Skam-alumni Herman Tømmeraas on growing up: “I experienced a couple of years of everyone believing I was a douchebag”

When Herman Tømmeraas was 17 he happened upon a casting notice in a Norwegian paper. It read: “Low-budget, internet series for TV channel NRK”. “I kid you not,” says Tømmeraas, smiling as his voice builds with excitement, ready to deliver the punchline: “I went to the audition and got the part. The show was Skam.”

If you haven’t watched Skam you wouldn’t realise the gravitas of that sentence. What started out as a small project that Tømmeraas didn’t even tell his friends about, quickly turned into a groundbreaking global cult smash. “I went in with the thought that this is probably going to be zero to no pay, but it's going to be a fun exercise,” he says. “Then halfway through season two, it was like, ‘Oh, everyone in Norway has watched it and it's gone across Scandinavia’. And then halfway through season three, every country in the world had bought it.” In fact, Skam became NRK’s most popular show ever.

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Through its four season run from 2015 to 2017, the teen drama was praised for its authenticity and its ability to tackle difficult topics such as sexual assault, bullying and mental health – something its predecessors in the genre hadn’t quite nailed. Today, people are still discovering the series – new fans approach Tømmeraas weekly. You’ll even find entire fan Tumblrs and blogs, guiding you to episodes with English subtitles.

‘Overnight stardom’ was a much-uttered phrase around the Skam cast at the height of its run, but for Tømmeraas he recalls it as stardom in three hours. “I remember the exact moment it really took off,” he says. “I was in London on a school trip with my acting class and that particular day we went to a museum. When I entered that museum, I had 2,500 followers on my Instagram. I spent three hours there with my phone on flight mode. When we went outside again, I unlocked my phone and my followers had doubled to 5,000. That had never happened before... and it didn't stop. It just kept on going until I reached a million.”

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Fast forward to 2023 and his Instagram following has tipped over to two million. He has a leading role in the Netflix hit Ragnarok, a string of movies in post-production, he sits front row at Copenhagen Fashion Week and has launched an esports company that has Norway’s cool kids buzzing. Not bad for someone who, over Skam’s four seasons, got a little under 10 minutes of actual screen time. “I got pretty lucky with the show,” he says.

The downside? “I'm playing such a douchebag character,” he laughs. And he’s right. There is no way to put it gently, the rightful term for his character, Penetrator-Chris, is f***boy. “Even though people know that it's fiction, people have this initial first impression saved,” he says. “So I experienced at least a couple of years of just everyone meeting me with an attitude, believing I was a douchebag.”

Douche or not, it’s little wonder Tømmeraas became the internet’s boyfriend in less than three hours. One scroll of his feed and the word ‘heartthrob’ springs to mind, yet he also has the acting chops and famed Norwegian humility to ensure his grid isn’t just gratuitous eye candy. In the first season of Ragnarok his onscreen love interest describes Tømmeraas’ character as “so perfect it’s almost strange”.

The same could be said for Tømmeraas himself. He cuts an old-school movie star figure – smouldering pout, expressive brows, Disney prince hair. It’s like he was born to wear a varsity jacket and dominate the hallways of a high school and, unexpectedly, his cut-gem jaw also makes him the perfect bad guy. “I had conversations during my theatre time about my face and what kind of characters I might be typecast as and I was told pretty early that I would probably never do bad guys,” he says.

It was this initial perception that attracted him to the role of the evil giant Fjor Jutul in Ragnarok. The show, which has launched Tømmeraas on the international stage, is a retelling of the Norse mythology of Ragnarök; the great battle between gods and giants. Set in modern times, the giants are trying to destroy mankind by disguising themselves as one of Norway’s richest and most influential families, with Tømmeraas’ Fjor posing as the teenage son. However, a reincarnated Thor shows up, threatening to foil their plans.

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Despite the fact that Fjor is a 3,000-year-old supernatural being, he also deals with typical teenage issues: first loves, pushing boundaries and finding his place in the world. As a consequence, his character takes many twists and turns. You’re scared of him but you’re also in love with him, and there are moments you think “maybe he’ll turn good”. However, ahead of the third and final season, out this year, Tømmeraas crushes the dream of his bad boy reforming, saying, “Well... I'm not becoming nicer. That’s for sure.”

