Vanguard’s Alex Haridi & Goran Kapetanović

A broad swathe of broadcasters from across Europe have boarded Vanguard, the Swedish event series that tells the story of media tycoon Jan Stenbeck. The production was commissioned from FLX by SVT in collaboration with the New8 alliance of European pubcasters. Viaplay Content Distribution has secured a number of deals for the series, which won best series and best actor for lead Jakob Oftebro at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival’s Golden Nymph Awards this year. Alex Haridi, writer, and Goran Kapetanović, director, discuss with TV Drama how the series approached chronicling Stenbeck’s impact on European media, his tumultuous family life and his complicated legacy.

TV DRAMA: What appealed to you about telling the story of Jan Stenbeck?
HARIDI: I grew up during the end of his life. At that point, he was a joke in Swedish culture. He’d become such a larger-than-life character. He’d gained a lot of weight. He was very abrasive and conflict-prone. [I had been thinking about] where we are today with fake news, the way communication works, where you don’t trust sources; media is very much in doubt. We no longer share a common truth. I was fascinated by this man because he was part of the start of disrupting media. So, it started from, how did we come to this point [in media], from a Swedish perspective? He was extremely handsome back in the 1970s, and he was incredibly glamorous. These things clashed with the picture I had in my mind of him as this sad, overweight joke. It was the dual stories of how we reached this point in time and his personal story, which was so fascinating. How does this wonderful, happy, joyous, attractive young guy end up as this sad clown?
KAPETANOVIĆ: It was also an interesting story about family. It’s a classic succession story. And, of course, the ’70s and ’80s were a time of such transformation. We find a playground in China to produce inexpensive goods for Europe and the United States. It’s the Margaret Thatcher era. We moved industry abroad and started something totally new here.

TV DRAMA: What was the approach to portraying an accurate representation of this polarizing figure?
HARIDI: I wanted to show his bad sides. In the Swedish context, that’s what he’s famous for. At the same time, it’s very much the story of how he becomes a joke. It’s a “becoming” story. If we’re going to emotionally invest in that, if we’re going to feel anything at the end when he is a pretty horrible person, we have to sympathize with him along the way. It was a question of communicating to the audience in a way that they understand why he’s doing these things while not excusing them. So, showing the horrible things that he does while also understanding why he does them.

TV DRAMA: Goran, how did you approach re-creating the look and feel of the era?
KAPETANOVIĆ: When you go back in history to the ’70s, it’s such a rich time. There are many details where you can express yourself. Numerous revolutions were occurring in clothing, furniture and everything else. We were trying to describe 20 years of one person’s life. The cinematographic expression is very powerful. We put a lot of effort into postproduction.
HARIDI: I’m so proud of the look of the show. One of the things that I, as a writer, really love about Goran as a director is that, even though the details are there, what he cares about is the story, the characters and the actors. It never becomes a fetish of filming individual old objects that we’ve spent weeks trying to find. We spent weeks trying to find them, and they’re there in the frame. If you look, you can see them. But it’s always about the story and the characters. They’re moving comfortably in these old clothes. That’s a credit to Goran and his directing style.

TV DRAMA: What is your approach to working with your on-screen talent? How do you get the best out of them on set?
KAPETANOVIĆ: I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, bringing some new talents from Sweden and [across] Scandinavia and giving them a chance. We are very familiar with some old faces here, the people who are getting the roles for the TV shows. I always try to find someone who is involved and engaged in the story. They want to show something new. They have such an interest in the characters. I give them a push, of course. I work with them to go deep into the character. It was a bit of method acting at times for the main character. We went on to drink and eat as the main character did during the ’70s and ’80s, and we tried to do it in three days. We gained two or three kilos! [Laughs]

TV DRAMA: What do you want audiences to take from the series?
HARIDI: One of the things that was so fascinating about this story was how much these things that we take for granted now happened by accident. This whole thing spirals out of a stupid conflict that he has with his sister. He changed so much in the world, in the landscape of media, and it’s basically because of a brother and a sister fighting on the playground. And it’s just stupid and it’s ridiculous, but that’s the way the world works. If there’s something that I want people to take from this, it’s that the way things are today is not God-given. Things change, they change fast, we’ve changed them fast, and sometimes things change for really stupid reasons.

KAPETANOVIĆ: He started all these things we have today. I think he realized we are going to reach this point. Maybe that was part of his destructive time. He made so much, but he asked himself, What’s going to happen next after this?