Who Is Joel Kinnaman, The Star Of ‘Altered Carbon?’

Joel Kinnaman, the star of new series Altered Carbon, says the allegations against Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein did not surprise him.

WHO IS JOEL KINNAMAN?

Kinnaman, 38, played Will Conway alongside Spacey on House of Cards and discussed the matter on Norwegian talk show Skavlan this week. “My ex was going to a meeting with [Weinstein] and we had met him the night before – he was very friendly with me – and the two of them had arranged a meeting,” he recalled. “She messaged me a little later and said, ‘He’s relocated our meeting to a hotel room.’ And I said: ‘Ok, let’s go home. You’re heading home now.'”

The actor also spoke about his own uncomfortable experience with Spacey when they first began filming the Netflix series. “I have five or six friends I know who have told stories about Kevin about when they were young and had just arrived in Hollywood,” Kinnaman said. “[Spacey] tried to… he gave me a very warm welcome in Baltimore. But later, when you learnt that he had supposedly behaved this way with 14-year-olds, then it’s like, ‘Thank you and goodbye.’ But there really was a culture where, if you had a certain status, you would get away with these types of abuses.”

Kinnaman grew up in Sweden, where he said that the idea behind movements like Time’s Up and #MeToo are common, and he is excited they are taking place in the U.S. “There is a revolution happening right now,” he said. “I went to school in Sweden. We had gender theory weeks in school there. The jargon and the way we talk about inequality now, I was already very used to that. And when I’ve spoken about these matters to American friends, when I’ve said that I’m a feminist, they’ll look at you like you’re a little bit crazy. For them, that’s something that’s extreme.”

Altered Carbon is a new Netflix sci-fi series that pays homage to Blade Runner. The visuals of the series are more compelling than any dialogue or character development in it, and the first season is getting mixed reviews from critics. Before being cast in the lead, Kinnaman had roles in Suicide Squad, The Killing and RoboCop. He has also acted in numerous Swedish films, including Easy Money, for which he won the Guldbagge Award for Best Actor.

Kinnaman also recently opened up about the plans for Suicide Squad 2, saying it will be more grounded than the original. “It was a great set-up, great characters. I think when we do the second one I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a more grounded version of the film,” he told Yahoo UK. “The characters are so extreme it could be more effective if we saw less sorcery. I think the characters become more extreme if you see them in conjunction with real people.”