If the theme of Disconnect is that all our online technology keeps us apart, we used our power for good and not evil. Swedish actor Michael Nyqist spoke to us by phone from Stockholm, Sweden about the film, which is now on DVD and Blu-ray. Nyqvist plays a man who speaks with a grieving mother (Paula Patton) in a grief chat room, and her husband (Alexander Skarsgard) suspects him of stealing their identity. Nyqvist is best known in the States for the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, which has led to some Hollywood bad guy roles in Mission: Impossble – Ghost Protocol and Abduction. He was happy to reflect on everything when we spoke.
CraveOnline: Did Disconnect get you thinking about your relationship with the internet?
Michael Nyqvist: We talked about it, [director] Henry [Alex Rubin] and me. We met in London. I read the script. If I compared myself to my kids, they know everything and they’re like small little hackers. I feel also that my identity can be stolen, I’m very paranoid about it compared to other people in the younger generation. Also if you’re going through that as my character did, I’m so lonely and I have this grief and sorrow, I do whatever to talk to someone with something about this. It’s a little bit like I give my credit card to someone, please don’t use it. It turns out to be what it is.
Having done the Dragon Tattoo movies, how did those affect your view of technology?
To be honest, what Stieg was into is today like talking about a tractor or sailing ship. Compare where we are now with the internet and computers and just the thing that I smuggle into Lisben, one cell phone that lets you go on the internet, in those days when he wrote it was like, “Wow, that’s really modern.” So the technology in The Dragon Tattoo was more or less a pen, paper and using a computer to send mail. That was that generation. Thinking about that, it goes so quick. In 10 years or five years, it’s so different. In those days, at the time we did Dragon, we didn’t even have apps. They didn’t exist. That’s a new generation on that.
When you read the script to Disconnect, were you surprised how your character turned out? At first we think he’s something else and then it’s revealed.
I liked the way it turned. That was why I said yes to it. I thought the good deed with the script was that you could do foretell things. That was also the intent, the intense feeling in the script. It was on the edge for everyone, everywhere and that’s what I liked in the script.
Since it’s a big ensemble, was there ever a moment where the whole cast came together, for a rehearsal or a table read?
We didn’t do that. I met Henry in London and then I did a film, so I couldn’t come. I came doing my stuff with Alexander and Paula. Paula and Alexander are two people I worked with before. I did Mission: Impossible with Paula and Alexander’s father is an old, old friend of mine and we did a couple of films. Also the stories were so in their own universe in a way for us. We didn’t really connect to the other people. We did our story.
There’s been talk that in the American Dragon Tattoo movies, they might take Blomkvist out of The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. What do you think about the idea to take him out of the second two stories?
I think the thing with Blomkvist, he has his political angle into things. If you take him out, the stories just go into thriller. So I don’t know. I think that is not the way to do it.
You might end up being the only actor who got to play him in all three stories.
That’s very flattering and I think I’ll have to call Daniel and say that. No, I think it’s kind of weird but also the story of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is so many hidden stones in the story. It’s about Swedish society and the prophet in that is Mikael. It’s not Lisbeth. To make that wider sense of the stories is very important I think.
Compared to all the other films we have, Stieg Larsson’s project was to show that society is a society that judges women, men, history in a way that we can do something about. He tried to encourage people to feel that you had the power to change things. You can change a society with a pen and paper and a cell phone if you have the power to ask the right questions of the right people.
Mikael is the one with empathy, with the social skills. To bring him out of the story, it becomes like that French film, La Femme Nikita. I’ve seen that film before, a woman at rage. That story’s told already. The power of Stieg’s stories are that he connects the whole society into his thriller. That’s already done, and we did something else.
Abduction became a legendary movie. What was it like making it?
I had great fun. I had great fun with John [Singleton]. Boyz N the Hood is my favorite film of his. To do that, with Sigourney [Weaver] and with Alfred [Molina], we were a good team. I think it’s a cult film for teenagers and we felt that a bit when we did that, when we shot it. I had a great time with John. The whole thing, that was so encouraging to do it.
The thing is I come from a different acting culture. I come from the Ingmar Bergman society and to play a person like him that I played was just for me great fun. It’s so far away from being an actor on the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theater and doing all the Swedish European films, films about grief or revenge or psychology without weapons, whatever. Also the interesting angle of who you are like Taylor [Lautner]’s part, he researches his identity, I found also interesting. That I think was a bit why I said yes to that film, to work with John and the thing about identity. My life story started like that, not knowing where I came from. I come from an orphanage and I wrote a book about it just released when John called me, so I got interested to play from the other angle.
If we only discovered you about five years ago from the Dragon Tattoo movies, what would you like us to know about your earlier films?
My early films were very European based. It was As It Is In Heaven, Together, they were great international successes, but then I did I think 60 movies or something. Where I come from it’s a little bit like England. We start from the theater and we do films a bit on our free time. The history of making films in Scandinavia is so old, it’s like the oldest. The Nordic film industry started before Hollywood in Stockholm in Copenhagen.
So we have an old, old industry of that where basically if you do a thriller, it’s not who was the killer. Who is the killer is not the big question. It’s why did they do it, or him or her? That is the big question so we come from a little bit different angle. That is, for me, the interesting thing when I now basically work in the United States, to work with your culture, the film culture. Where you’re brilliant in building new worlds like Mission: Impossible or Abduction and things like that, we basically try to put a mirror up to the society we live in. It’s a bit different. It’s a little bit like Mike Leigh. I feel spoiled to do both. I feel so happy about it.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
