“Sentimental Value” stars Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve on their heavy and emotionally incompetent father-daughter relationship

Gerrad HallThu, March 5, 2026 at 5:20 PM UTC

0

'Sentimental Value' stars Renate Reinsve and Stellan SkarsgårdCredit: Dia Dipasupil/WireImage via Getty Images

Renate Reinsve remembers the first time she met Stellan Skarsgård, the man who was about to play her father in Sentimental Value.

"I was scared. He's such an icon and such a legend," Reinsve, Oscar-nominated for her performance in Joachim Trier's movie, says on Entertainment Weekly's The Awardist podcast. "We were just in this really normal office, sitting opposite each other at a table read. And to keep your cool and to stay in your body when you're a little scared meeting someone you really respect, that's a challenge."

"Same for me," says Skarsgård, sitting next to Reinsve in London, the day before the BAFTAs.

Their jovial, friendly off-screen relationship couldn't be more opposite than that of their characters: Skarsgård, who also received his first Oscar nomination for his work here, plays famous movie director Gustav Borg, who has just written a new screenplay; he wants his actress daughter, Nora, to play the lead role. Just short of being estranged, the two aren't on the best of terms, to the point that she's finding it difficult to care much about his next project. Nora and her sister Agnes (Oscar nominee Inga Ibsdotter Lilleas) have just lost their mother, who also had a fraught relationship with their dad, who wasn't exactly the best dad and husband, often making his work and art a bigger priority than the three of them.

Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve in 'Sentimental Value'Credit: Christian Belgaux/Neon

Much like meeting Skarsgård, Reinsve remembers being just as scared about her character upon first read of Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt's script.

"I know how thoroughly Joachim can see a person, and I knew that he can both see through layers of what you present here in the world, as an actor and as a person," she says of the director, adding they "got to know each other very well" while starring in his previous movie, The Worst Person in the World, "I knew that he wanted to challenge me in something a bit more heavy, more emotional weight with the second character that he wrote for me. So I knew that was gonna be there, and then I was a little scared of seeing something about myself that I hadn't seen. There is something that resonates in kind of this deepness of having a connection with the sadness or trying to understand why you're sad, and going into that world is something both in me and him is interested in."

In the case of Nora, a theatre actress with tremendous stage fright, that sadness once led to a suicide attempt, which her father doesn't know about.

"To go into that respectfully, also you get affected by it," she continues. "So I knew from every page I read, I knew that this was gonna be heavy to do, but also so grateful to get that challenge and to go into something in that way. And the way he writes the characters in layers and detail, and to keep working to develop that with him on set, I was, both scared and grateful reading."

Stellan Skarsgård in 'Sentimental Value'Credit: NEON

Skarsgård recalls being happy as he started digging into the story.

"It's so playful. It's cinematically playful," he describes of Gustav's first scene, where he shows up at the family home. "It gives a perspective on the entire film where he sort of moves out from the problems that the family has and watches from the house's perspective, and then it goes in again. And that made me so happy. And then I continued reading and the character was, let me say that there were many jokes at his expense in the film, and half of them are gone now. [Joachim] was more concentrated on showing him not having contact, not having the sort of sensibility to have a contact with people."

Advertisement

It made Skarsgārd wonder if Trier had a problem with his own father, he remembers asking him. "Because the fathers in his previous films were also kind of cliché, but he just nodded. And he expected me to counterbalance the script in a way, which I did. But that's a very weird, but very flattering kind of writing here that he's [saying], we don't have to write that because Stellan will fix it."

Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleas in 'Sentimental Value'Credit: NEON

Stuck in the middle is Agnes — "the center of gravity," Skarsgård says of the character, "and she's also the center of love" — who's trying to fix both of them. What Agnes and Nora don't realize at first, though, is that Gustav's script isn't about him and Nora — an assumption they make because he tells Nora he's written the role for her and she's the only one who can play it. But, in fact, he has parental trauma of his own that has greatly impacted his ability to be one.

That possibility, though, doesn't even cross Nora's mind.

"She's so blinded by anger and grief. And I think that's also something so human, that if something's really bad has happened to you, it's just so human to put that on someone or to be so filled by that pain, that to get to the point of seeing a deeper perspective is that road is so long and it's so hard to walk those steps," Reinsve explains. "But that's really what I love about that Nora character and the relationship between the father and the daughter, that they actually find a way in the darkness in a way, for that little light, so that they can start that process of getting to know each other."

Even though Nora won't star in his film, that doesn't stop him from trying to make it. So he casts American actress Rachel Kemp, played by Oscar nominee Elle Fanning. Skarsgård recalls his night scenes with her on a beach in France as being some of his favorite moments with her.

"It had a sadness, those scenes, but it was sort of subtle. It was this bittersweet scene because it was the end of the one life and her coming in, but then we had all the rehearsal scenes, and there I wanted to show Gustav's emotional competence. I wanted to show that in his work, he's competent... he can psychologically understand everything. He can't communicate when he's with his children."

Skarsgård says he felt a kindred spirit in Fanning, who, like him, was also a child actor. "We grew up in the business, We are the lucky child actors that survived. You can go two ways. She has a very, very sound approach to the work, and she will survive a long time. She doesn't go for the fake stuff; she believes in the profession and in the job, and she enjoys it. It's cool to see the skill of a young girl that has been a child star and has handled it so well."

Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning in 'Sentimental Value'Credit: Kasper Tuxen/Neon

Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year's best in TV, movies, and more.

Listen to Skarsgård and Reinsve's full interview on The Awardist, below, where she sheds light on Gustav's interesting cleaning method (using the full roll of paper towels instead of ripping off sheets of it), whether he'll do Mamma Mia 3, why she was terrified of her first English-language movie, A Different Man, and more.

on Entertainment Weekly

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”