Aftonbladet Sunday 201220
By: ANNA-MARIA STAWREBERG
Helen Sjöholm has made people she has never met find love. But also to end destructive relationships. For Aftonbladet Sunday, she talks about the search for security – and constantly new kicks.
It’s really dark in the huge salon, and the audience is buzzing with anticipation. Suddenly it explodes. It winds next to our ears and high above our heads a little person swings on a swing.
We who sit in the audience don´t know it yet. But when Helen Sjöholm swings out there on the swing in Kristina from Duvemåla, it´s the beginning of a comet career we are watching.
It´s 1995, and in fierce competition with a thousand other applicants, the 25-year-old Helen Sjöholm, then completely unknown, has been given the role of Kristina in the musical Kristina from Duvemåla, which Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson stage at the Gothenburg Opera.
What we soon become aware of is that she sings with an intensity you rarely experience. Her presence on the stage is total, and even though she is only 160 centimeters tall, she fills the entire stage.
(…)
– I was very inexperienced then, but was lucky enough to work with a fantastic ensemble and a strong history. The work discipline was very hard, and we had performances five, six days a week, for five years.
We are sitting in a suite at the Grand Hôtel. Helen is relaxed, sitting curled up on the sofa and laughing a lot. In front of her she has a half-drunk bottle of mineral water.
Recent months, she has spent with the filming of the film Tills solen går upp (Until the Sun Rises), where she plays with Mikael Persbrandt, Vanna Rosenberg and Peter Dalle. Unfortunately, the pandemic put a stop to the planned Christmas premiere, but the idea is that the film will be released as soon as the cinemas reopen.
– Peter got in touch 1,5 years ago and said that he had the perfect role for me. Then I was in a situation where I wanted to try to film more, so it fit perfectly, Helen says.
She has turned 50, and since that big breakthrough with Kristina from Duvemåla, she has become one of the country’s most beloved artists. As a singer in BAO, Benny Andersson’s orchestra, she ended up at the Swedish charts for 278 weeks. With her role as Gabriella in Kay Pollack’s Så som i himmelen (As in Heaven), she got the Swedes to start singing in a choir – and end destructive relationships.
– I´ve been lucky to get powerful material ever since the breakthrough with Kristina from Duvemåla. When people tell me that certain songs, like Gabriella’s song in As in Heaven, have changed their lives, I feel that what I do actually matters. She describes herself as a “security-snoring domestic cat who feels best when she comes home and can close the door on herself”.
– At the same time, I´m still looking for this passion that I get an outlet for through work. The tingling in my stomach, the opportunity to try something new and challenge myself…
There is a great contrast in describing herself as a security junkie, and at the same time constantly seeking passion and new kicks. How do you make it go together?
– I can´t! The downside is that it is easy to get exhausted. Setting boundaries is difficult, she says and laughs.
As if to set an example of what she just said, she apologizes and takes the ringing mobile phone out of her bag. Quickly tells me that she is in charge of logistics at home, and has to take the call. Whispering, she deals with snacks and afternoon activities that her 13-year-old son Ruben will fix for his two younger siblings, twins Samuel and Johanna, 9 years old, and then lands again in the suite at the Grand Hôtel, also mentally.
– I´ve a hard time letting go of the job sometimes and a few years ago I was close to being burned out. I´ve a very hard time doing something a little, I´m someone who does everything to the max. Today, I´ve become better at recognizing the warning signals, she states.
Neither she nor her husband David Granditsky, who is a sound engineer, has a traditional 9-17 job. To make life with three children go together, they have puzzled, conjured with their knees and, when the children were small, taken the help of babysitters.
– Sometimes I think: “Damn, I want to be home more in the evenings with the kids!”, And it feels like an ongoing tug-of-war between home and work, she thinks. But, she says shortly. Working with something else is unthinkable. For her, the job is an adventure, something that in the same way that it can drain her completely of energy, can fulfill her.
– I also believe that both David and I serve as good role models for the children, as we are passionate about our jobs. In Tills solen går upp (Until the Sun Rises), she plays Lena, who lives in an uneventful, yet harmonious marriage with Peder (Mikael Persbrandt).
(…)
The role of Lena came at the right time. Because, at the same time as the pandemic swept across the world, the country’s theaters and concert halls were forced to close to the public. Helen Sjöholm, who then played the lead role in the musical Next to normal at Uppsala City Theater, was suddenly left without an assignment.
– It was an involuntary break, you could say, which at the same time gave David and me the opportunity to be at home more with the family.
But, even though it can be great to shut up and spend time with the family, and even if Helen is basically that house cat, the porridge on the table and the bills have to be paid. And of course, just hanging out at home does not pay off. Helen looks happy when she tells about the filming.
– Vanna Rosenberg and I have worked together before. I like and respect her. The only negative with the recording was that we didn´t have one single joint recording day, we were as if on each side of dream and reality in the script.
Helen Sjöholm may have been on stage since the 1990s. But, even though Helen loved to sing for as long as she can remember, started in a choir already as a child and was part of the singing group Just for fun back home in Sundsvall, artist was not plan A for her.
– No, I went the cultural science line at Stockholm University when the role of Kristina appeared and then I realized that it could be a gateway. Benny Andersson had seen me in an amateur performance, and thought I would fit in as Kristina. Helen realized it was a chance she could not turn down. Such a chance that only appears once in a lifetime, if at all.
– I told myself that “now it’s just to go. If I sabotage this, then I can at least tell myself that I´ve tried “, Helen remembers.
To say that she stopped completely during the pandemic is therefore a lie. During the past year, she has also had time to record a solo album with completely newly written material.
The album is called En ny tid (A New Time). Is it a reference to the strange time we live in?
– No. We started recording before the corona. However, it has been an extremely special production! I sat alone with the producer, and everyone else sat at home and played, isolated, Helen says.
So far, she has not been able to perform with the album in front of an audience, even if it´s something she longs for.
– I love playing in front of an audience. Of course I have stage nerves and am nervous before the gigs, I wonder why, actually, I expose myself to this. But then it disapears, and I love every second.
That involuntary break has thus been filled with creative projects. During the autumn, she also had a role in Amy Deasismont’s new Viaplay series Thunder in my heart, where she plays together with, among others, Gustaf Hammarsten. And in December, we saw her appear in Så mycket bättre (So much better).
– Maybe for my part, the pandemic has partly given me time to think and formulate my own dreams and wishes, both privately and in my work. The soda water in front of her is empty. She states that she still thinks the job is a “damn adventure”.
– I swung up on stage with a swing 25 years ago. And I’m still there…
(…)
5x last I…
…longed for the stage:
“Continuously! Just now. That was a long time ago.”
…had stage-fright:
“A few weeks ago when I was in Hellenius’ corner. There is something about those sofas that makes me nervous. ”
…erupted in song spontaneously:
“When I sang for Malena Ernman on her birthday.”
…wished to work in another industry:
“I never want that.”
…forgot your lines:
“It was on the dress rehearsal before Next to normal.”
3x favorites
On the bedside table:
“Olle Adolphson’s autobiography and my fat diary.”
What I do to relax after an intense work period:
“First I have to clean up. It’s a little therapy for me. Then I read. Then I go out into the woods.”
In the headphones:
“I very rarely listen to music. I need silence, but when I listen to music it will be Ane Brun or Anna Stadling.”
Finally, Anna-Maria thinks:
That Helen Sjöholm often had roles as nice, decent people. After spending a few hours in her company, I understand why. Helen feels genuinely friendly, easy to laugh with and at the same time very funny.
(The entire interview is not reproduced for copyright reasons)