{"id":23459,"date":"2025-09-23T09:44:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T13:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T15:01:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T19:01:19","slug":"vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Vanguard\u2019s Alex Haridi & Goran Kapetanovi\u0107"},"content":{"rendered":"

A broad swathe of broadcasters from across Europe have boarded Vanguard<\/em>, 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\u2019s Golden Nymph Awards this year. Alex Haridi, writer, and Goran Kapetanovi\u0107, director, discuss with\u00a0TV Drama<\/em>\u00a0how the series approached chronicling Stenbeck\u2019s impact on European media, his tumultuous family life and his complicated legacy.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong>\u00a0What appealed to you about telling the story of Jan Stenbeck?
\nHARIDI:<\/strong> I grew up during the end of his life. At that point, he was a joke in\u00a0Swedish culture. He\u2019d become such a larger-than-life character. He\u2019d 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\u2019t 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?
\nKAPETANOVI\u0106:<\/strong>\u00a0It was also an interesting story about family. It\u2019s a classic succession story. And, of course, the \u201970s and \u201980s were a time of such transformation. We find a playground in China to produce inexpensive goods for Europe and the United States. It\u2019s the Margaret Thatcher era. We moved industry abroad and started something totally new here.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong>\u00a0What was the approach to portraying an accurate representation of this polarizing figure?
\nHARIDI:<\/strong>\u00a0I wanted to show his bad sides. In the Swedish context, that\u2019s what he\u2019s famous for. At the same time, it\u2019s very much the story of how he becomes a joke. It\u2019s a \u201cbecoming\u201d story. If we\u2019re going to emotionally invest in that, if we\u2019re 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\u2019s doing these things while not excusing them. So, showing the horrible things that he does while also understanding why he does them.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong>\u00a0Goran, how did you approach re-creating the look and feel of the era?
\nKAPETANOVI\u0106:<\/strong>\u00a0When you go back in history to the \u201970s, it\u2019s 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\u2019s life. The cinematographic expression is very powerful. We put a lot of effort into postproduction.
\nHARIDI:<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019m 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\u2019ve spent weeks trying to find. We spent weeks trying to find them, and they\u2019re there in the frame. If you look, you can see them. But it\u2019s always about the story and the characters. They\u2019re moving comfortably in these old clothes. That\u2019s a credit to Goran and his directing style.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong>\u00a0What is your approach to working with your on-screen talent? How do you get the best out of them on set?
\nKAPETANOVI\u0106:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019ve 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 \u201970s and \u201980s, and we tried to do it in three days. We gained two or three kilos! [Laughs<\/em>]\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong>\u00a0What do you want audiences to take from the series?
\nHARIDI:<\/strong>\u00a0One 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\u2019s basically because of a brother and a sister fighting on the playground. And it\u2019s just stupid and it\u2019s ridiculous, but that\u2019s the way the world works. If there\u2019s something that I want people to take from this, it\u2019s that the way things are today is not God-given. Things change, they change fast, we\u2019ve changed them fast, and sometimes things change for really stupid reasons.<\/p>\n

KAPETANOVI\u0106:<\/strong>\u00a0He 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\u2019s going to happen next after this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vanguard\u2019s writer and director talk about\u00a0how the series approached chronicling Jan Stenbeck\u2019s impact on European media, his tumultuous family life and his complicated legacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":23458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,70],"tags":[1741,11399,10194],"class_list":["post-23459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-alex-haridi","tag-goran-kapetanovic","tag-vanguard","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nVanguard\u2019s Alex Haridi & Goran Kapetanovi\u0107 - TVDRAMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vanguard\u2019s Alex Haridi & Goran Kapetanovi\u0107 - TVDRAMA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Vanguard\u2019s writer and director talk about\u00a0how the series approached chronicling Jan Stenbeck\u2019s impact on European media, his tumultuous family life and his complicated legacy.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVDRAMA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-09-23T13:44:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-09-26T19:01:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/09\/AlexHaridi_and_GoranKapetanovic.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"394\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/\",\"name\":\"Vanguard\u2019s Alex Haridi & Goran Kapetanovi\u0107 - TVDRAMA\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2025-09-23T13:44:17+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-09-26T19:01:19+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Vanguard\u2019s Alex Haridi & Goran Kapetanovi\u0107\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/\",\"name\":\"TVDRAMA\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\",\"name\":\"Mansha Daswani\",\"description\":\"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. She can be reached on mdaswani@worldscreen.com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/author\/mdaswaniworldscreen-com\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Vanguard\u2019s Alex Haridi & Goran Kapetanovi\u0107 - TVDRAMA","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Vanguard\u2019s Alex Haridi & Goran Kapetanovi\u0107 - TVDRAMA","og_description":"Vanguard\u2019s writer and director talk about\u00a0how the series approached chronicling Jan Stenbeck\u2019s impact on European media, his tumultuous family life and his complicated legacy.","og_url":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/","og_site_name":"TVDRAMA","article_published_time":"2025-09-23T13:44:17+00:00","article_modified_time":"2025-09-26T19:01:19+00:00","og_image":[{"width":640,"height":394,"url":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/09\/AlexHaridi_and_GoranKapetanovic.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Mansha Daswani","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Mansha Daswani","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/","url":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/","name":"Vanguard\u2019s Alex Haridi & Goran Kapetanovi\u0107 - TVDRAMA","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#website"},"datePublished":"2025-09-23T13:44:17+00:00","dateModified":"2025-09-26T19:01:19+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/vanguards-alex-haridi-goran-kapetanovic-2025\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Vanguard\u2019s Alex Haridi & Goran Kapetanovi\u0107"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#website","url":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/","name":"TVDRAMA","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad","name":"Mansha Daswani","description":"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. She can be reached on mdaswani@worldscreen.com.","url":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/author\/mdaswaniworldscreen-com\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}