As a fan, I think it’s going to be a huge event movie and I really hope that people watch it in theaters because it’s going to be funny and violent, as well as batshit crazy. There’s going to be a lot of oohs and aahs in the theater, and a lot of laughs. It’s the kind of movie that you will want to have a collective experience when viewing it.

Exactly how crazy and wild is the story?

When it comes to batshit crazy, add John Cena wearing a silver toilet seat on his head and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect! Suicide Squad is going to be wild! I can’t wait.