Mireille Enos And Joel Kinnaman On Reteaming On ‘Hanna’ And On Whether ‘The Killing’ Got A Fair Shake

Five years ago, after a controversial four-season run on AMC and Netflix, The Killing ended. Its lauded co-stars, Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman, then went their separate ways. Enos went on to star in the Shonda Rhimes caper series The Catch and movies like My Dinner With Herve, and Kinnaman became an action star in movies like Suicide Squad and RoboCop, as well as the first season of Netflix’s Altered Carbon.

But when Enos was cast as CIA agent Marissa Wiegler in David Farr’s Amazon adaptation of his film Hanna, she was asked to find the person her character chases, Erik Heller, father of the title character (Esme Creed-Miles), who has raised her in the woods to be a killing machine. She asked her buddy Kinnaman to help her brainstorm, until Farr came up with the best possible solution: Kinnaman himself.

Decider spoke to Enos and Kinnaman about their on-camera reunion, if their four seasons playing Sarah Linden and Stephen Holder gave them a shorthand, and if there was any nervousness playing characters on opposite sides of the story for the change. And, because we couldn’t resist, we asked if The Killing, equally praised and derided by viewers and critics, got a fair shake. Kinnaman’s answer is especially enlightening.

DECIDER: Did each of you know that the other was going to be on this at a certain point? When did you know each other were going to be on it?

MIREILLE ENOS: I came to it first. David [Farr, the writer and creator] reached out to me while I was shooting over in England and he lives there, so we were able to sit down together which was great. So, I got signed on and then I was helping brainstorm … Actually with Joel, I was like, “Well you send me names of your favorite 40-something European awesome actors” and then I found out that actually David Farr’s best hope was that Joel would join the show.

JOEL KINNAMAN: I got the call and I was like, “Okay, should I scratch this list? ‘Cause I got Mads Mikkelsen on top,” I just chucked that list and just signed on.

What did you each think when you knew that it was going to be the two of you this show together after being in The Killing together for four seasons?

ENOS: Well, when you find somebody that you love to play with so much and you have such a respect for their work and also, it’s just like you’re good friends and it’s comfortable and it’s great. Then you want to keep getting to do that, but obviously you don’t want to try to reinvent The Killing. So, it had to be the perfect balance of something that was different enough, that would be a very different dynamic, but then also such a happy reunion.

KINNAMAN: I think the important thing was to find something that was drastically different from The Killing; I felt like the danger was that to some people it would be hard to accept the new circumstances and you would just kind of see The Killing if it was too close. So I felt like this was perfect and I was curious of how it was going to feel, if our chemistry was sort of exclusive to The Killing. I didn’t think that that was going to be the case, or to those characters, and then as soon as we started shooting in these very different characters, I just realized that like oh, we have the same flow. It’s just fun and easy. It feels creative and I think it turned out really good.

Did it help that David established Marissa and Erik separately through those first two to three episodes before having a scene with the two of you together?

KINNAMAN: I don’t think it mattered, really, but I’m sure it didn’t hurt. It’s that thing when you get into this other character and all of a sudden you see the world through their eyes and it’s just … it kind of just flows.

Mireille, what do you think Marissa’s motivation has been to chase down Erik to these extremes over all these years, sitting and waiting even though she’s built a life for herself in Paris?

ENOS: She assumed that [Erik and Hanna] were going to die in the woods and she told, I think, a lot of very important people that the situation was contained, that there was nothing to worry about and then actually she’s moved on. Fifteen years as evidence of silence, she thought that situation was behind her and she’s made a really nice comfortable life for herself, so Hanna’s emerging from the forest is very bad news for her. She’s going to be in a lot of trouble with powerful people and so she just wants to make that go away as quickly as possible.

Joel, what do you think, what’s Erik’s motivation? ‘Cause obviously we know that he has taken care of Hanna for all this time even though she wasn’t his. What do you think is driving him beyond just a father daughter protective relationship?

KINNAMAN: I think that is his singular focus. I think it was his whole idea of parenting, everything else is stripped away and the only thing that he’s focused on is survival and equipping her with the tools to be able to defend herself against this threat that he sees coming. I think after they become discovered, he’s trying to figure it out, but I think a big part of that is to eliminate the threat which is Marissa.

