Praya Lundberg takes Hollywood: “I did over 100 auditions”

You would never take Praya Lundberg for a sidekick. One quick glance at the Swedish-Thai actress and the only words that swim into focus are: ‘Main Character Energy’. Though that wasn’t always the case; as a young teenager in Bangkok with a penchant for classic movies like Some Like It Hot and It ’s A Wonderful Life (an obsession ignited by her father), she was initially overlooked when the big time came knocking. “There was a scout that came to my school and my friend was the prettiest girl in school, so they picked her,” she recalls. “It was a very strong calling for me and when the calling didn’t happen, I felt really hurt, just like any young teenager would.”

But as luck – or the fates – would have it, someone, somewhere, must have been smiling on Lundberg and a second chance came when she was out shopping for a pair of Converse in her local mall. “This person comes up to me and goes, ‘Hi, where’s your mum?’ And I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, it’s a very weird exchange’,” she says. As it turns out, the person in question was A Supachai Srivijit, one of the country’s most influential celebrity managers. After one screen test, Lundberg landed her first lead role in the Thai TV series Sao Noi Nai Tha Kieng Kaew [The Little Girl in The Glass Lamp], a whimsical I Dream Of Jeannie-style show that catapulted Lundberg’s 14-year-old face onto television sets up and down the country. “It was crazy, when I least expected it, it hit me in the face,” she says.

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We’re talking from other ends of the world, Lundberg in LA, myself in Stockholm, but one thing is consistent: the bleak grey skies above us. It’s something that Swedes are well-accustomed to, but Lundberg, whose father is Swedish, isn’t having any of it. Appearing on screen like a sunbeam, she exudes a warm familiarity with every upbeat giggle. Her rescue pup, Ziggy Stardust (she became a dog mum in lockdown) meanders in the background wearing a fetching bandana, occasionally making a guest appearance. She possesses a certain Swedish down-to-earthness, while also radiating starpower.

Though she might not be a household name (yet) in Europe, back home in Thailand, if Lundberg were to pop out for a quick coffee, she would be recognised on every street corner. Spending her teen years acting in popular soaps, and later in films such as the comedy Maa Kap Phea in 2006 and 2009’s Bangkok Adrenaline, Lundberg has long been both tabloid fodder and red carpet darling. Gracing the covers of every glossy from Vogue Thailand (twice) to Harper’s Bazaar Thailand, most Thai millennials would at least know her name if they don’t follow her on Instagram, where she boasts three million followers.

Although she can’t speak Swedish, the place still holds a special spot in her heart. Lundberg’s father, a diplomat who spent time in Thailand, Japan and Kuwait and was formerly the Swedish ambassador to South Korea, is “very proud to be Swedish”, she tells me – as is she. “I miss Sweden,” she says. “I can’t wait to go back. All I remember is fresh seafood in the summer; everyone is so happy.” Having spent many a holiday visiting family in Malmö (her step brother lives in the city) along with Gothenburg and Stockholm, she’s fallen hard for the country’s idyllic summers. “It is beautiful,” she says. “I mean, I just remember gorgeous weather, sunny days, cold lakes, and hot Swedish saunas.” And what of our top-class cuisine? “Well, Swedish meatballs for sure.”

Growing up in busy Bangkok, her early life as a child actor was challenging. Balancing being on set with classes at Bangkok’s NIST International School and cramming in homework in between was not only a logistical nightmare, but psychologically tough, too. Her everyday, Lundberg says, looked “so different” to that of her peers; not many other 14-year-olds she knew were getting up for school at 7am, spending their days learning algebra and then rushing off to film sets and studying their lines in between.

And it wasn’t just the pressure of a busy schedule she had to contend with, either. “What was harder, too, was going through puberty on set, and also in the public eye,” Lundberg says. “A lot of things that you felt very insecure with, you saw on screen, and a lot of things like teenage spats or love life or first crushes, were all highly publicised, which I found really difficult.” Growing up, pimples and all, in the glare of the public eye would be difficult for the hardiest amongst us, let alone a self-described “highly sensitive person”. And though social media wasn’t quite a thing just yet, there was one particularly dark moment from those fledgling years: when the comments board on the show’s website lit up. In fact, those comments stayed with the actress well into adulthood.

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“I remember I went on to the library desktop in my school to read the comments the first day the episode aired, which is a silly thing to do – it’s never a good idea. I did it and they were like, ‘How is she the actress? She’s so dark... She doesn’t even look developed blah blah blah. She’s a terrible actress’. It was all that I felt – and I remember running out of the library and I was on the [school] steps bawling my eyes out,” recalls Lundberg. “I hid away from the sun [after that] because I thought it was a handicap. I thought, ‘Oh, if I get darker, they’re not going to love me’.”

Trolls and critics aside, those teenage years went by in a blur of hard graft (an aptitude the actress has in spades) and, often, missed moments – you know the sort, friends’ sleepovers or movie nights – skipped because she had to learn her lines. “I was on a very heavy schedule with a lot of responsibilities... It was just so much pressure, so I didn’t get to be a child,” she says. “Looking back, I don’t want to relive it for sure, but I’m grateful that it’s shaped me into someone who’s very disciplined.” So then it’s probably not all that surprising that after conquering Thailand’s entertainment scene (she was once described as the Angelina Jolie of the Thai film industry), Lundberg found herself looking beyond her home country for a fresh challenge. Namely, she was determined to move to Los Angeles to make it in Hollywood.

