Interview with Edward by Sillén behind “The 12 of Sweden”

It is a symbolic meeting place. Vasagatan runs through what might be called Stockholm’s theater district. But he has never emitted headlight and neon here, like the London or New York counterparts, and now in times of coronation, of course, he is completely dead.

– Our sad version of 42nd street, says screenwriter and director Edward af Sillén, worried and looking at the silent facades of the Oscar Theater and the Vasateatern.

We decided to go to his hometown, Kungsholmen, instead.

During the walk talk We are talking about the actor Ola Forssmed, whom Edward af Sillén said goodbye to after a lunch. How talented he is, why he is not an even bigger name.

– If there was a true tradition of sailing in Sweden, that’s not the case where women only run in lingerie, Ola Forssmed had to show her unique talent to a much wider audience, she says when we settled in a wine bar in Scheelegatan .

This is how Edward af Sillén works, happy to stand out from the rest. At thirty-seven, he is so committed, respected and acclaimed, even the Englishman The Guardian noted his Eurovision script in 2013, that it would not be surprising if a certain complacency had been introduced. He has written, edited, translated, produced, or directed, sometimes all at once, in such a quantity that most people in this country should have been affected in some way. From beats to Shakespeare; script for Guldbaggegalor, Melodifestivaler and QX Gaygalan, plays, shows, musicals and movies. And so he has commented live in the Eurovision Contest on SVT nine times.

Then on May 14, He is making the “12th Sweden” on SVT, one of Sillén’s creations to air in place of this year’s Eurovision Set Finals in Rotterdam, where viewers can vote on 25 European Final Video Contributions. For a Swede douze points it should just be distributed, somehow.

He protests when I flatteringly call him the performing arts alchemist, but he says that his love for the stage in a broad sense has meant that he can feel great extra respect for all the tasks he takes on.

“I really think a Goldbag gala is as important as William Shakespeare’s” Thirteen Day Evening “,” he says. An audience should always experience something extra. If you make a complete culture, if we have to divide it now, with the same conviction and precision that you do with a good culture, then I think you are on the right track. Daniel Rehn, with whom I have written a lot, has the same attitude. We value both the Melodifestivalen and, well, something from Roy Andersson. And – we think it’s just as difficult.

– But of course I’m always terrified that what I’ve done is wrong, he continues. I would piss for a long, long time.

In addition to his number A well-filled resume, Edward af Silléns seems to have had a natural aptitude for scripts and directing from the start.

“I was a lonely boy and a pretty lonely boy,” he says and turns on the glass. Children alone are forced to create their own world, and I really did. I wrote pieces and acted for my parents from a young age. My dad made a curtain that hung under my loft bed, and there was my stage.

– I should never have done that, haha. I played for hours, my mom brought knitting and dad’s receipts to report, and I got mad when they lost their attention.

Was he a happy loner? The family scene says a bit about Edward af Sillén’s relationship with his parents. He was adopted as a very young child in Brazil by the Swedish father Claes and the American mother Judy, and he moved with them to the area next to the Bromma church where he grew up. Since everything has gone so well, as he says, he has never felt the need to search for his biological roots.

– I look like Mom Judy and I sound like Dad Claes, and I don’t have that hole in me either: There’s nothing in my childhood that I have to fill, he says.

Edward af Sillén’s grandmother also had a lot to do with awakening entertainment, if you can call it that. Two occasions with her turned out to be crucial.

– When I was very little, maybe seven, she took me to the cinema and we laughed to make the tears flow. When we went out, I said it was the best thing I had ever seen and she asked me, “Do you want to see it again?” With that said, she went straight ahead and bought two tickets to the next show. I think it was there that I first understood what entertainment could be, that you can create something with which others can escape from reality.

– As I got older, I started applying more often in the classroom, especially in the theater. The first real theater appearance also came with Grandma, we saw Thorsten Flinck’s set of “The Long Journey from Day to Night” at the Dramaten. I was 13 years old, I sat in the front for about four hours, and I just … wow. Since then, I have used theater for others to eat candy. I see so much that it just goes away. I never stop feeling that there is something very beautiful about entering a room that promises something and experiencing something that is created here and now.

Quite young You probably understand the delights of screenwriting. Most people want to appear, to act, to be the outer face. So did Edward af Sillén. And it was successful, very well. Until one day it stopped.

– I had the dream job. I was on stage with Michael Nyqvist and Suzanne Reuter in “Geten or Who is Sylvia?”, Written by my idol Edward Albee, who was openly gay and discussed the limits of sexuality. He really had. But I felt bad, and I understood, from time to time: I can no longer stand on stage. In my case, that nervousness that everyone knows before going on stage never turned into something pleasant afterwards.

So twenty three years The actor’s dream exploded due to stage fright. And there was great sadness, but finally also relief: “Once I decided to quit, 130 kilos disappeared from my shoulders,” he says. And by that point he had already written and directed a lot, and if he couldn’t leave his heart onstage now, he should be behind it. There was no doubt that he would continue working with the performing arts. It never has been.

That “here and now” characterizes much of what Edward af Sillén did. Self-written or processed, you must breathe simultaneously. When he directed Stig Larsson’s “CEO,” he changed his perspective, from a male manager and a woman in a dependent position, to a female manager who sexually harassed a young man. And in French “ART” by Yasmina Reza was the first foreign director to move the three old friends of a 90s Parisian to Vasastan in Stockholm, with the Bohman Gallery and the psychologist Per Naroskin among the references.