How far into the shooting schedule did the two of you get your first scene together?

ENOS: Halfway through? Not quite halfway through.

KINNAMAN: Yeah, that would be right.

Was there a little sense of nervousness or anticipation?

KINNAMAN: [Jokingly] We’re cold-blooded professionals. We don’t get nervous, we just execute.

ENOS: So, the number of hours we’ve spent together in every different possible situation, there’s no need for nervousness. I think, one thing that is very different about these two characters, is how willing they are to regard each other. In The Killing, we both were playing people who are hiding, and are most available to one another, but just in general we’re hiders. These two human beings, we’re willing to regard each other and I think that’s a tactic that Marissa has that she doesn’t hide at all. She just pushes forward.

So, I did … I was like “I wonder what’s it’s going to be like to look at each other in a very different way,” but that’s the fun of the work. It’s like oh what does this feel like?

I was about to say Marissa smiles a lot for someone who’s in a very tough situation.

ENOS: Cool as a cucumber.

Was that David’s intention, saying she’s not some sinister government agent?

KINNAMAN: I think that’s some of Mireille Enos putting her stink on it and creating a contrast of the image of the character.

ENOS: Yeah, it didn’t come from David or the writing, it was actually a gift that the … John Jones, out second block director who directed [episodes] three and four, it was a gift he gave me. We were in the middle of shooting these big chunky scene with Joel and I and John said to me, “If you smile at me, I’ll give you anything you want,” and it was such a key for Marissa. That’s a tool that she can use.

What do you want fans of your work on The Killing to know about Hanna and your characters?

KINNAMAN: Well, I think they shouldn’t expect to see a continuation of The Killing because it’s not that, but I think they’re going to see a very exciting, moving series that has a lot of different qualities and they get to see me and Mireille play [against] each other again, but with … I think with a similar kind of chemistry, but with very different characters.

ENOS: It is a hard question to answer because it’s so different from The Killing, but I think along with falling in love with those characters of Linden and Holder, I think what they really were responding to was the flow between us and that flow is there. The energy of our playing together is there, they just get to experience it in this very different way.

By the way, what kind of shorthand do you two guys have after being scene partners for so long? What’s a good example of shorthand the two of you guys have together?

ENOS: Well, we don’t have to talk about it, we just get in it, you know? We follow each other.

KINNAMAN: We’ve never been … another thing, neither of us have an inclination of over-analyzing things. So, I think even in the work process, too it’s … you kind of leave each other alone and then you sort of look at each other and like, “Oh, go a little bit more,” and then the other person’s like, “Yeah exactly, yeah yeah yeah, we know.” So, you don’t really have to put too many words on it, you kind of … you just feel. You feel that maybe we didn’t really quite reach the potential on that or yeah, I tried something different on that one and it didn’t work let me try something different on this take. You sort of just feel it out.

ENOS: And you know, Joel’s work is so delicate and detailed and subtle, and so for me, there’s like such a curiosity. They start rolling and I’m like what’s he gonna do? It’s fun to watch.

You guys have both moved on with other roles since The Killing ended, but do you think the got enough time to tell the stories that Veena Sud wanted to tell or do you think it didn’t get quite the fair shake that it should’ve gotten?

ENOS: No, I think that story got told.

KINNAMAN: I feel like I was really happy that we got to conclude it. That was a really good feeling. I think some of the controversy that mired The Killing after the first season, I think if that would have come out now, it would have been a very different response. I think that it was pretty silly the way that people reacted to it and I think that the audience … I think that was more indicative of the audience not being quite as mature as they are now.

I would say that has changed drastically of how the audience perceives the show now. So, I think if it would’ve come out now, I think a lot of things about it would have … I think it would’ve … because The Killing received like quite a bit of initial acclaim, then backlash, then it sort of came back and then it has longevity.

I think if it came out now, it wouldn’t had a backlash, it would’ve just climbed up, but I was just very happy that we got to conclude it even though it was maybe a little abbreviated.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Hanna on Amazon Prime Video