After a stint living in New York in 2017, Lundberg moved across the country just two weeks before a little thing called Covid unfurled around the world. “I remember: it was March 13th. I flew to LA and there was an announcement of a national emergency and Trump was on screen saying, ‘Yeah, Covid is here – we’re going to go into lockdown’,” she says. As a self-confessed introvert, some parts of lockdown were more enjoyable than others; she adopted three rescue pups (“I felt like Will Smith in I Am Legend”) and painted and cooked a lot, but other times, she was very much alone. “Except for a phone interaction, I’d go three weeks without seeing a single human sometimes,” Lundberg says. She stuck it out nevertheless, in a bid for stardom stateside. That too, has been a struggle, with a lot of knock-backs and no’s from casting directors. “I heard someone say ‘you have to try and love the process’,” she says. “Sometimes it’s really hard because I was a working actress in Thailand, and now I don’t know when my next gig is.”

Lundberg is not too proud to admit that in between projects she’s been busy toiling away behind the scenes, perfecting her craft in workshops with acting coach John Markland, who has trained the likes of Rami Malek, and Dakota Johnson. Luckily it has paid dividends, landing her a starring role in Chuck Russell’s rip-roaring 2022 gambling thriller Paradise City, alongside film greats Bruce Willis and John Travolta. “It’s a huge deal! Yeah, I was ecstatic, but I’ll tell you, I did over 100 auditions until I got that one,” she says with laudable transparency.

Even when she did finally bag the role, Lundberg still experienced some imposter syndrome – in fact, on meeting her revered co-star Travolta for the first time, she, er, bowed. “Why would I bow? Like, why would the first reaction be... and that had nothing to do with being Asian or anything – it was nothing to do with that,” she recalls, laughing. “I thought, ‘I am in the presence of greatness’.” It didn’t end there. “He put his hand out to shake and I went in for a hug – and then stepped on his foot,” says Lundberg. Even movie stars have toe-curling moments.

When the actress isn’t refining her acting skills, and endearingly putting her foot in it with acting royalty, she can be spotted on the hunt for a vintage steal, sometimes spending whole days sifting through the piles at Tab Vintage, a favourite of Olivia Rodrigo and Dua Lipa, and Wasteland on Melrose Avenue. “Sustainable fashion is very important to me,” she says. “My wardrobe is about having staple pieces and sometimes thrift shopping.”

When it comes to style, Lundberg is fairly low-key, gravitating towards her mum jeans and Birkenstocks. But the red carpet tells a different story, where, lately, she’s been turning back time in iconic pieces from the archives, namely that Versace safety pin dress. “That was very special because I remember seeing Elizabeth Hurley wearing that to a premiere with Hugh Grant,” recalls Lundberg. “Reliving the greats is amazing.” She’s also not afraid to embrace an entirely different side of herself. Take our shoot, for example, where she was decked out in a cyber punk style boxing ring, silver spiked armour bra and slicked back wet-look locks, a far cry from her usual bouncy blowout. “I felt like a badass for a day,” she says.

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Away from sets and shoots, Lundberg escapes into LA’s lush surrounds, ambling along the Malibu Pier and hiking. She also loves the adrenaline-inducing rush of a cold dip. “I think the shock to the system is great,” she says. Perhaps she is more Viking after all – more so than she first lets on anyway.

On one level, Lundberg relates to the Scandinavian sensibilities. “I love Sweden – I definitely feel I’m 100 per cent half Swedish because I’m Scandinavian, you know, I’m very sensitive,” she explains. But on another she feels, as with many “third culture kids” (her words), like home isn’t here. After all, it’s hard to fully relate to a country you weren’t raised in. So where is home for her? When she closes her eyes and thinks of home perhaps a sun-scape of LA swims into view or maybe she finds herself back on her grandmother’s farm in Ang Thong, with 12 family members under the same roof and three bodies to a bedroom. “And then you feel like you don’t really fit in anywhere,” says Lundberg. “I wouldn’t say that I go to Sweden and fit in because I’ve never fully lived there. Thailand: I wouldn’t say I’m fully Thai or say I really fit in either, and then coming to America, I’m this mix of nationalities and cultures.”

Like many women bidding goodbye to their twenties, Lundberg is in a period of self-reflection. For her, that has meant a rejection of the constant pressure placed on women in the public eye, not only to look ever youthful, but to tick off life’s milestones (love, marriage, and a baby carriage) in a timely fashion. “We’re not even allowed to age gracefully in this day and age. There’s just so much pressure to stay young, to get married. You know, everyone says the clock is ticking,” she says. “As a woman, you feel guilty that you’re not fulfilling societal roles.”

Instagram and TikTok aren’t exactly helping, either. For all the good these platforms can bring, there is also the side that encourages comparison, and the glare of the green-eyed monster is difficult to challenge. “Constant body comparison, constant comparison of lives. I find that aspect of all this sometimes really hard for a sensitive person,” she says. “It’s funny when we look back at pictures of us at 26, right? We look back now, we’re like, ‘Oh my God, I looked so good.’ That was that, but then when we were at that age, we were completely unhappy with the way we looked.”

Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is to reject the expectations placed upon us and stay true to what is important. “We women are so hard on ourselves because society is so hard on us. So I think the best thing we can do is sometimes say, ‘you know what? Screw it’,” says Lundberg. If Lundberg seems unsure about where she has come from, she’s certain about where she is heading. Moving into her thirties, and relocating to LA, have been the catalyst for the actress to truly take charge of things and unapologetically live life on her own terms. “Most of my life started at 30, in my opinion,” she says. “I finally started having some form of awareness. I finally have money to be able to spend on things that I want... I think I’m at my peak now.”