Scripting Secrets
Writer Ingeborg Topsøe tells DQ why she wanted to explore the world of au pair culture in Danish drama Reservatet (Secrets We Keep), a Netflix series that follows the fallout from a young woman’s disappearance in a leafy Copenhagen suburb.
When Danish drama Reservatet (Secrets We Keep) debuted on Netflix in May 2025, writer Ingeborg Topsøe hoped it would be well received locally. What she hadn’t considered was the “happy surprise” that the six-part series would make such a huge impact internationally, landing on the streamer’s top 10 list in 87 countries worldwide – and reaching number one in 35 of them.
“I’ve mostly done art-house films, which premiere at Berlinale, San Sebastián or Sundance. So suddenly making something that 35 million people saw in the first two months was almost incomprehensible,” she tells DQ. “I know that’s part of being on a big streamer, but for some reason, I didn’t really think in those terms. I thought more about reviews in Denmark, the debate here, that sort of arena. Suddenly I was like, ‘Whoa’ – and I woke up to a text from a woman in America who was like, ‘This is not OK. I need justice for Ruby.’”
In the series, Ruby (played by Donna Levkovski) is a young au pair from the Philippines who suddenly vanishes one day from the home where she lives and works for Katarina (Danica Curcic) and Rasmus (Lars Ranthe) in an upmarket suburb of Copenhagen, the Danish capital. Their neighbours, Cecilie (Marie Bach Hansen) and Mike (Simon Sears), have an au pair of their own, Angel (Excel Busano), who does almost everything for them and their son Viggo (Lukas Zuperka).
Following Ruby’s disappearance, Cecilie takes it upon herself to enquire about her whereabouts – and soon becomes concerned more people from her inner circle may be involved than she wants to believe.
Coming from the world of feature films, where her credits include The Charmer and Wildland, Topsøe had previously worked as an episode writer on Hanna but mostly rejected the chance to join other people’s TV shows in favour of developing her own material.
“That’s always a big gamble,” she admits. She had flown to LA for meetings with several US studios in March 2020, never questioning why it might be “insane” for execs to take a chance on a relatively unknown Danish writer. Then as the global industry shut down during Covid, she began work on a more local, Danish show – one that would become Secrets We Keep.
“The industry in Denmark is so small, just because it’s a small country, so it’s not difficult to get a meeting with people or pitch your ideas,” she says. “It can be difficult for people to take a chance on you. But the good thing about writing is the proof is in the writing. So if you read a pilot and people like it, your track record is maybe not as important.”
It was national broadcaster DR that first took a chance on Topsøe, putting Secrets We Keep into development. “But DR has been famous for those shows where every part of society is somehow represented, and I think they found that this was too specific an environment to really be public service, which I think is not quite true,” the writer says. “There’s been a big debate in Denmark in terms of the au pair schemes and what it means. But then they didn’t do it.”
The project then moved to HBO Max, which was developing its own slate of original series from across Scandinavia, and was on the verge of a green light when the streamer withdrew its original commissioning strategy in numerous countries across Europe.
Then executives at Netflix read the script and took the project to series. “They have been really great. I feel like they just understood what I wanted to do with it, and they were not micromanaging,” Topsøe says. “They just had a lot of faith in it. I actually felt like I had very free hands. I didn’t feel a lot of creative pressure doing it.”
In particular, she found there wasn’t a “pushback” to the ending of the story, which resolves the drama in a way that “should leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. It’s not a closed case,” she notes. “There’s stuff about it that is slightly unconventional, but there wasn’t a big pushback or a lot of questioning of whether or not that would work.”
In fact, the ending shines a spotlight on the lengths to which parents will go to protect their children, and how au pair culture in Denmark often leaves parents with little knowledge of who their children are or what they are doing, particularly in today’s digital age.
It was part of Topsøe’s ambition to write a story that discusses the au pair experience in the country and create a series that portrays an “antidote” to the seemingly equal power-sharing relationships between families and servants seen in other shows like The Crown or Downton Abbey.
“There seems to be this idea that there can be a symbiosis between the ruling class and the workers if everyone is behaving nicely. Cecilie would subscribe to that idea at the beginning,” Topsøe explains, “and it’s very much saying, ‘No, if you think there’s some kind of symbiosis, it is probably because you have too much power.’
