Thread by @thetimes

"I have been told that I was the worst person in the world,” says Renate Reinsve, recalling the words of an ex-boyfriend.

Meet the woman being described as Norway’s answer to Fleabag thetimes.co.uk/article/is-ren…

#TheWorstPersonInTheWorld follows Julie (played by Reinsve in her first big-screen lead role) as she turns 30, navigates her career, tries to make sense of her love life (which includes a serious partner, Aksel, who is “perfect, on paper”) and contemplates starting a family

It is the biggest film to come out of Norway since, well, possibly ever, and has clearly hit a nerve, writes @CharlieGowans

➡️ Barack Obama put it on his best films of 2021 list
➡️ Richard Curtis described it as a “complete masterpiece”
➡️ Dakota Johnson said it “wrecked” her

@CharlieGowans It has been called the Norwegian Fleabag — the parallels cemented by a wink to camera in one scene.

If Julie isn’t a poster girl for the messy woman, she is one for the woman who, says Reinsve, is “not good or bad, just complicated and complex”

@CharlieGowans “So many great women that I know are so easily being called crazy,” she says.

🗣️“That is still a hangover from a hundred years ago, when women were thrown into asylums for hysteria. They were prisoners in their own lives and they acted on it, and then they were called crazy”

@CharlieGowans 🗣️“I wanted Julie to be strong. I was defending her because she was in this state of figuring stuff out — we live in such a polarised time and you’re supposed to know everything and make a stand and be very opinionated. But you lose the process of just really figuring things out”

@CharlieGowans The film also deals with strained family ties, gruelling arguments and an honest weighing up of motherhood versus personal ambition. 👩‍👧‍👦

The fertility rate in Norway dropped from 1.95 children per woman in 2010 to 1.48 in 2020 📉thetimes.co.uk/article/the-wo…

@CharlieGowans “In Norway it’s not taboo any more to talk about not wanting kids, and I really respect that perspective, so I took it very seriously. I have friends who are talking about that and are really great, loving people — it has nothing to do with not being able to love,” said Rensive

@CharlieGowans As for Reinsve, “I’ve always wanted kids, from when I was young. I heard that if you have a hard time growing up, you want kids more to make it right or to make it different”

@CharlieGowans She grew up in Solbergelva, a village in 🇳🇴, leaving home at 16; her own family dynamic “was very turbulent, but I feel like the whole family has stumbled back together, and it’s better. We’re getting there.”

Of her relationship status she will only say: “It’s complicated” 💓

@CharlieGowans So who was the real-life ex-boyfriend who called her the worst person in the world?

She won’t say but her crime then was “just being fair with myself — like leaving a relationship for reasons I didn’t know consciously”

@CharlieGowans 🗣️"I’ve been in so many relationships where there is something that feels off. I can feel stronger by myself, as a single woman, than I do with a guy I really love and think is great but who has some old-fashioned views that he isn’t even aware of about how to be with a woman”

@CharlieGowans 📽️ #TheWorstPersonInTheWorld is in cinemas from March 25.

Read the full interview 👇 thetimes.co.uk/article/is-ren…