The first Netflix Original battling for the coveted Nordic Series Script Award at Göteborg, Danish thriller “Secrets We Keep” (“Reservatet”) shot to No. 1 in 28 countries when it launched on the U.S. streamer May 15, and has since captured around 40 million Netflix viewers worldwide. That’s quite a coup for Ingeborg Topsøe who signs her first fully-fledged TV show as a creator-writer, although her contributions to the Danish thrillers-psycho drama pics “The Charmer” (2017) and “Wildland” (2020) already established her name among top Nordic writers to watch.
The former graduate from the National Film & Television School in the U.K. also served as episodic writer on the Emmy-nominated Amazon show “Hanna.”
True to her taste for suspense drama, Topsøe has skilfully combined crime with social commentary in this six-part series, inspired by her own privileged upbringing, with au pairs as outsourced family support. Set in one of Copenhagen’s most affluent neighbourhoods, “Secrets We Keep” turns on the successful businesswoman and mother of two Cecilie, whose seemingly perfect life starts to crack when her neighbours’ Filipino au pair goes missing. Cecilie and her own au pair Angel begin to investigate, but the case of the missing foreigner is a low priority for the local police. Eventually Cecilie is forced to confront her own blind spots, her “friendship” with her racist neighbours Rasmus and Katarina and how she should raise her children.
In the title roles are Marie Bach Hansen (“The Legacy,” “White Sands”), Danica Curcic (“The Chestnut Man”) Simon Sears (“Ride Upon the Storm”), Lars Ranthe (“Another Round”) and Sara Fanta Traore (“The Nurse”), joined by newcomers Excel Busano and Donna Levkovski as the Filipino au pairs.The show, co-written by Ina Bruhn (“Darkness: Those Who Kill”) and Mads Tafdrup (“Speak No Evil”) was helmed by the seasoned Per Fly (“Borgen”) for Uma Film (“The Opponent,” “The Excavation”) and Netflix.
Topsøe spoke with Variety ahead of “Secrets We Keep”’s bow at Göteborg’s TV Drama Vision.
You’re in the running for best screenplay with “Secrets We Keep.” Could you first tell us how you got into screenwriting?
That’s a tough question to answer. I think it started when I went through a depression at university, while I was studying philosophy. Trying to write was a way of trying to regain a sense of self or point of view of the world. My writing didn’t amount to much at the time, but I finished my BA in philosophy with an exchange year at UCLA, where I took a minor in creative writing. This is where I really fell in love with writing. It was literature, but I remember one of my teachers who was a novelist said that if the TV business had had the same opportunities when she started writing, she would probably have gone in that direction. After UCLA, I applied for the National Film and Television School in London, as I was already writing in English and you could only apply for the Danish Film School every other year – which seems like an eternity when you’re in your 20s.
What type of stories and genres make you tick?
I’m always attracted to subject matters that I find intriguing or puzzling. Something you can look at from a lot of different angles, and with no easy solution or conclusion. Creating a TV show or a film is a very lengthy process and you have to be able to keep yourself engaged and interested for a long period of time. So I’ve never been attracted to a brave-man’s-fight-against-injustice” type of stories.
In terms of genres, I’ve never written anything that was pure drama. I always try to play with suspense or uncertainty. I’m seriously wondering if it’s because I have anxiety, but suspense just feels much more true to how I experience life in general. I always wonder what something reallymeans or what’s reallygoing on. I also like the suspense genre because it requires the audience to stay hyper-aware.
With “Secrets We Keep,” I purposely used the well-known techniques and themes of the crime genre to draw the audience in: the disappearance of a young woman, a concerned neighbour, a sexual motive, a police investigation. But hopefully I’ve used it slightly differently as class, ethnicity, white guilt and privileges are an inherent part of how this crime story unfolds
When and how did you first get the idea for this Nordic Noir, with a missing Filipino au pair at the heart of the plot?
I actually think of my show as anti-Nordic Noir. If you think of shows like “The Killing,” “The Bridge”and “The Investigation,” it’s all so cold, all water, glass, metal. Cool tones and police officers who show no emotions. I’m not really into that, and that’s why my police character Aicha is pretty emotional. Besides, “Secrets We Keep” takes place in this green, lush suburb north of Copenhagen with colorful homes and stylish outfits. The unease and suspense is present in broad daylight inside of the domestic sphere. In “Secrets We Keep,”it’s a culture and society as a whole that’s under indictment and assigning guilt is not as straightforward as in a normal whodunnit. Even once the truth about what happened becomes clear. The show should leave you with a really bad taste in your mouth.
The core idea for the show came from my own experience of growing up with au pairs. When I was three years old, my family moved to Germany for my mother’s work and my parents hired their first au pair, a young Danish girl who had just finished high school. From then on, my sister and I grew up with au pairs until our early teens. I never thought too much about it, until I was older and began thinking about starting a family myself.
Contemplating motherhood, family life and the division of labor in the home; I started wondering what it means to outsource intimacy in a family. Are picking a child up from school and making a sandwich, washing their sheets acts of love and ways for a parent to get to know their child, or are they simply domestic tasks which can easily be outsourced without implications? That’s what I set out to investigate. Then I started researching the current use of au pairs in Denmark, which is no longer young European girls working abroad for a year, but mainly women from the other side of the world; the majority (80%) are from the Philippines. And even though it’s officially a cultural exchange program, there are some very hardcore power structures at play in those homes where foreign women live with their employers who sponsor their stay in Europe. And while researching, I found that the people who employ au pairs don’t really seem to acknowledge this. There seems to be this interesting mental glitch.
Secrets We Keep
Credit: Nikolaj Thaning Rentzmann/Netflix
Denmark is usually perceived as a very egalitarian society. Was your intention to challenge this image?
