Diane Kruger as Detective Sonya Cross in The Bridge. Photo copyright of the FX Network.
For the past several years, the U.S./Mexican border has been a hotbed of activity as well as a political hot potato as far as how to deal with the problems associated with securing the area. This summer, the FX Network has turned a spotlight on this infamous strip of land in the new crime drama series The Bridge.
Based on the Danish/Swedish show of the same name, The Bridge takes place on the El Paso,Texas/Juarez,Chihuahua border and follows the efforts of law enforcement officers on the hunt for a serial killer who is terrorizing both countries. Not surprisingly, their work is hindered by secrets, corruption and violence committed by the powerful drug cartels.
Detective Sonya Cross, a member of the El Paso police department, and Detective Marco Ruiz from the Mexican state of Chihuahua are assigned to the investigation. Clearly mismatched from the start, their professional relationship is complicated by Sonya’s Asperger syndrome as well as the homegrown dangers faced by Marco on his side of the border. Despite all obstacles, they must learn to operate as a team if they hope to solve their case.
Playing Sonya Cross is the award-winning German actress Diane Kruger. A familiar face to moviegoers, she is perhaps best known for her roles in Troy, National Treasure (and its sequel, National Treasure: Book of Secrets), Inglorious Bastards and The Host. A couple of weeks ago, the charming and talented Kruger took some time out of her day to speak with myself as well as other journalists about her work in The Bridge. The following is an edited version of that Q & A. Enjoy!
You sort of have a double role to play here – a person with Asperger’s and a cop. What was the hardest thing for you about putting those two roles together?
Diane Kruger: It’s a question of how someone with a condition such as Asperger’s is truly able to excel at being such a good cop. That’s really what initially drew me to the project. Yes, Sonya has this condition and there are so many shortcomings in her personal life that appear because of it. However, she also has this ability to focus and look at things from a different point of view. I never really had a desire to play a cop. I’m not a gun toting kind of person, so that’s what was especially interesting to me. Also, adapting our show from the original Scandinavian one was another real draw for me. The Sonya character is just so different as well as cool and a real challenge to play because Asperger’s is a lot more subtle than a more severe version or case of autism.
What was the hardest thing to master about playing a person with Asperger’s? You mentioned that it’s a very subtle thing; what was the most difficult aspect of that?
DK: Everything about Asperger’s was very new to me. I’ve heard of autism, but I wasn’t familiar with Asperger’s. As soon as I started reading up on it, I realized that this was a really daunting undertaking and continues to be, because it’s not something that you can just ‘put on.’ It’s a mind frame that I have to put myself into every day. There’s not one single line in the dialogue that’s ever been a straight-up line.
The key for me really happened when FX decided to reach out to Autism Speaks, which is the biggest association for, not just for Asperger’s but for autism, obviously, in the U.S. They introduced me to a young man named Alex, who has Asperger’s. FX brought him on as an advisor to the show. So he’s on the set every day when I work, and, I’m not kidding, I’ve spent more time with Alex in the past four months than I have with my partner. I have so many questions and I’m just observing him, but I’m also asking him some pretty uncomfortable questions. Alex’s willingness to be my partner in this has made a big difference. I sleep easier at night knowing that he watches over everything I do.
Is there a particular part or scene that you’re looking forward to people seeing specifically?
DK: Well, I think what I’m looking forward to is that we decided early on that we weren’t going to label Sonya’s condition in the show. I feel that’s very important and very interesting, because we didn’t want her condition to be her defining character trait. I thought that was quite brave and, in my eyes, pretty ballsy, too, because in the first episode she’s so odd and you don’t really know what it is that’s off. I think it will be great to get the opportunity over the next 13 episodes to see Sonya’s nuance and her layers and to understand a lot of her back story that has made her the person who she is today.
Where we stray from the original show is that our writers agreed to create a back story for my character, which we will come to explore as the show goes on. It will really show viewers a very emotional side of Sonya, which I am always very excited to play, because she so often could come across as being blunt or standoffish, which is not at all the case. People with Asperger’s have empathy and they have feelings, of course. It’s just that they don’t know when to show those emotions. There’s a delay, and they understand when somebody is pissed off or their behavior causes people to misread their intentions. They just don’t get right away what it is they said that caused the person to feel that way.
So there’s a lot of darkness and loneliness that Sonya carries around and probably has carried around for most of her life, and yet she’s so great at her job. There will be a lot of emotional moments for her along with some funny moments because sometimes Asperger’s leads to comedic moments, like in episode two and the way that she goes to pick up a guy in a bar. That is pretty priceless in my opinion.
With this kind of script, is there room for any improvising or changing around the lines, or is it pretty much set in stone?
DK: No, we change, not a lot, but there are definitely gaps to be filled in, and FX being FX and being a very actor friendly network as well as a very character driven one, we always do table reads and the writers invite all of us actors to give comments on the script. It doesn’t always make a huge difference, but they have been very open to our suggestions, and some of the scenes have been changed. That’s really important because sometimes you can write a great scene but when you’re actually in a situation and it doesn’t work, you have to be flexible enough to make it work for you.
Your character and Demian Bichir’s character (of Marco Ruiz) make quite an interesting and unique detective team. Sonya is so brittle and socially awkward, while he’s so warm and a people person. Was that all laid out for you in the script? Did you all have to fine-tune it or work at it, and how do you get along when the camera stops?