He rattles off his other projects, which he jokes have more or less become vehicles for him to develop his bad guy repertoire. Tømmeraas’ resume has become proof that good looks can kill. Last year saw the release of Leave, an American Norwegian horror film where “I'm playing just a general bad guy”. This was followed by Nightmare, which centres around a young couple who move in together, at which point the woman starts having nightmares.

“I'm playing this super nice boyfriend who's very down to earth. But in the girlfriend's dreams he is super dominant and physical. When she wakes up, she still has bruises on her body.” And then there is Danish thriller Birthday Girl, due for release later this year. Another bad guy? I ask. “I'm not a straight up bad guy,” he says, before adding, “But I’m not necessarily a good, good character...So yeah, that’s become my niche.”

But like all good actors, Tømmeraas is not his characters. The guy before me, in a casual black hoodie, is a 25-year-old bubbling with equal measures of excitement and disbelief that he gets to do what he loves every day. He grew up in the small Norwegian village of Solbergelva where sports like bandy and football are the life blood of the community. “All my friends were doing it. All their parents were doing it. So I tried out, and...” Tømmeraas pauses for dramatic effect, “I was absolutely terrible.”

A natural storyteller, Tømmeraas lets that sentence hangin the air. Every time he speaks he takes you with him, keeping you captivated through dramatic pauses or by asking “right?” at key moments. His mum, a dancer, and dad, a singer, suggested the then six-year-old try dancing instead. “I loved it,” he says of the hip-hop classes he subsequently took. “I stopped doing sports and started dancing a lot. And then my dad asked, ‘Do you want to try singing?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, why not?’ And when you do dancing and singing, acting comes along with the package.”

This devil-may-care attitude has been a trademark of his career thus far. It seems he’s up for anything. He’s one of those rose-tinted glasses types, yet not in a naive way. It’s more that for him, obstacles don’t seem to exist. Case in point: he explains he was on a shoot recently where he said to the stylist, “Try your best to make me uncomfortable.” The result was him in pink leather trousers, a see-through turtleneck and zebra heels caressing a blue unicorn which, he admits, did little to faze him. And while the world made sourdough during the pandemic, Tømmeraas, an avid gamer, saw the opportunity to further popularise esports in Norway.

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“Gaming used to just be a hobby for me but then Corona happened,” he explains. “I was blessed with the opportunity to play video games four hours a day, with eight friends in my ears. So during the whole lockdown, I didn’t really feel that lonely. It helped me a lot.” He’s now part of 00Nation, an organisation that has seen some of Norway’s (and the world’s) hottest, buzziest talent get together to create a gaming community that holds esport events and tournaments. “We’re explaining to people that you don’t have to be a nerd to like video games. You can be a person interested in storytelling and still play.”

Growing up, Tømmeraas idolised his cousin who was four years his senior. After his cousin scored a TV gig in Norway when he was just 13, Tømmeraas set himself the same goal. So, at 13, he and his mum scanned the local paper for castings. “It was the first audition I ever did and I was lucky enough to land it,” he says of his role in Emmy-nominated Stikk. What’s more, Tømmeraas managed to convince the TV production studio, which was the same studio his cousin had worked at years earlier, to allow him to wear his cousin’s costume from his show.

After Stikk, he took a break from acting – it required too much time away from school. But at 17 he was “ready to get back on the horse”, grabbing the trusty paper again to discover the ad for Skam. “That was how castings were done for us non-professionals back in the day,” he laughs, completely aware of the absurdity of ‘back in the day’ tumbling out of a 25-year-old’s mouth.

His part in Ragnarok was not, however, found in the newspaper. He went through rounds and rounds of strenuous auditions. And with the streaming juggernaut behind it, it was definitely not ‘low-budget’. He remembers rocking up to his first day on set to be greeted by over 200 people behind the camera. “In the first scene I shot I was supposed to come down the stairwell, around the corner and look at the main character Magne and say ‘Hey man’,” he explains. “I was super nervous. Freaking out but then I look up and I see Jonas [Strand Gravli], who plays Laurits in the show. And I felt this small moment of relief because I knew him. So I look at him and give him a nod.”

