Joel Kinnaman interview: Suicide Squad star on managing criticism and working on Netflix's answer to Game of Thrones

Kinnaman, who plays Rick Flag, explains how he prepared for the blockbuster role and how starting his career in Scandinavia has helped his journey to the top

Joel Kinnaman as the one good guy in Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad is further confirmation of the rising status of Swedish heartthrob Joel Kinnaman. He plays Rick Flag, the one "good guy" in Suicide Squad, expected to be the government’s eyes and ears, watching over the group of supervillains they’ve banded together to fight crime. For many, this is blockbuster entertainment, a diversion to pass away a couple of hours, but for the 36-year-old actor it meant eight months of intensive preparation and training. A lot of training.

“We went deep into the characters for preparation,” he says, while sipping green tea with honey in a London hotel room. “Director David Ayer put together a buffet of character development bringing in his friend, a veteran of the Rampart division of the LAPD, who has done many interrogations. Together they would find ways to get you to open up and share, asking you questions like: What are your biggest fears? What have you done that you’re most ashamed of? After a while you get really honest and then David would use that in the shoot, completing betraying your trust.”

He laughs as he says this, suggesting that he wasn’t offended by Ayer’s methods, but nor would he reveal what those moments from his life were, “Oh no, that’s not for print.”

He was assigned three former military men to train him and his bulging muscles are a testament to his dedication, but what most struck Kinnaman about the training was the mental aspect: “They wanted me to understand the mindset that you need to have, to block everything out and make a decision when you’re exhausted. Even though the guns are blazing and everything and everybody is shooting, maybe you are walking out and figuring out what you are going to do. One wrong decision will mean that your friends are going to die.”

It was the Vietnam war that led to his father, Stephen moving to Sweden, where he met Kinnaman’s therapist mother. His dad was drafted to fight in South-East Asia, but his conscience got the better of him. “Yeah, he deserted from the Vietnam war, and lived on the run in Laos for five years, then he came to Sweden and of course that’s a huge decision. He came from a generation that grew up on the Nuremberg trials, where the idea that you shouldn’t obey orders that are illegal, that hadn’t been brought up before. That was what he was brought up with, and he couldn’t find justice for that war.”

In the film an American government agent decides to form the Suicide Squad because of a hypothetical threat of supervillains or rogue superheroes attacking America. They respond by doing a deal with their enemies to stop that threat, but in doing so, unleash a greater foe. Making one reading of the film about America creating their own monsters. “Wow, that’s deep,” says Kinnaman, “But I don’t think the film has any political aspirations.”

We meet after the film has received a critical mauling from the press. His first blockbuster effort, a remake of Robocop, in 2014, also received a critical backlash. Kinnaman says, “When it happens, it can be frustrating. You have your hopes that you have a film that you both feel proud of yourself, and that other people will like it. Most importantly, you have to have a film that you feel proud of yourself because that’s the part you can control. Being an actor, means for 95 per cent of the time you’re being told, no that’s not right, so you have to be very robust when it comes to criticism.”

Although he’s also refreshingly honest when he comes to criticism that he might agree with. He says, “On Robocop for example, in hindsight, that was my first lead in a big American film and had I got that role today, there was a lot of decisions that were made initially in that project that I would have had very strong opinions about.”

He praises director José Padilha for taking the Robocop story and putting a unique spin on it, but then adds, “But you have to understand the fan base. If you are going to do a remake of something, you have to understand what the fans of it love, otherwise you shouldn’t touch it. What Jose was interested in wasn’t that, he just saw it as a way to tell a really interesting big budget story about the merge between us and machines and the repercussions that has on the soul.”

Up till now, the critical acclaim for his English language performances has come from his performances on television. He played detective Stephen Holder in The Killing and joined House of Cards in its fourth season playing Governor Will Conway. In Sweden it was his turn in the Easy Money films that confirmed his status as Scandinavia’s favourite heartthrob.

He says of his journey, “Growing up in a different culture and a different taste, I think you have a contrast that makes it easier to see and define things. In one way, I came from a country where I’d already played a bunch of lead roles, so when I came to the States, I was already used to being in that position. So when I got that opportunity, even though it was the first time in the US, it wasn’t new to me. So that can be an advantage coming from a smaller market.”

He says there was much of himself in Holder, “He was so quirky, he had so many interests, he could be an expert at computer engineering or he knew how to train a panda, or he couldn’t cook pasta. What became of that character was just fun. The funny thing was Patty Jenkins, she directed the pilot of The Killing and Holder’s sense of humour very much came from trying to get Patty to laugh.”

He was excited to become part of House of Cards, “It was the first time that I entered a show that I was already a fan of. I don’t think I ever went more than three days after a season came out before I finished it,” he says. “And then Kevin [Spacey] in that role, I don’t know if there is any actor in that role who does it better.”

I jest that Helen Mirren may now want to slap him. Kinnaman then shows the Holder sense of humour, “But you see I wouldn’t mind that. I would kiss Helen Mirren.”

It would have to be on screen though, as otherwise he might be on the end of the wrath of his wife, Cleo Wattenström, a tattooist he recently married. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has a lot of tattoos on his forearms.

If he has a nemesis it might be Tom Hardy, who beat him to the role of Mad Max and also was cast in Suicide Squad, before a production clash led to Hardy withdrawing. Kinnaman jests, “He has really good taste.” Before adding, “No, Tommy is a phenomenal actor. If I can continue to eat the leftovers on his table, I’m eating good and I’m happy.”

Whether Suicide Squad continues to break box-office records or falls away, it seems assured that Kinnaman will be one of the most talked about actors over the next few years. He’s filming a fifth season of House of Cards and then comes Altered Carbon, a futuristic sci-fi being produced by Netflix.

The actor can barely contain his excitement about the project. “It’s their biggest show so far. It’s their answer to Game of Thrones, in terms of ambition. But it’s a sci-fi series, it’s based on a book [by Richard K. Morgan] called Altered Carbon and it takes place 500 years in the future and the human body has lost it’s value because your soul and everything, its memories, are stored on a chip, in a stack at the top of your vertebrae. It’s a noir story that takes place in this world. There will be comparisons to Blade Runner, I’m sure.”

Suicide Squad is out now