Tuva Novotny: "I've had my share of slaps" (3 May 2022)
Photo: Rickard L Eriksson
SPG has met with film star Tuva Novotny in a conversation about togetherness, strong integrity and why Hollywood is not attractive.
It has been over a decade since Tuva Novotny was affected by them: thoughts about the complex phenomenon called love in general, togetherness in particular. Perhaps because at that time she herself had begun to experience its different sides.
TN: I probably came into it a little faster than people generally do in Stockholm today. I really thought the subject was so exciting then, but it is probably more common to start thinking about this life structure when you are like I am now, in your forties.
It is early morning and Copenhagen is hit by April weather. Tuva Novotny, who has called the city home for 20 years, notes that it is βabsolutely sick, it never snows here!β before continuing to talk about the background to her new film Diorama:
TN: At the same time, I saw a documentary and found out that you can have a gene that makes you more predisposed to infidelity and high-risk activities. I was completely taken by that knowledge. I started nerding out about the subject and really couldn't let it go.
The thoughts would lie dormant for a long time. In the meantime, Tuva Novotny would make her directorial debut with the Norwegian feature film Blind Spot, about a teenage girl's severe mental illness, and then make a film of Fredrik Backman's bestseller - about how a 60-year-old woman leaves her long marriage - in Britt-Marie Was Here. It wasn't until now that the dramatic comedy come where Tuva Novotny examines the human thirst for coupling by depicting how a couple goes from being passionately in love to standing on the precipice of marital ruin many years and three children later.
TN: What I'm investigating is probably actually comfort. I look for problems that I don't understand, try to solve them and become a little wiser from it. To get comfort.
So what should you do when your relationship is about to crash?
TN: I think it's important to ask yourself why it is the way it is. I'm not sure that everyone feels good in the structures we establish ourselves in. Maybe just because we don't reflect on them. Just talking about it gives a stronger sense of self and identity in the relationship. I think there are many who don't even think about it and then suddenly you stand there and think: what happened?
She herself goes to a "damn good psychologist".
TN: It's a good outlet for things that are stuck in the system. Disconnecting is also a survival thing for me. I place great importance on reflection, contemplation and existential searching, she says and describes herself as an existentialist.
To withdraw, to create air and space in everyday life to think and to protect one's private life is something Tuva Novotny cares about. It's been in her mind ever since she came to Stockholm from the small town of Γ
mot in VΓ€rmland at the age of 16 and got her first big role, in the TV series Skilda VΓ€rldar.
TN: I probably saw it as a safari at the time. I thought it was exciting, but I wasn't at all sure if it was something I wanted to do in the long run.
The path from there could have been marked out. But Tuva Novotny decided early on to go her own way. Today she has around sixty acting roles under her belt, in everything from Swedish romantic comedies to big Hollywood dramas. She has been seen considerably less in the media.
TN: Some of the choices I have made have been about integrity and my own will, while others certainly have to do with fear. Because the industry is terribly scary in some respects, especially when I entered it, in the 90s.
TN: There was an unreflected idea that success is being seen and heard, and doing it in a certain way. Even more so as a woman and a young person. I didn't do many interviews when I was younger either, but the aesthetics and the way you were addressed were incredibly belittling really. No one was deliberately condescending, but words like self-reflection and integrity weren't that popular back then.
TN: For someone like me, who came from the forest and built things with pine cones, it was scary to lose myself in that. I think part of my selectivity in life has been about fear, which I'm still working on dealing with.
For several years, rumors have been circulating that Tuva Novotny is in a relationship with actor Alexander SkarsgΓ₯rd, something they both have chosen not to comment on. However, the fact that she now meets us heavily pregnant is a fact that is difficult to avoid. But she is clear that she doesn't talk about her private life.
TN: I'm not trying to be dogmatic, but it's clear that it colors you if you've experienced feeling exposed in media contexts. I don't want to make myself available for that kind of exposure. So of course it's also a protective mechanism that I don't talk about my private life. For me, it's all about creating a conversation about what I do, film is my way of communicating. And personally, I don't always find it interesting to be involved in other people's private lives.
How do you deal with writing about you?
TN: It's clear that it can be annoying and that it's unpleasant, I don't want my family and friends to be affected. But you just have to put the lid on it.
She twists her long hair while answering the questions confidently. Where does that security come from?
TN: Oh, I also have my sleepless nights and slaps in life, but I try to be as well equipped as I can to handle them. I need exercise, time to think and do things other than work. And I don't need to look at social media. That discipline around my well-being is important to me.
During the filming of Diorama, she demanded that no one in the team work more than eight hours a day and have zero communication after work hours.
TN: I was keen to keep those boundaries. I think it's so important that we recover. There doesn't have to be a self-destructive effect for what we create to be good, quite the opposite!
In the star-studded film, which stars Sverrir Gudnason, Peter JΓΆback, Marika Lagercrantz and Gustav Lindh, David Dencik and Pia Tjelta play the main roles and Sarah Dawn Finer, the supporting role.
TN: At least half the cast are good friends: Sverrir and I grew up together, David and I have known each other since we were teenagers. Pia and Sarah are two of my closest friends. It created a super safe climate for me to work in, which was so nice.
What experience do you have with you from your international jobs, such as Eat Pray Love?
TN: That you can disappear into a hole and come out two months later. There is something cool and incredibly exciting about it, but also extremely draining. After Eat Pray Love, I wasn't super keen on working in Hollywood anymore. Today I think it's fun to be able to put my foot down there sometimes, most recently with Annihilation.
And this fall Tuva Novotny can be seen in Lars von Trier's Kingdom, when she's not sitting in her room writing new film scripts, both for her own projects and those of others.
TN: In ten years, I'll probably only be sitting and writing if I know myself, but I have to try to push myself out into the world too. It'll be too lonely otherwise, she smiles before setting out into a Copenhagen that has begun to be stained by small streaks of spring sun.
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