“I was interested in talking about class, because we don’t usually talk about it. The reality is these upstairs-downstairs homes exist in Denmark. I grew up with au pairs when I was a kid, but I’ve never seen it portrayed. There’s this uncomfortableness about class and privilege and money.”
The writer likens au pairs to middle management in environments where there is always a power struggle, where the children might assert power over those who are employed to raise them. “So how much can the au pair say about the kid, if they have troubling behaviour, to the parents without the parents actually getting annoyed with the au pair or feeling like it’s a criticism of the kids? I feel like there can be this triangle of silence, in a way, because the communication is not quite clear, which I also found really interesting to investigate.”
Topsøe applied that idea to a mystery story, with Cecilie taking it upon herself to investigate those around her who could be linked to Ruby’s disappearance, before discovering she herself might be connected too.
But the writer found that things soon became “tricky,” with Cecilie’s efforts restricted in ways that wouldn’t apply to a character like a police officer or a journalist. “That’s also why there is a police character,” she says, referring to Aicha (Sara Fanta Traore), who is assigned to Ruby’s case. “But I never wanted to do a police show. So that’s also why she’s introduced in the beginning of episode two, to make it clear she’s actually more someone circling the environment.
“Having grown up in that suburb north of Copenhagen where it’s set, and largely also where it’s shot, people don’t have the same reaction to the police showing up as someone who isn’t as privileged, who doesn’t have the same connections. So I was also interested in trying to set something in a place where the police would not feel particularly powerful. Cecilie wants to work with the police when it seems to be about her neighbour. Then when it seems to be about her family, she doesn’t want to. So it becomes this thing of how much are you willing to give up to do the right thing, if the right thing isn’t just pointing at someone else and going, ‘Oh, they’re wrong.’”
After seeing the finished product, Topsøe says her biggest accomplishment is that the series stayed true to her original vision despite being developed at three different broadcasters. She was supported in the scriptwriting by Ina Bruhn (Darkness: Those Who Kill) and Mads Tafdrup (Speak No Evil), who helped her plot out a series that was notably short on potential suspects, as the story is largely confined within the circle of Cecilie, Katarina and their husbands and children.
“But I didn’t necessarily want to create a lot of red herrings because I didn’t really want to get too far away from the environment and the main cast,” she says. “How I tried to create tension was by getting a lot from a little. So, for instance, an empty trash can is a big thing in episode one. I don’t have 10 murders, I don’t have car chases, so it’s really about getting the tone and atmosphere right, and getting something that people are interested in enough to keep watching.”
Directed by Per Fly (Borgen) and produced by Uma Film, production took place in the Copenhagen suburb of Gentofte, which is known as The Reservation – a nickname the show adopted as its Danish title, Reservatet. Cecilie and Mike’s luxurious home was constructed in a studio, with production designer Niels Sejer and cinematographer Jasper Spanning ensuring every aspect of the show looked “very beautiful.”
Topsøe was also on hand during production, talking to the actors and watching dailies. “But I wasn’t out in the trailer at 6.30 in the morning if I didn’t need to be,” she laughs.
She praises executive producer Stinna Lassen and producer Claudia Saginario for supporting her along the way and fighting for the show to make it to the screen despite its initial setbacks.
When it came to casting, casting director Anja Philip put out an open call for actresses from Denmark’s Filipino community to play Ruby, Angel and the other Filipino characters who feature in the series. “There was a really overwhelming response,” says Topsøe. “So many women showed up. They were very good. Excel, who plays Angel, is just brilliant.
“That could have been the thing that would have been really tricky, but that just turned out [so well]. Once we got to that point, there weren’t that many bumps in the road. We took all of them, like development and HBO shutting down and whatnot.”
Now among the nominees for the Nordic Series Script Award, which is presented annually at the Göteborg Film Festival, Topsøe says the key to writing Secrets We Keep was knowing exactly what kind of series she wanted to make.
“I just knew what it was and I knew the themes I was interested in, because I grew up with au pairs,” she says. “But then it was at the point in my life when I was thinking about starting a family. So I was very interested in this idea of what happens when you outsource housework – and to a certain extent, care work. What are the benefits for the women? What does it say about the home? None of the dads are very involved. Even though the characters are maybe not always super likeable, I have a very real interest in some of their dilemmas.”
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