“I’m horrendous to people”: Meet Denmark’s Claes Bang

On a drizzly fall afternoon, in the opulent salon of Paris-based couturier Ashi, ’Starman’ by David Bowie plays gently from a speaker. Lis Kasper Bang, artist and photographer, stands in the corner overlooking Paris’ bustling Boulevard Saint Germain, camera at the ready as she waits for her husband, Claes Bang, to finish being dressed.

Soon he enters, cloaked in a monastic, floor-sweeping, ivory cape over diaphanous pleated trousers in the same shade. Seams descend down the cape’s front from Bang’s shoulders like a spider spinning a web, restricting his ability to move his arms above his elbows. Forearms raised, wrists suspended; a look so otherworldly, so disorientingly delicate – particularly for anyone that knows Bang as the 6’4” picture of masculinity he so often plays – that I gasp audibly. He turns, laughs and raises his hand (best he can, anyway) to shake mine in greeting.

As his wife, chicly dressed in a black shirt, fawn corduroy trousers, Balenciaga sneakers and smart glasses, points her lens at him, Bang immediately settles into character, rotating slowly, elegantly at her direction. The two met in 2006 whilst working on the play Den grønne elevator at Kanonhalløj, have been married for 12 years and currently live in Frederiksberg in Copenhagen. We’ve caught Bang in Paris on a rare day off; the actor is in town shooting the Apple TV+ series, The New Look, a World War II biopic that explores the rise of Dior and the fall of Chanel during the Nazi occupation of the French capital (Bang plays a Nazi officer tasked with seducing Chanel).

Between shots, Bang peers over from behind his wife’s shoulder as they murmur to each other in Danish. Changing into his next outfit, he asks the designer, his friend Mohammed Ashi, as he shrugs on a white feathered jacket, “Have we seen enough of these [trousers]? Because I think they’re really f***ing cool,” in his inexplicable East London accent.

Many first discovered Bang in his breakout lead role in 2017’s Cannes Palme d’Or winning The Square from Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund. It’s a role that catapulted him into international orbit after a resumé of theatre, television and film including the Danish political drama Borgen and the Swedish-Danish series The Bridge. In The Square, Bang plays a charismatic art museum director, who makes a series of catastrophic decisions that ultimately land him in public disfavour (example: greenlighting an ad campaign in which a toddler is unceremoniously exploded).

Since then, he has played a villain opposite Christopher Walken in The Outlaws, the titular bloodsucking role in BBC’s Dracula, and a barbarous uncle to Alexander Skarsgård’s nephew in Robert Egger’s The Northman. Next he’s off to Budapest to play a monarch in an expansive historical drama.

In real life, particularly today, as Bang poses affably in heeled boots and crystal ear jackets, one struggles to see how he inspired a filmography so full of morally questionable characters. He is chatty and immediately likeable, at once politely checking in as he notices the shoot running late, then swearing enthusiastically like a drinking buddy.

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When we sit down to talk, he’s back in his own clothes – a grey collared knit shirt, black trousers, and tan lace-up boots. He sits closely without impinging on personal space, holds eye contact in a way that isn’t discomforting, gestures warmly – if not wildly – within centimetres of touch when talking (when his hands aren’t punctuating thoughtful pauses by running through his hair) and brings to mind wholesome, old-timey descriptors like raffish, dashing – even cliché’s like tall, dark and handsome (all of which, it must be said, extend to his devastatingly cool wife).

It’s a far cry from the deplorable JP that Bang plays in this October’s Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters, (which, at the time of writing, has the rare honour of receiving 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes). So malicious is this JP, that the first episode – which opens with his funeral – is named in his honour: “The Prick”. Though in firm agreement with his character’s moniker, he has been tickled by the response to him from the Twitterverse.

“But listen, no, the hate for this character,” Bang exclaims. “Have you watched it? Oh, but I’m the worst person in the world! I’m horrendous to people. No, it’s cool. I mean, it’s not that I enjoy that people want me dead but... You know where you normally have your bad guys or your villains be also someone you slightly want to be because there’s that thing where they’re either crazy cool or crazy clever or sexy or charming or something or the whole thing in combination? This guy? None of that. He’s just a f****ing c**t. Yeah, and what I’m reading on my Twitter or on Instagram and stuff: ‘It’s really a great show and I really enjoyed it, but I just can’t wait for you to die!’ It’s really, really... Yeah, it’s good fun.”

Does he prefer playing twisted characters? “Yeah, I mean, it is that sort of perverse thing, where it’s more fun to play because there’s so much more to play with, than when you’re just the straight shooter,” he pauses. “You know that feeling when you always think of a great comeback, five minutes after you should have said it? That’s not the case here – I got to say all of them.” His delight is palpable.

