Second thoughts
Ghosts continue to haunt Swedish police officer Veronika Gren in season two of SkyShowtime’s psychological thriller Veronika. Star Alexandra Rapaport and director Mikael Håfström discuss seeing spirits, the introvert title character and recreating the 1960s.
Alexandra Rapaport has a secret dream to see a ghost – “but it never happens.” Thankfully, however, the Swedish actor is surrounded by them on the set of her series Veronika, in which she plays the lead.
Season one of the SkyShowtime psychological thriller, which debuted in 2024, introduced Rapaport’s haunted police officer Veronika Gren, a mother-of-two who is struggling with her complicated family life and a secret pill addiction. When strange things start to happen and a dead boy appears in front of her, she thinks she’s lost her mind.
Reluctantly, she is forced to accept the boy is not an illusion – and soon finds herself involved in a murder investigation that goes deeper than anyone in town would like to believe when she learns about the murder of two teenage girls. She then determines to find the link between the two cases before the killer can strike again.
In season two, which debuts on the streamer today, the story of Veronika’s complicated personal life continues against the backdrop of a new investigation. Still struggling with the repercussions of her past, her mysterious visions and a longing for normality, she’s impatient to return to her regular post in the police force.
As the story unfolds, Veronika finds herself in the middle of a dark and perplexing murder mystery, rooted 60 years back in time. Torn between the worlds of the living and the dead, Veronika’s façade begins to crack, and an inevitable chain of events puts everything she’s worked to rebuild at risk.
The returning cast includes Tobias Santelmann, Arvin Kananian, Eddie Eriksson Dominguez and Sarah Rhodin, with new members Gustav Hammarsten and Hanna Alström. And viewers can already look forward to a third season of Veronika, with SkyShowtime announcing the recommission for 2026 ahead of S2’s launch. In fact, S3 has also already been filmed, shooting back-to-back with S2.
“We had a week between the two seasons. It was a really long shoot. I worked for like six months,” tells DQ. “We were working on the script with season three as we were shooting season two. So it was quite a lot for me to handle, but I knew the bigger picture of what we were doing.”
But the star was happy to undertake the work, describing playing Veronika as “one of my happiest memories ever shooting.”
“I actually love the genre, and to build the suspense around my character and what she’s struggling with,” she continues. “So I enjoyed continuing the story about that, telling about Veronika’s inner struggle. And now in season two, there’s more of the acceptance that she has this gift, and how that developed. I really love that – that’s a secret dream I have. ‘OK, show me some ghosts.’ But it never happens.
“The second season has another flavour to the first season. It is going broader into the plot, so it was a bit different. And since it was another director, Mikael Håfström, it had another flavour, and that’s also interesting to see. He added a bit more humour and a bit more pace, so it was a different experience from the first one. But I really enjoyed it, and I really like Mikael. He has this warmth that he implements in the storytelling.”
Another reason Rapaport so enjoys portraying Veronika is the fact the character is unlike any of those she has previously played, whether Sonja Ek in Gåsmamman, Nour in Heder (Honour) or Nora in Morden I Sandhamn (The Sandhamn Murders). “I’m used to playing characters that are very driven and very outgoing, and it’s really nice to play a person that’s introverted, more calm and more reflecting,” she explains. “She doesn’t take responsibility of everyone’s feelings in the room. She’s very introverted, so that’s quite soothing to play. She’s very different from me in that way.”
Because of the difference in their personalities, Rapaport also found it easy to step into the role again ahead of filming S2. “In the first weeks, I had to go away, concentrate, and try to find out, ‘OK, how is Veronika?’ Because she’s so far from what I am. But then, as the weeks passed, I found the on and off switch, so it became easier and easier to find her energy. In different characters, I have big energy sometimes, but she has a low energy,” the actor notes.
“It is exhausting, because there are a lot of angles, a lot of takes and, of course, sometimes difficult scenes to play, emotional scenes to play. But with the ghosts, what I’m struggling with is to make it true. I’ve never seen a ghost; many people maybe have, but I haven’t. So I was struggling with what a true reaction to what [Veronika sees would be] and getting used to seeing people that are not in the room.”
S2 explores more about the origins of Veronika’s “gift,” with a diary entry revealing that her aunt Ninnie had a similar ability. She also questions whether the people she sees are really just victims, or if they are also the perpetrators of crimes.
“So we’re exploring in a different way what happened in the past and what shaped her mother to bring up Veronika in the harsh way she did. We get to know more about the history,” Rapaport says.
Beyond her screen role, the star is also an executive producer on the series, with her own production company Bigster making the series. That means 10-hour days on set stretch to 13, while she also supported creators and writers Katja Juras and Anna Ströman, among other additional duties.
“I always think it’s a challenge,” she says of her dual role, “because you feel this responsibility to shape it and I always have the audience in my mind. ‘Is it the same show, or are we changing too much?’ There are a lot of nerves for me. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. In Sweden, we say that you have ice in your stomach. That is, being cool – and I’m not particularly cool about it. The acting is the easy part for me.”
Joining S2 to direct all episodes is Håfström, who had never worked with Rapaport but found their partnership in front and behind the camera “creatively really satisfying.”
“It all fell into place in a good way. I enjoyed the experience tremendously,” he says. “It’s been a lot of fun – a great cast, a lot of actors I know from before and a lot of new, younger ones that it was real pleasure to work with.”
Håfström, the filmmaker behind The Rite, Evil and Days Like This, compares making Veronika to shooting three feature films back to back, which was why he felt it was important that each episode had a consistent tone and style with himself at the helm.
Before beginning work on set, he watched S1 and got to know the characters and the world of the series. He then helped to develop the script, joined the casting process and worked on finding locations for the show.
“S1 is obviously a completely different storyline and a new adventure, even if we have the [same] characters, so we were not bound to S1 more than [by the fact] we have these characters and obviously a family and a world we can recognise,” he says. “But other than that, S2 has its own thing going, its own stories and mysteries and its own conclusions. So it was fun to work with. There was total freedom to put my stamp on it visually and do something that works for this specific story.”
In particular, Håfström had the opportunity to recreate the 1960s, with a big portion of the season taking place during the decade. That storyline then slowly intertwines with the modern day story as the story progresses.
“For me and the DOP, the ambition was to find a specific visual language for the 60s that was slightly different from the present-day situation,” Håfström says. That look took inspiration from Swedish films of the period, with more handheld camera, brighter lighting and colours, and a “rough” edit to contradict the “control” of the contemporary scenes.
“Then Veronika has her specific gifts. She can see things. She has visions. That’s not always something she wants to entertain, but she does. And those obviously have their own visual language, and how they intertwine with reality,” the director says.
“You’re always a bit wary so it doesn’t become hokey, and we also don’t want to venture into visual effects territory that take us out of this world, because it’s not really a visual effects production. It’s a character-driven drama thriller with a lot of twists and turns, so when we worked with those ghosts, which are important for Veronika’s inner world, we just tried to make them as practical as possible, with as little visual effects as possible. Obviously we needed to enhance certain things, but not to a point where it looks like visual effects. That was really important to us.”
He now hopes the audience that tuned into S1 will return for S2, “because it’s going to be a completely new adventure for the characters they like from season one,” he adds. “When I read it the first time, it’s such an unpredictable story, and there are lot of great twists and turns throughout the season. I hope we deliver something really entertaining for the audience.”
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tagged in: Alexandra Rapaport, Mikael Håfström, SkyShowtime, Veronika