Whether she’s squeezing the life out of James Bond with her signature crushing move as Xenia Onatopp in GoldenEye, or emerging as Phoenix and unleashing her deadly power on Cyclops in X-Men: The Last Stand, Famke Janssen knows how to make an entrance and leave an everlasting impression.
With an impressive acting resumé spanning more than three decades, and a massively versatile range, Janssen demonstrates time and again that she’s a worth adversary and a talented contender who’s always up for a challenge.
Proving she’s just getting warmed up, Janssen stars as Betty, a wife scorned and out for revenge, in the upcoming Netflix series, Amsterdam Empire.
I had the immense pleasure of chatting with Famke Janssen recently about her love of animals, taking on a good challenge, and her new Netflix series.
Check out the interview below!
Gabrielle Bisaccia: I read that you’re a big animal lover. Have you heard of “The Catboat” (De Poezenboot) in the Amsterdam canals that serves as a refuge for stray and abandoned cats?
Famke Janssen: I haven’t gone in, but I’ve walked by hundreds of times! I was just filming in Sofia, Bulgaria, and they actually have wild cats and dogs everywhere, just roaming the streets! It seemed like the dogs kept multiplying; they would bring their pals saying, ‘Hey, there’s Craft services!’ I was really in heaven with all of the animals, and a donkey came to set, and then we had horses at some point too. So, yeah, I love animals! I just love them. Right off the bat you went with the perfect question! I thought, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to ask me about X-Men or something like that.’ But the fact that you’re coming into it with the animals, I’m good. I did a movie in London a couple of years ago called Locked In for Netflix, and I had to ride a horse, but I hadn’t ridden one since I was 12 when I broke my collarbone. It was a whole new experience, but also just as an adult, going on a horse and feeling that connection between animal and human in the most incredible way is just beautiful.
GB: You left the Netherlands at 18 years old to pursue modeling. What do you miss most?
FJ: When I first moved to the US, I missed the down-to-earth part of the Dutch culture, because I couldn’t quite navigate through the American culture. I took everything at face value and thought when someone would say, ‘Let’s go meet for dinner tomorrow night’, that they meant it. And then I realized it wasn’t ever meant to be real. So, in Holland, when someone says that, they mean it. It was like navigating through this culture of when they say that, it’s just figure of speech and it doesn’t really mean anything. I missed that initially, but now that I’ve lived in New York for so long, I love how open people are and how you can just talk to anyone. Coming back to the Netherlands, I realize it’s so reserved. So that’s the flip side of it…In Holland you can sit and have a coffee in the same place for eight months and no one talks to you. Whereas in New York, you would already have befriended everyone, know their family, know their backstory, their whole history. It’s just cultural differences. I enjoy traveling so much to different cultures and I think this is where Amsterdam Empire fits in perfectly right now because we live in a time where authenticity has become so much more desired; there’s a bigger appetite for it on screen. Streaming services like Netflix coming out with Squid Games, and most recently, Adolescence, shows that there is this authentically made content shot in local territories, in different languages, and then it’s released on a global platform through Netflix and that’s really important and sought after. Amsterdam Empire has that same formula. I’m very excited because I think people don’t know much about Dutch culture and this is authentically Dutch.
GB: You’re an executive producer on this project, which is amazing! How important was it for you to have more control and creative liberties on this show to ensure the integrity and authenticity of the environment and your character, especially as this takes place and was shot in the Netherlands?
FJ: It’s made by Belgian and Dutch people, so it is very authentic to begin with, but it was mostly because I thought, ‘I’m coming back to my country that I left when I was 18, and I didn’t start acting until I came to the States in my 20s. I’m coming back with 80 films under my belt and I want to come back with more control, some authority, and things that I just feel I’ve earned over the years to bring to this project.’ And so, I did, and then the costumes weren’t even originally in my contract, but it just organically started happening because I understood this character so much so I became costume designer for my costumes and I had people around me to help execute these ideas because the costumes are so much a part of who Betty is. My character is very colorful, very extravagant, very larger than life. She’s also very childlike, and her emotions fly every which direction. I just wanted that reflected in the clothing and it became such a fun, creative outlet for me. What I’m wearing right now, for example, I put all of this together. I very much already had been doing that to make my own clothes more authentic, so really it was just a natural, organic way of expressing myself and my character. I also did a music video as the character; a throwback 90s song. I worked very hard because the song is at a very fast tempo, and the choreographer invented all of these 90s hip hop moves that he wanted to incorporate into this song. I was trained over the months that I was filming there, and it was honestly the most incredible experience. I never, ever dreamed this was something I would do. And it wasn’t even initially part of the script. It just came out of the filming experience where we were like, ‘Hey, let’s just make a little video for this character!’ I had vocal lessons, dance lessons, all of it. And then it’s supposed to be a much younger version of myself that’s doing this video, but you can’t cheat dancing younger or singing younger. So, it had to be good enough to be believable, so there were some challenges, but I love a good challenge. It’s my favorite thing in the world. Give me one and I will literally work my ass off to get there!
GB: Did you channel anyone for your character, Betty?
FJ: No, I mean, in terms of the costumes, I did start looking at a lot of former pop stars from the 90s and I was getting inspiration from fashion as well. So, there were different influences that certainly came to mind, but I wanted Betty to just be Betty- very much her own authentic person, so that she didn’t look like we just stole ideas from an existing person and made her that. It was very important that she had to be authentic and just be her own person. Oh, and her song is very catchy! Whenever we were playing it on set, everyone was singing along.
GB: How does it feel to be acting in your native language of Dutch for the first time?
FJ: To be honest with you, it’s probably the thing that seemed the most intimidating out of everything, but then it ended up being the least! I was there for a long time recently, almost all of last year, so it was just second nature. It’s the language I grew up with, my first language, but I did leave when I was 18. So, I speak English a whole lot more than I ever speak Dutch now. It did intimidate me at first, but then it was just easy. It was really like riding a bike; once you started doing it, you just fall back into it. Which I know because I grew up riding bikes; everyone does in Amsterdam actually and it’s very much part of Dutch culture. But it also rains so much and when it rains there, it rains sideways! It made filming a bit tricky because we ended up filming through mid-November. Thankfully the last two weeks were in studio, but most of it was location work. It wasn’t easy to navigate Amsterdam because logistically speaking, it is a very difficult city to film in with all the canals, the fact that there isn’t much infrastructure, and they’re also very specific about rules. While it wasn’t easy to film there, it really adds so much to the show. I think just as the title suggests, Amsterdam Empire is almost its own character!