I usually steal something from each set

Rebecca Ferguson was already a fan of Jo Nesbó’s novels and had long wanted to work with Tomas Alfredson so when the opportunity to star in ‘The Snowman’ came along it was, she laughs, “absolutely the easiest decision ever!”

“I’d read and really enjoyed a lot of Jo’s novels but actually I hadn’t read ‘The Snowman’,” she says. “But when Tomas got in touch and said that he was making the film that Michael Fassbender was going to be playing Harry Hole, I thought it was perfect. I’d long wanted to work with Tomas and Michael.”

Michael Fassbender plays Harry Hole, the Oslo detective who features in eleven of Nesbø’s novels – ‘The Snowman’ is the seventh in the series. A hard-drinking, chain-smoking loner, Hole has become one of the most popular characters in contemporary crime fiction.

In ‘The Snowman’ Hole is investigating a sociopath who calls himself ‘‘The Snowman Killer’’ – at the scene of each murder he builds a snowman - and Ferguson plays Katrine Bratt, a rookie detective assigned to his team.

“There’s a serial killer on the loose in Norway,” says Ferguson. “When the snow falls it activates the serial killer and sometimes The Snowman is built prior to the killing or post the killing.

“We have Harry Hole, the incredible detective, who is thrown into this case and my character, Katrine Bratt, joins the team with her own motive and agenda.

Ferguson was born in Stockholm. Her films include ‘Vi’, ‘Hercules’, ‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’, ‘Despite the Falling Snow’, ‘Florence Foster Jenkins’, ‘The Girl on the Train’, ‘Life’, ‘The Greatest Showman’ and ‘Mission: Impossible – Fall Out’.

Excerpts from an interview:

Was Tomas the main draw? Or were you a fan of the books?
I hadn’t read the book. I knew very well about Jo Nesbø and I find him to be an incredible author. I also read ‘Headhunters’ quite recently and have seen the film many times. I think they did a great job. I’d never met Tomas. I was asked about being star-struck once before, and I think this was actually one of those moments where I was quite nervous because I really wanted to work with him.

Your character is a rookie detective. So how did you prepare?
I thought I would have a lot of training and time to study detectives, and I was quite excited about it – anything that I can do to throw myself into these weird environments – but she was also kind of a rookie. She was new, so I was allowed to make mistakes. I remember one scene, where I’ve kicked in a glass window and I’m looking for a phone, in a house, and because I’ve just done ‘Mission Impossible’, I carry guns very well. I was walking too confidently with a gun, so I had to learn how to hold it a bit more relaxed. I thought, ‘well, that’s a big problem!’ She’s worked as a detective for a couple of years, but she’s just studied. She’s studied Harry’s cases, and she’s a bit in awe of him. It’s quite depressing realising the demons that he’s battling with because that resembles her own previous life with her father.

How was it filming in the freezing cold Oslo winter?
Fantastic! It would be horrendous if it was called ‘The Snowman’ and it was plus degrees all the time (laughs). I’d only been to Oslo for some commercial shoot. I’ve never travelled around. I’d seen images of the fjords, the Preacher’s Chair, and all of the places I wanted to go. I never been able to go or had the time. This brought me into Rjukan, Bergen, and Oslo – it is so breathtakingly beautiful. It’s magic. I think something that’s absolutely incredible is how Tomas has managed to take this landscape and make it into a character in itself.

Did you take home a prosthetic finger from the set of The Snowman?
No! I was thinking about liberating one and I’m so annoyed I did not. I usually steal something from each set.

- Sourced exclusively for The Hans India.

- The Indian TV Premiere of ‘The Snowman’ is on December 9 at 1 pm on Sony PIX and Sony Le PLEX HD.