Nordic Watchlist speaks to Norwegian star Jakob Oftebro about his role in Viaplay’s Vanguard

Nordic business empires have inspired some of the most compelling dramas on screen, from the hair-raising revolution of Carmen Curlers to the streaming wars in The Playlist. Now, actor Jakob Oftebro takes on his most complex role yet: portraying the formidable Swedish media mogul Jan Stenbeck over his entire career.

In this exclusive interview, Oftebro discusses the immense pressure of embodying a publicly known figure, comparing the family drama to a “Swedish take on Succession.”

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Nordic Watchlist: There are some great series that portray some of the most famous Nordic business empires; from Carmen Curlers and The Playlist – what attracted you to this project and story?

Jakob Oftebro: Well, first of all, I mean, the character… when you get a part like Jan, it’s not very often you have a lead like that who can do everything, to be honest. It’s not only that he’s a nice guy — he’s also a terrible person, and also a beautiful husband. And there’s an art to him. He’s good with his kids, and he just has everything in him, you know?

You get to portray a brilliant man over almost his entire lifespan. So it was both an honour, and also… It’s not very often you get to do something like that. So that was fun.

Nordic Watchlist: And did you know much about Stenback’s story? Because for us, I guess he was a new character – or person – to discover. We know our Murdochs and figures like that, so it was quite interesting. Obviously, for you, you’re probably very familiar with him. If so, was there any pressure in taking on that role?

Jakob Oftebro: Yes, there was a lot of pressure because he’s a known character. And quite recently, too many people have a very clear idea of who Jan is, how he talked, how he walked, and things like that. So I felt I had to work a lot on that, which was fun. That part was actually the most enjoyable: trying to find him, his way of speaking and walking, and those small characteristics.

But as you said with Murdoch, it’s definitely a Swedish take on Succession. Although I didn’t approach the project thinking, ‘Oh, this is that family.’ It’s more than it’s about their legacy — who’s going to inherit the company, all the drama around it — that sort of thing.

Nordic Watchlist: Your portrayal of this character, specifically capturing his sense of betrayal, was phenomenal. You conveyed a complex mixture of responsibility, internal conflict, and profound vulnerability, which made him a far more sympathetic figure than someone like Logan Roy.

Of those aspects, which did you connect with the most personally, and which did you find the greatest challenge to portray?

Jakob Oftebro: Well, I think for him to be such a complex character… A lot of people who’ve lived a long life, and then times change, suddenly find people looking back at their careers saying, ‘Oh, he was like this, and that, and that was terrible. We’d never do it that way today.’

But I don’t think he thought he was doing anything wrong at the time. It came from his upbringing, or simply the way things were done. If you were hard on your workers, that was considered the best way to teach them to do it right.

I don’t think he’d have been able to run that kind of work environment today — not the one he had at Cinevik back then. But it’s funny: when you meet the people who worked with him, they say he was terrible… but they also loved him. They really did. They said he was like a father figure. He was so complex — he could be funny and wonderful one day, and furious the next because the numbers were going down or he felt people weren’t doing their jobs.

Jakob Oftebro: (Cont.) It’s also difficult to run a company when everyone depends on you. He had too much on his plate, and everything had to go through Jan. Of course, if you’re creating 50 new companies a year, only two or three are going to succeed. Things won’t move fast enough, you’ll lose money, and he won’t have time. So it won’t work out — and then he’ll get angry at someone. But at the same time, it was impossible for anyone to do their job well, because everything had to go through him.

He was brilliant, but also very difficult to work for — and yet they still loved him. That complexity made it fun to play.

On a family level, I can relate. I’m a little brother, and I understand being the charming one in the family who thinks everyone gets me… and then suddenly they don’t. I can get furious or annoyed: ‘Come on, guys, what do you mean? Why do I have to fix this all the time?’

In that way, he’s very human. He’s emotionally driven, which is fun to play and easy to relate to. And I think many actors can relate too — we just find a constructive way of channelling those emotions into the work, instead of aiming them at the people closest to us. That’s probably a good thing.

Nordic Watchlist: In inhabiting the role, was there an aspect of the character that you didn’t know initially, but that you discovered or learned about him through the process of playing the role?

Jakob Oftebro: I did not know that he was so sentimental, that he cried a lot and that he was very vulnerable. A lot of the stories about him being goofy and goofing around and telling a lot of fun stories, I didn’t know that part either. And I didn’t know either that he was so alone in the end and so fragile in many ways and so excluded from the rest of the world, which I think was kind of fascinating.

Nordic Watchlist: I want to talk about his kind of physical transformation as well, which I thought was fascinating because It almost felt like the more successful he got, the bigger he got. The prosthetics looked incredibly real and added so much to the character. Knowing you’ve worked with subtle effects before – how did the process and the experience of working with this specific, more complex prosthetic differ, and how much time did the application take?

Jakob Oftebro: So that was like an hour… well, more like four or five hours every morning. But they did an amazing job; they’re so good. It’s the same team that worked on Dune so they are incredible at what they do.

It was only in the first three episodes that I played Jan, but once I got all of that on, I suddenly became Jan in a very strange way — because that’s the Jan people remember from his later days.

Nordic Watchlist: Was there anything new you learned from this experience and story?

Jakob Oftebro: This is definitely the funniest, most challenging task I have ever been given as an actor. While projects like playing Hamilton are fun because they fulfil ‘every boy’s dream’ of playing a legendary secret agent, Jan is the most difficult part I have ever tried.

Every single scene was a challenge. It required an extreme range of emotions—being extremely angry or extremely sad, sometimes both in the same moment. The process felt more like doing a six-month-long theatre play, which was unique.

Nordic Watchlist: This is a fun question for you. Since you’ve worked with Kenneth Karlstad on Kids in Crime, I’d love to get your thoughts on a fictional scenario: What do you imagine a meeting between your character, Freddy Hell (pictured below), and Jan Stenbeck would look like, and what could each figure learn from the other?

Jakob Oftebro: (Laughter) That is an amazing question – I think Stenbeck could definitely learn to do big business. A tougher approach to business, maybe. To think bigger. I think if Freddie met Stenbeck he would become like Pablo Escobar for sure.

Vanguard is out now on Viaplay USA and Viaplay UK