Claire Foy on how The Girl in the Spider’s Web reimagines Lisbeth Salander

Clarisse Loughrey visits the set of Sony Pictures’ sequel to (and soft reboot of) ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ to learn what’s changed

We’re huddled in a small tent in one of the cavernous spaces of Germany’s legendary Babelsberg Studio, located right outside Berlin. Fritz Lang’s Metropolis was shot here, alongside Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. I’m here, alongside a handful of other journalists, however, to observe production on Sony Pictures’ The Girl in the Spider’s Web.

The film has attracted its fair share of curiosity: adapting the fourth book in the Millennium series, written by David Lagercrantz after the death of original author Stieg Larsson, it’s both a sequel to 2011’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and a soft reboot.

Gone is director David Fincher – the Evil Dead remake’s Fede Alvarez is now at the helm. Daniel Craig has been replaced by Sverrir Gudnason, best known for playing Bjorn Borg in 2017’s Borg vs McEnroe, in the role of investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist.

And Rooney Mara is Lisbeth Salander no more, as The Crown’s Claire Foy steps out as Sweden’s avenging angel, with that same inked dragon winding down her back. For an actor most familiar to audiences as Queen Elizabeth II, the switch is quite a jolt to the system. And, sitting in a tent in Babelsberg Studio, watching Foy filming a scene through a bank of video monitors, the extremity of the transformation becomes all the more apparent.

When the cameras are rolling, Foy-as-Lisbeth is a taciturn presence. A few words manage to trickle out in a thick Swedish accent, but she seems to fold into herself, her energy contained behind those wide, darting eyes. But the moment “Cut!” is called, Foy-as-Foy jumps to life. She exists a world apart, as she rallies her young co-star, Christopher Convery, in a sing-song voice that brings to mind the ever-buoyant Mary Poppins (was she ever in the running for the Disney sequel?).

Foy isn’t blind to the fact that the role presents a huge risk. When she sits down with us between takes, she says, with a chuckle: “I was just absolutely cacking my pants and thinking: ‘Why am I doing this?’ I could just make my life a bit easier and not try and push myself to the edge of my abilities as an actor. I could just let it go. But there was some sort of weird impulse to just jump off the cliff, in a way.”

Claire Foy as Lisbeth Salander in ‘The Girl in the Spider’s Web’ (Nadja Klier/Sony Pictures via AP)

However, the project was initially a no-go for Foy. “Wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. Absolutely not”, she says of her initial reaction. “You’re just asking for trouble when you play a character from a novel. Everyone reads books from their own perspective,so you can’t appeal to everyone or get it right. So you’re entering in a situation where you’re always going to fail in a way.”

It was only after a meeting with Alvarez that she understood the director’s intentions to carve out his own version of the story. As he explains: “It’s based on the main storylines of the novel, for sure, but it is a departure in many other elements. I think there are certain novels you have to be faithful to every detail of, like when they adapted the first one. Here, I think, for me, it’s more about honouring the universe of these books.”

There are moments that reference the second and third books as a nod to fans. “And I think that’s when I then went, ‘well, I can do that’,” Foy says. “If you’re asking me to do that, I can do that.”

Foy was also attracted by the promise of Lisbeth herself, having originally read the books when she was in her twenties. “What I loved was that Lisbeth appears one way to the outside world, which is as a victim and weak and easy prey,” she says. “But inside, you know, she is completely the opposite. She’s tough and intelligent and really vulnerable, but she’s done everything she can to avoid that. And I think that’s how a lot of people feel that they’re viewed by the world – as something other than what they are.”

The fact Foy isn’t the most obvious choice for Lisbeth is, in fact, key to how The Girl in the Spider’s Web separates itself from its predecessors. In the books, Lisbeth has suffered greatly by the time we reach the events of The Girl in the Spider’s Web – she’s faced abuse, false accusations, and a brush with death – but we’ve also seen her confront her trauma and grow stronger from it.

She hasn’t seen Blomkvist in three years, although the bond between them hasn’t faded. “Lisbeth is his fuel,” Gudnason says. When their paths cross once more, she finds herself thrust into the role of hero, as she calls upon Blomkvist to help her prevent a programme with the ability to access the world’s nuclear codes from falling into the wrong hands.

And, while Mara and Noomi Rapace, who starred as Lisbeth in the Swedish adaptations, traded on ethereal edge, Foy’s version plays into Lisbeth’s heroics, subtly revising the character to make her more relatable to audiences.

As costume designer Carlos Rosario says: “Everybody was very stressed out about how we wanted to portray Lisbeth Salander on this project. She’s been portrayed so many times and so beautifully by other actresses, in so many other great projects, that everybody was very stressed out about how she was going to look like on this project.”

The answer, for Rosario, was to tone down Lisbeth’s trademark goth style and create a look that was “more approachable, so the audience could relate to her a little bit more”. The character’s wardrobe instead gives off a “motorcycle vibe”, specifically in her final outfit in the film, a combo of black leathers with a red and white stripe running down the side, taking inspiration from Uma Thurman’s yellow tracksuit in Kill Bill (2003).

Foy has enjoyed making the jump from Elizabeth (above) to Lisbeth (Netflix)

For Foy, it was essential that every piece in the wardrobe had a sense of meaning to it. Rosario adds: “She’s very logical, very rational in the way she works.” Each of Lisbeth’s piercings has its own story and belongs to a specific time in her life. “I’m a bit difficult about that, because I always believe less is more,” Foy says. “I know for me, if I do anything, if I try to make it something that isn’t something I believe, then I look fake. And I have a real problem with being fake.”

In fact, Foy is extremely practical when it comes to the question of how her Lisbeth will stand out from the pack. “I think I am a different person and a different actress, so there it will be different,” she says, quite matter of factly. “At the same time, I don’t want to be disrespectful to the novels or to the script or to the performances that have gone before, and decide just to throw it all against the wall. I don’t want to do that. So it is a fine balance. I’ve really enjoyed the journey of being in something that you know people will have an idea of what it should or shouldn’t be, and just to do what you think is right in that moment.”

As we sit and watch her leap in and out of character with breathless ease, it’s clear that Foy is smart to trust her own instincts.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web will be released in UK cinemas on 21 November