DK: The relationship between both detectives was laid out for us, which is something else that was interesting to me. We have two opposite cultures and in a way I think Demian represents very much how we imagine Mexican men to be, very Latin and charming and he has a great accent. Sonya is very much, in a way, America because she is by the rules and all about business and enforcing the law. That was all in the show, and what we’re trying to do as these first 13 episodes unfold is show how two people from such different cultures and countries can put aside their differences for the greater good and try to make their relationship work and can learn things from one another. That’s what we’re working on every day in every episode and trying to adapt the characters to that.
When the cameras are not rolling Demian and I have actually become really good friends. We were supposed to make a movie together before the show came along, so it felt like we were meant to work together. I admire him very much, not just as a colleague but also as a person, I think he’s wonderful, and his significant other and mine have sort of formed a real friendship, too.
As an actress, emotion is the calling card that you bring to any kind of a production, so how do you pull away the emotion in this?
DK: It has not been easy, and that continues to be the case. It’s not like Sonya doesn’t have any emotion, like I mentioned before, it’s just that it’s in the oddest places. It goes against my instincts every single day. So doing this back story has been my saving grace because when you watch the show, you discover that there’s this one place where she puts all those bottled-up emotions. Also, Ted Levine’s character of Hank is the only one who I’d say gets to see the more emotional side of Sonya. It’s a daunting character to take on, though, and you have to accept that people might be put off when they first meet her.
There are several shows on TV right now like The Following, The Killing and Hannibal that all deal with serial killers. What you think will make The Bridge stand out from these other shows and what’s unique about it?
DK: Well, to me, first of all, the setting between Mexico and America is unique and I don’t believe has been done on television before. I think the backdrop of the unsolved crimes involving the missing girls from Juarez and the relationship between America and Mexico is very interesting to see and shine a light on. I also think that the two characters, Marco Ruiz and Sonya Cross, are an unusual combination of detectives. It’s not the typical cop show. It’s very character-driven, and just when you think the show is about one thing, it goes in a direction that will be quite unexpected.
This seems like a very challenging assignment for you, not only with Sonya’s Asperger’s and learning about that, but also mastering the situation about the Mexican-American border and all that that entails. Did you do a lot of research for that aspect of it, or did you find that the scripts pretty much covered everything you needed to know?
DK: Yes, I did a great deal of research. We actually shot a couple of days in El Paso for the pilot, so I did get to walk the bridge of the Americas and spent the day in Juarez, because I just needed to see for myself. I don’t claim to know everything about the conflicts going on, but certainly I’ve been in the U.S. on and off for the past 20 years and I read The New York Times every morning, so you practically have to be blind and deaf to not hear about these issues. I’m intrigued by that aspect of the show, for sure. I want to know and understand more, and I find it fascinating as well as quite risky, actually, on FX’s part to try and shine a light on that situation.
Do you feel that the relationship between Sonya and Marco is a metaphor for that whole Mexican-American relationship and how it could be, I guess?
DK: Yes, a little bit, obviously, just on the surface, because our characters are not trying to make a political statement. But it is pretty obvious how different their ways of operating are on the show and how they look at the world quite differently. I think it is a bit of a metaphor of how they’re trying to solve crimes and shine a light on these horrible situations that present themselves. So we’ll see what happens; we’ll see how this season evolves and maybe what direction it will go in for the second season.
You have a very long, extensive movie career and I was curious as to what led you to television?
DK: The cable television networks right now are in their Golden era, and I find myself watching shows like House of Cards, Mad Men and Breaking Bad and feeling like they’re better than most movies that I watch these days. They’re great dramas and the quality of the writing surpasses so many films, and I just am very excited to be part of a show like The Bridge. The writing is superb, a character like this has never been offered to me in the movies, and the opportunity to get 13 episodes to explore that person is exciting. I feel like it is a really thrilling time for directors and actors to come to cable television, so that’s really what led me to it.
I was wondering how different you think the tone of this series is versus the original?
DK: The tone is actually pretty similar. I think we follow the skeleton of the original show faithfully. It’s the same sort of intrigue and plot. Obviously the lighting is very different, because we’re setting it in El Paso and Juarez, so it’s much warmer and lighter, brighter and sunnier. The characters are pretty much the same, though, and then obviously storylines will evolve a little bit because of that. The major difference is that we get to see Sonya in her personal life much more than in the original show.
You mentioned that you were drawn to the cable television renaissance, but roles for women on cable television have frequently been limited to the wives of the men who are the main characters. Do you see opportunities for women broadening in cable television with roles like this one, and do you think that cable does better with women than the movies does?
DK: Oh yes, I absolutely agree with that. There will continue to be movies that have great female roles, but I definitely think that on cable television, from Mad Men to Homeland or House of Cards, those female parts are so well written and unafraid of characters, and that’s really what it comes down to, I think. It seems to me that they thrive and audiences are looking for characters like that. So it’s definitely very exciting for women, I think, in general. Like I said, I’ve never been offered an in-depth character like Sonya in a movie.
Did you always want to work in this industry while you were growing up, or did you have other professions in mind?
DK: No, I didn’t dare dream of anything like this. I come from a very small rural village in northern Germany, and being an actor never even seemed a possibility. I thought you’d have to live in a big city or been discovered somewhere or being born into an artistic family, which I certainly wasn’t. I dreamt of becoming a ballet dancer. I studied with the Royal Academy of London for 11 years, and while that did not pan out, my love for being onstage was born there. I actually then went to drama school in Paris, so that’s where it first started. I never thought I would have an opportunity in the United States to act and continue to expand my career outside of Europe. So my reality is, to be honest, it’s bigger than I would have ever dared to dream.
As noted above, photo copyright of the FX Network, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!
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