Claes Bang

Besides Danish, the guy’s pretty much a language machine—he can rattle off in Swedish, Norwegian, English, and German without missing a beat. It’s actually wild how effortless he makes it look, swapping between languages like he’s changing radio stations. Seriously, not many people can keep up with that kind of linguistic flex. You’d think he grew up in some kind of Scandinavian United Nations. And it’s not just basic tourist stuff, either. He’s fluent. Like, can-watch-a-movie-without-subtitles fluent. If you ever catch an interview with him, don’t be surprised if he suddenly switches to German just to mess with the host—he’s got that kind of confidence. It almost makes you wonder if he dreams in different languages depending on the day. Anyway, it’s just another thing to add to the list of reasons people are a little obsessed with him. Multilingual and talented? Yeah, unfair.

So, I didn’t even see The Square’s script before landing the role. Wild, right? My first audition, they wanted me to come up with that whole speech my character gives in the museum—yeah, the one to the audience. I wrote it out, did my thing, and honestly, most of what I scribbled down ended up in the actual movie. Then Ruben Östlund, the director, sat me down and just talked me through the entire story, scene by scene, no sugarcoating. Instead of just reading lines, we riffed, tried out five or six scenes on the fly, just improvising. That’s really how the whole thing came together for me—getting to know the story not by reading, but by jumping in and feeling it out. It was messy, real, kind of nerve-wracking, but man, it made everything feel way more alive on set.