Yes. Definitely. I really wanted to challenge the Danish self-perception. These upstairs-downstairs homes exist in Denmark, but I’ve never seen them portrayed on Danish television, or anywhere else for that matter. Danes think of ourselves as living in a very egalitarian society as you say, so I think it’s more uncomfortable for us to be faced with class division then for other nationalities. That’s why I think the au pair scheme was perfect for investigating the Danish perception of class and privileges. Even the language of the au pair program itself is not really representative of reality. The grown women who come here are called au pair “girls,” they live with their host “mom” and host “dad,” but these people are their employers. The women are given an allowance, but many come here to support their families. We say that au pairs are “part of the family,” while obviously being able to be fired and forced to leave the country. So it has this “double speak” quality, which I just wanted to dig into.
You also describe the households without much parental guidance, where the teen boys Oscar and Viggo use misogynistic online content. Can you comment on this storyline which nurtures both the crime plot and social commentary?
I was interested in these parents who are well-meaning and articulate, while also absent and full of blind spots. And these children who are both over-protected, while nonetheless overlooked. I kind of knew this dynamic from my own childhood to a certain extent, but wanted to take it further.
I do think there can be this triangle of silence between au pairs, parents and children. How much is the child aware of the power they hold over the employee? How much can the employee tell the parents about problematic behavior without it seeming like criticism of the children or even their parents? How well do the parents know what goes on in their own home if they’re not hands-on?
Misogynistic content is obviously present in all parts of society, unfortunately. But even if you’re well-educated and consider yourself a feminist like Cecilie, what do you really teach boys, and girls, about privilege, ethnicity and gender, when it’s always a woman of a different ethnicity who picks up after them? Does that change how they view others and their place in society? I thought that was interesting to investigate.
What were your inspirations for the show in terms of setting and atmosphere? It’s easy to think of “Big Little Lies”….
The setting and community were largely inspired by my own upbringing in the wealthy suburb north of Copenhagen, where you find the highest concentration of au pairs in the country and where the show is set and largely shot. But “Big Little Lies” was definitely an inspiration and a reference. It doesn’t really deal with class all that seriously, but I loved the female characters and I was inspired by the way the police was used. I knew pretty early on that I needed a police character and was looking for other less traditional ways to use the police. In “Big Little Lies,”the police circles around the community and main characters in a way I liked.
This is your first full series as creator-writer. What did you find most challenging and also most rewarding?
That’s so hard to answer. The process is so long and there are so many highs and lows along the way. Seeing it all come to life is so rewarding and the reception has been overwhelming. I’m especially happy with the ending. It ends with the exact feeling I always wanted, and it was a real balance to make sure it wasn’t too unsatisfying, but still haunting.
I love the end scene. I feel like everything came together. I think I cried when I watched the dailies that day, because I knew it would work. The actors completely pulled off this kind of tricky scene and Jasper Spanning the cinematographer got the mood just right. To me, it ends like when you tap a crystal glass and it makes a clear, ringing sound that lasts a few second. It encapsulated the precise tone of the whole show.
Endings are so important. I’m working on something else right now – my first play – where the ending doesn’t feel right and that’s really stressing me out!
How was your collaboration with Per Fly?
My ambitions for the show where always extremely high. We knew we really needed an equally ambitious director and we needed that person to take on all six episodes, because we had a big built [set] in a studio and couldn’t really shoot in blocks.
When we met with Per, it was clear he had a natural interest in the subject matter. He made a Danish film trilogy about class in the 2000s before working on TV shows like “Borgen.” He has almost always made things that have been very accessible, so he has a natural focus on opening material up to a broad audience. And he really managed to do that here as well.
Were you involved in the casting process, and why do you feel Marie Bach Hansen, Danica Curcic, Sara Fanta were perfect for their roles?
I had worked with the casting director Anja Philip two times previously and she knew the kind of characters I create, and what they require from an actor. I really trust her opinion, so working with her and Per during casting was wonderful. I have a love for inactive, observing main characters and the show is structured around the main character Cecilie’s slow realization of the realities around her. Marie Bach Hansen managed to carry the show and make sure we never lose interest in Cecilie, sometimes with very few means. Without that, the whole show would fall apart.
Danica Curcic’s character Katarina is much more outrageous, and Danica was not afraid to take that character to her limit. I love her for that. Some people thought the character was too much, but Danica managed to make her just that without losing the truthfulness, and the ending wouldn’t have worked without that. So it was extremely important for Danica to give Katarina this sort of disarming over-the-topness with a real undercurrent.
Sara Fantawho plays the police officer Aicha, probably had the most underwritten character of the core cast to be honest, because I wanted to limit the role and only ever see her at work. But I think that just gave Sara the freedom to somehow really make the character her own and just fill out all the blanks.
How was your relationship with Uma Film and with Netflix?
I had worked with Uma on the project for quite a while before the show went to Netflix, so they really fought for this show with me and Netflix were great. As you said it’s my first show as a creator and a pretty big show. I feel like they had a lot of faith in me and what I wanted to accomplish, so I felt very supported.
Will there be a second season?
The story was always intended to end the way it does. Some viewers are clearly very unhappy with that. I got messages from different places in the world from viewers who looked me up and contacted me. I remember waking up one morning to an American woman simply writing: “This ending is unacceptable. I need justice for Ruby.” But there will be no justice for Ruby, unfortunately.
What’s next for you?
I actually have a feature film – “Ghosts” – with director Milad Alami, which is set to shoot later this year and which is being presented in Göteborg. Milad, the producer Stinna Lassen and I made our feature debut together with “The Charmer”back in 2017, so it’s great to be working together again.
Ingeborg Topsoe