She has played Kristina från Duvemåla, been number one on the Swedish charts and sung lyrics by Swedish star writers in the SVT program Babel. Now when the film “Livet är en schlager” is turned into a musical Helen Sjöholm enters into a new role: she will play a personal assistant.
We meet Helen Sjöholm together with Jonas Helgesson. Jonas is a writer, lecturer and stand-up comedian and is now, in “Livet är en schlager”, making his acting debut in the role as David who has cerebral palsy. (…)
The story is about David who is super musically talented and composes a melody that his hit song crazy personal assistant, Mona, writes lyrics for. (…) In the role of personal assistant Mona we see Helen Sjöholm.
She says that she hasn’t done any real research for the role, like for example interviewing real personal assistants.
– Jonas’ experiences have shaped our collaboration and it’s because of Jonas’ own person that I feel safe in the role of a personal assistant.
Helen Sjöholm herself has also worked in home care when she was young.
– There are a few scenes where we’ve talked about the sphere of integrity you have to work with as an assistant and then I can only refer to when I worked in home care service for elderly people. When you have to get close to someone and help, without helping too much.
(…)
And now, in “Livet är en schlager”, she will once again work together with Peter Jöback who was in the Duvemåla musical. This time Peter plays Mona’s brother, transvestite Candy Darling.
– Since Kristina became so important to us and we played for a long time, it established some sort of kinship actually, and we have followed each other without for that sake having worked very closely together, Helen says. It’s been nearly 20 years since those first trembling steps when we were going to some press conference and we almost wet ourselves. We were so terribly nervous. There are few people you have experienced such a journey with.
Due to copyright reasons the whole interview cannot be translated