Tømmeraas raises his brows, mimicking the nod. Jonas nodded back. Tømmeraas then took it further by puckering his lips. This exchange continues, getting more and more ridiculous. As it turned out, the guy was not actually Jonas but an extra. Tømmeraas realises in the exact moment that action is called and he simply freezes. “So nothing happened in that scene because I was standing at the top of the stairs feeling very awkward.”

Ragnarok has become a playground for Tømmeraas to fine-tune his craft. He says that while it wasn’t necessary for him to transform his body for the role, he wanted to learn how to work on his body safely, knowing it’s a vital skill for actors. “I had a conversation with David [Stakston] and he said, ‘Well, I’m doing all bulky because I’m doing Thor. So I’m going to be super huge.’ And I said, ‘All right, you know what? Why don’t I counter that and make it interesting. So I’m just going to go more ripped.’ The idea was to make me look more agile, while he would look like a tank.”

The result of the meticulous eating plan and exercise routine can be seen in a much-talked-about scene in season two where he stands naked on the mountains. “That scene was six months of me trying to learn how to work out,” he explains. Tømmeraas also doesn’t shy away from a skincare routine citing “sunscreen as a must” and describing his perfect day ending with him “in a face mask, playing video games”. His iconic brows, however, have never seen tweezers. “I don’t touch them. These are natural. I got them from my mum.”

While he loves everything about the show there is one thing you shouldn’t bring up... the Gucci tracksuit. “Oh man,” he says, putting his hand over his eyes. “I have been slammed about that for the past three years.” For the unacquainted, Fjor wears red overalls paired with a Gucci logo tracksuit jacket for the majority of season one. Why? He’s a senior partaking in the Norwegian tradition of russetiden, a celebration of finishing school that sees month-long partying while the graduates take their final exams.

"When you’re about to graduate in Norway, you get those pants which are like overalls and you wear them pretty much the entire month of May.” It seemed like a fun idea at the time, however it didn’t really translate to international audiences so instead the look became the subject of memes and lengthy Reddit threads. “I loved the costume for a day and a half, and then I hated it for the remaining shooting time,” he says. It seems the Gucci top, like many of Fjor’s enemies, may have met a sinister fate. “I now no longer have it in my possession, that’s all I’ll say,” Tømmeraas says.

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Tømmeraas has arrived at a time where TV has become a powerful medium for the youth. Shows like Euphoria, Young Royals and Sex Education are challenging taboos and dominating the zeitgeist. While Skam celebrates the outsider, Ragnarok brings to light the climate crisis, shining a light on the young people taking a stance to save our world. With a passion to make a mark, this teen genre 2.0 fits with Tømmeraas’ ideologies.

“At one point, I think it’s important to remember the stuff that’s really going on – not just dancing trends on TikTok,” he says. For him there’s so many different ways you can deliver information that traditionally was only thought of as being found in books or on the news. “This is why shows like Young Royals are so important,” he says. “It’s captivating, it’s well acted, it looks beautiful, but it’s also a fantastic way to show how it is to grow up in a place as a homosexual and not being allowed to be you. Ragnarok is not only a coming-of-age drama, we’re also putting environmental issues out there, making viewers think about it, without necessarily shoving it down their throats.”

With idols like Mads Mikkleson and Leonardo DiCaprio, the dream was always Hollywood, but the impact that Skam had on audiences, tweaked Tømmeraas’s thinking. “Skam went from being something I wanted to do for fun, to me being able to travel to countries to meet up with people who’ve experienced bullying or were struggling with their sexuality or had been treated badly,” he says. “It helped so many people understand who they are.” Nowadays, Tømmeraas’ end game is to find “projects that change something for someone” whether it be in “Spain or Sweden” or, true to his happy-go-lucky nature, “wherever”.