Very really proven he as a young man standing, here and now, the main expression of art. It was, in fact, so he got into the corner of the printer seriously.

– I started standing up as a teenager. After one night, an audience member came up to me and asked if I had written the material. Me and Daniel, I replied. He gave us direct jobs for SALE – Fun. Elf. News – on the Hamburg Stock Exchange. We were young and green. Calle Norlén was the king. We wrote about “Deirdres samba” to be Margareta Winberg, who became an ambassador to Brazil. That’s where I started writing entertainment.

– Although I really had already started in high school. I was very in love with a boy in my class, he was a tough football guy and I didn’t, I can say it, but I knew I could make him laugh. This is really awful, but I was expecting it in Brommaplan in the mornings, I made sure that I ended up in front of him to call me. And then I joked, as if it was time to write firmly written and practiced the night before, during the short journey between two subway stations.

I ask him if they ever met.

– No, that train was lost! laughs at Sillén.

– But I understood that to write jokes that they take, and they take directly, they must start from the present.

Here in high school, Therefore, Edward af Sillén had no doubts about his sexual orientation and began the identity journey. It’s often a pretty miserable trip for those close by, everyone knows that from that experience, but even here he has much more to say about his family.

– They didn’t make a deal when I went out, they let me understand that they loved me. But it was a world that my parents didn’t know at all. And it will be a change. Because even if you can accept your child going out, it is also another step to respect him. And maybe even interested in it.

– We had some years when we misunderstood each other. It should also be said that I was quite complicated, I lived my homosexuality enough. But instead of being scared, my parents began to understand that “we should ask Edward questions.” So we made our way, our conflicts became smaller and smaller, and finally, one day, when I was 19 years old, I saw from my stage in Stockholm the pride of my parents in the area. My dad … So I can say that, see Claes af Chair with a beer in a plastic cup in one hand, a teriyaki chicken skewer in the other, surrounded by people painted on the body and many sex toys … It was an incredibly beautiful sight. There I saw that our trip had reached its destination.

He says the movie “A wonderful and fucking Christmas”, which he wrote with Daniel Réhn and Helena Bergström, dealt with much of this.

– We wanted the story of a rainbow family to reach a wide audience in the form of a Swedish Christmas film with Robert Gustafsson and Maria Lundqvist. The audience would come out of the cinema and get something they weren’t prepared for. I received a lot of letters from gay people who had left and saw him with his families, sitting next to his father, who then maybe didn’t think this was so terribly strange anymore. That was the best compliment.

He says there is also something on the subject of parents that fascinates him:

– There is always something moving, I have always thought about it. So many people seeking parental approval. You can get five hundred weights and five more, but nothing beats the feeling when one of the parents looks at him with proud eyes. Why is that so? Of course, not for everyone, perhaps, but it is a subject that always worries me. I think a lot of my life has been about making adults proud and therefore feeling valuable.

A dog that we believe he is a Jack Russell, he has been in the room since we got here, but now he has lain down between our feet and seems to have fallen asleep. Yes, a, we say in a race and look down. Edward af Sillén would like to become a father, he says. But don’t be in a rush, there are plenty who should sit down first before you feel good. For starters, the “dating bachelor” calling himself should find the right man. Children are still in the sleep stage, although it is becoming more frequent.

– I had a one in a million chance of getting out of poverty in Brazil and ended up in a semi-detached house in the Bromma church. Perhaps it has meant that I have felt some sort of responsibility to work fast, that I must succeed, that it should not be in vain. Which, in turn, made me, until recently, have been the youngest in the room and thought I needed to prove myself, so I have read more than most to stay on my feet and know that “play, I can fuck that me. ” But now I’m 37 years old, and for the first time I can feel that some extra time is starting for me. Then it is easier to look at future dreams.

– It would be more beautiful if you could adopt from Brazil. Imagine being able to finish the circle, which could reassure a child here. And that maybe someday we can go back together.

Now feel long flights to say the least. He wonders how long it will be before people dare to sit in a movie theater near 700 other people. And cough. But at the same time, he believes that the crisis can teach screenwriters a lot, that new kinds of stories emerge in the footsteps of the coronavirus.

And here we return to the farce. A form with a special position with Edward af Sillén right now.

– I’m passionate about that, he says, I want to work more with it. After all, you hardly play a real father anymore. Many mistake it for bush ice. A parent tries to see how bad things can go for someone. Take shows like “Breaking bad” or “Better call Saul”, both fantastic, and both really dads. Someone makes the wrong decision about the wrong decision about the wrong decision … how far can they go?

– If I had enough talent, I would write a new father myself, which is very difficult. I have a passion project that could be something in a couple of years, and it’s about giving the downtown audience a real father. We can see, but it would be wonderful to hear those laughs in the living room.

Already this summer however, if possible, it will make daddy outdoors. At the Krusenstiernska Garden Theater in Kalmar, Edward af Sillén will direct Ray Cooney’s translated “It Works in the Family” car. The premiere is scheduled for June 25.

– There you have a father! We are ready and I know that people should laugh now. Then we wait.

In this case, Thomas Pettersson, Sussie Eriksson and, just that, Ola Forssmed will stand firm.

The Swedish title? Dads on trial.

Read more interviews and more texts by Niklas Wahllöf