Denmark’s Nikolaj Lie Kaas enters a new career phase with his TV series about a talent agent, playing in Berlinale Series.
First things first: actor-turned-writer/director Nikolaj Lie Kaas had the idea to write and create a comedy/drama series about a Danish talent agent more than a year before anyone heard about Call My Agent!.
“I thought of all these stories I heard about celebrities and agents, some that I’ve been working with, and I thought it would be interesting to do a show about a self-absorbed agent,” he laughs. “There were so many great stories out there to draw from, even a few from my personal life.
“Also,” he continues, “my dad [Preben Kaas] was a comedian, and he had stories from back in the 1960s and 1970s. Today’s stories are nothing compared to his…”
For his new show Agent, Lie Kaas first envisioned the agent character as “a complete idiot, but we realised he wouldn’t be likeable. Because we wanted the audience to relate to the guy, we wanted to make him more pleasant.” So, this agent, Joe, is a far cry from Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold in Entourage.
Heart of gold
Casting the charming Danish actor Esben Smed (Follow The Money, A Fortunate Man) also helped create a character that audiences would be invested in. “My initial plan was to cast someone from the comedy world. Esben is not known for his comedy, but he’s a very open-minded dramatic actor,” says Lie Kaas. “I knew he’d be perfect to cast; he has a heart. This character makes so many stupid choices, it was a problem if he wasn’t charismatic.”
Another theme that sets the new show apart from other work-obsessed agent stories is that Joe is a divorced dad trying hard to create a special bond with his daughter. “I wanted this relationship he has with his daughter to be not just parental, but talking to her as an equal. It’s inevitable for her that she has to stand up and become the adult that he’s not,” says Lie Kaas, who was able to draw on some of his own experiences balancing the entertainment world and parenthood.
The showrunner asked some famous friends to play heightened versions of themselves, among them Ulrich Thomsen, who becomes obsessed with a Hollywood role, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who hires a singing bard to follow him around.
“I wanted them to play characters that are somewhat related to their lives,” he says. “I know a bit about how they are privately, but the audience doesn’t — so that let us dial it up. Some of them took some convincing to come on board, but I think they trusted me.”
Lie Kaas decided not to appear in the show himself, as he thought it might be distracting for the audience (although his framed photo can be spotted on the agency’s wall of clients). He says his own agent is a fan of the series, and insists the character of Joe is not based on her — she is more the inspiration for the supportive junior agent who puts up with Joe’s outrageous behaviour.
Lie Kaas’s acting credits include Riders Of Justice, Zentropa’s hit Department Q films and, more recently, Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom Exodus. He recalls his days as an EFP Shooting Star at Berlinale 2003 (when he appeared in The Green Butchers) — there were a lot of drinks during that festival and Dennis Hopper presented the award. And he certainly has no plans to quit acting even while his career takes a new turn.
Having previously directed the Danish show Mr. Poxycat & Co. in 2007 and been offered other directing gigs in the years since, he says now felt like the right time to try something different and push himself. “I wanted to tell a story I could relate to and that I found funny and full of drama and heart,” he says.
TV2 will start airing the Zentropa-produced 8x40mins series this summer in Denmark, and Lie Kaas is excited to show it to an international audience in Berlin (TrustNordisk handles sales). “You never know if a show is going to travel, but they say by being local you can appeal globally,” he says. “The show bridges comedy with being pretty serious, so I hope that mix of genres can travel. I’m excited to see how people respond.”
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