Thankfully, Bang is not method. However, in his process he seeks to find the core of the character, to empathise with their humanity – if it exists. “It’s just going to all your own insecurities and all your own inferiority complexes and all that shit and letting all your bad stuff hang out and let it overexpose in a way,” he says. “I mean, we’re all really complex, aren’t we? And no person can actually be reduced to anything, I don’t think anybody can be explained, really. I think it’s really important to not try and understand or explain everything, so that you also leave something for the audience where it’s like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’. I really feel that I try to allow myself to let all the irrationalities of being a human being work for [me] instead of trying to make everything fit and sit nicely.”

Born on the Danish island of Funen in Odense (where another celebrated Danish storyteller, Hans Christen Anderson, was born) Bang, 55, speaks a smattering of languages, and is presently fluent in Danish, Norwegian, German, Swedish and English (he explains his British accent as having developed from an exchange programme after he stayed with a host family in Paignton and Brighton at the age of 13).

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His family left the island when Bang was about six, at which point he began hopping around the country for a few years while his parents went through a divorce. “I lived in almost any part of Denmark. I was in, like, nine different primary schools because my parents kept moving all the time. I had new mates in school every Monday, that was crazy.” When I suggest it’s probably why he’s so personable, he offers, “I think it’s made me quite, sort of... I adapt easily. Or something.”

Certainly, his chameleonic ability serves him well when switching from the androgynous, on-stage swagger of a 1970s glamrock star in Ashi’s intricate couture looks to his civilian dress and standard pleasantries at dizzying speeds. It was Bang’s idea to enlist the help of his wife and friend to participate in today’s shoot, themed less for any gimmicky statement of fluidity (Bang identifies firmly as “male”), but more so for the challenge, to get out of his comfort zone, in a practice akin to donning a costume for his acting projects.

“I met Ashi through a friend, and I wanted to wear his stuff, because I thought it would be more fun than the jeans and suits you always wear for a traditionally styled feature,” explains Bang. Indeed, couturier Mohammed Ashi – who has dressed the likes of Beyoncé, Penelope Cruz and Kylie Minogue – mentions that most pieces had to be made especially for Bang, who towers over the standard male model sample size, a process that was miraculously achieved in three days. “It’s very sculptural, almost architectural, so it really does something other than just wearing your normal jeans or chinos,” Bang explains, of donning Ashi’s extravagant creations. “It was the same sort of feel as when you’re put into a costume for a show or for a play or something, because it really helps build your character.”

“It’s the first time I’ve seen him in high heels,” says Lis, now seated next to her husband, the shoot having wrapped. “I was actually very impressed. I don’t work in fashion, he doesn’t work in fashion, this is not my area [of expertise], so it was very important for us to stick together.” While she occasionally dabbles in fashion photography, Lis primarily sticks to portraiture and art photography.

Bang isn’t shy in front of his wife’s lens. “That’s why I asked her to do it because, I think [Lis takes] really, really amazing photos but I also probably wouldn’t dare to challenge myself to wear that and have someone else take the photos,” he says. “I needed to know that we could have a communication, [Lis], me and Ash where we felt that we’re all getting what we want and having respectful conversations about each other’s work. And then, we just made the rule before we came here to not say ‘no’.”

Dressing in the lavishness of couture is a new experience for the actor. “There’s a little bit of reinvention here, in the sense that I have never worn anything like this, not even on stage,” he says. “I felt like a sci-fi war lord, or something. Very Bowie, but also very, like, ‘Whoa man, I’m from another century!’” He recalls a favourite story between Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton where the latter is fretting about finding his way into a character. Bang retells Nicholson advising, “What you do is just be yourself and you let the costume play the character”.

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I ask Bang about his next big role, taking the stage as a musician in his thus far unplugged-only side project, THIS IS NOT AMERICA. It’s a one-man-band that sees him compose, sing and play piano and guitar in a 1980s-soaked, synth-y haze reminiscent of the sounds of Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, New Order and his beloved Bowie (’This Is Not America’ is a song of his from the 1985 film soundtrack The Falcon and The Snowman). The Bangs have worked together on all but one of the music videos that have been released onto YouTube and there’s an EP of four new songs that are due for a November release.

“I would be terrified to have to go up on stage [as a musician],” admits Bang. “When I’m on stage [as an actor] there’s always someone telling me what to do and someone telling me what to wear and where to stand and where to sit and where to whatever, and I have not written any of what I’m doing myself. And here with my music... I can’t explain. I really wish I could. I obviously feel comfortable when I’m on stage with what I do, but singing on stage is just so fucking different. Perhaps it’s only me, but I feel so much more vulnerable... I promise I’ll go on stage before I’m 60!” And so, the five year countdown begins. When the time comes, ready or not, perhaps with a little help from his friend Ashi, he can just be himself and let the costume do the work.