Joel Kinnaman breaks down his "conflicted, malignant narcissist" character in Detective Hole

Netflix subscribers tuning in to watch new Norwegian crime drama Detective Hole may be surprised by the presence of Hollywood star Joel Kinnaman in the cast.

Although he has acted entirely in the US and in the English language for a long time now, Kinnaman is Swedish-American, and grew up in Sweden.

He is now playing Tom Waaler, the corrupt Swedish cop who is the arch nemesis of Harry Hole, his colleague and the detective at the centre of the drama.

Kinnaman sat down with Radio Times exclusively to speak about the "conflicted" character, who gets up to plenty of devious deed across the series and is never anything less than compelling to watch.

When asked to describe Waaler, Kinnaman said with a heavy dose of sarcasm: "He's just warm, kind, and he's a good friend. He's a good friend, he takes his job very seriously, and he cares a lot about his society. And even though he doesn't have any empathy and he cuts off an occasional penis, he's a good guy. He's a really good guy."

Asked how Waaler's relationship with Harry Hole develops, and how much fun it was working on that with Harry star Tobias Santelmann, Kinnaman said: "So fun. It's so fun playing this kind of character that's so conflicted.

"He's sexually conflicted. He's morally without any real compass. His only real compass is his sexual drive and his ambition and need for power."

He continued: "But at the same time, there is also something underneath there that is a wounded child, that just wants to be loved and wants to be accepted. So it's all these things that are in there and working together in conjunction. And he is not clear of what's going on. Tom is not clear.

"He's not like, ‘Oh, this is my goal, and I'm working towards it and I know what I feel about things.’ He is all over the place, but he's also very intelligent and competent and knows how to play power games really well.

"I sort of define him as a malignant narcissist, which, on the scale of psychopathy, is the station right before a sociopathic narcissist. It's someone that doesn't have much empathy, and can act completely without empathy, but has the ability to sometimes feel it. I thought that was really interesting."

All nine episodes of Detective Hole are available to stream now, with the series having been adapted for the screen by the author of the Harry Hole books, Jo Nesbø. This particular season is based on the fifth novel in Nesbø's series, The Devil's Star.

Detective Hole is available to watch in full on Netflix now. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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