Joel Kinnaman talks shedding his clothing for Netflix’s “Altered Carbon”

NETFLIX(NEW YORK) — While watching Netflix’s ambitious new sci-fi show Altered Carbon, the first thing you might notice is the stunning futuristic visuals. The second thing you might notice? Joel Kinnaman is naked a lot.

The Swedish actor plays Takeshi Kovacs, a former elite soldier who gets reanimated in a new body after a 250-year “sleep” in order to solve a murder. It’s a role with a lot of layers, but for the first three days of shooting let’s just say there were no layers…of clothing, that is. Talk about the ultimate icebreaker.

“Yeah, I mean at least, uh, my ice was broken,” Kinnaman laughs. “Yeah, the Swedish very relaxed relationship to clothing came well in handy.”

As for the other stunning visuals — the futuristic set pieces — Kinnaman says it wasn’t all green screen like people may expect.

“I’ve done a couple of big movies before where you’re in these big green screen boxes and you have to imagine everything and that’s kind of how you picture that this shoot was gonna be because you’re doing this 300 years in the future,” he explains. “But we actually had amazing practical sets, huge practical sets. We had one set that was three football fields deep!”

When asked how he would react if put in his character’s shoes — namely, popping up in 2018 with no idea what’s going on — Kinnaman laughs, “I would lose my godd*** mind!”

“I think to sort of predict 50 years into the future is really difficult right now because the technological advances are going so quick and everything is changing so fast,” he adds. “I mean, it’s a very volatile and dynamic time that we’re living in right now.”  

Altered Carbon debuts on Netflix today.