00:04
Trine C. Jensen
I picked a picture by Henri Matisse called Zulma and it is this very colorful picture of a woman standing with her hands resting on two tables. And there's yellow and orange and three different shades of really bright blue and pink and multiple shades of green in it.

00:27
Trine C. Jensen
She has no middle. Then it also looks a little bit like a motion capture suit. The entire middle of her is this orange line. It's like a speed stripe of something that's ready to take off.

00:38
Trine C. Jensen
It is delightful and playful. I imagine that she's standing there, pondering what's going to be her next move.

00:48
Trine C. Jensen
It is a great lens to see women through. It made me very happy that an artist that many years ago could see a woman like that.

01:06
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark and the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Trine Camilla Jensen, a Danish theater and voice director, coach, and performer. Welcome, Trine.

01:32
Trine C. Jensen
Thank you.

01:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's very lovely to have you here. Trine, you're based in Los Angeles, and we talk to you from my home base in Glendale. How would you describe your city of Santa Monica and why did you decide to settle down there close to the Pacific Ocean and the fantastic wide beaches?

01:53
Trine C. Jensen
Why did I settle in Santa Monica? It was a combination of the fact that I've never lived very far from the ocean. I went to drama school in Miami, so I was right on the beach. And then I lived in New York, which is also on the water. I'm from Copenhagen, which is on the water. That part just seemed natural.

02:10
Trine C. Jensen
And then also I was told that Santa Monica has a really good school system separate from LA Unified School District. And I was pregnant. And we did not have the funds to use private school. So we thought, this will work.

02:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How would you describe Santa Monica? What's it like living there?

02:29
Trine C. Jensen
It's like a little bubble. It's a little bubble in LA. And sometimes you can feel a bit landlocked in the sense that when everybody comes to the beach, it can be very hard to actually get in and out of there, so you just end up staying. But if you're going to stay, it's not such a bad place to be.

02:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
No, it is a lovely place actually. We will return to how you got to be where you are today and learn more about your background a little later, but let's start with the year 2016 when you became the vice president of Vault 501, a company that does voice recordings for video games. What made you become part of this company and what is it that you do there?

03:10
Trine C. Jensen
A friend of mine, a long-term friend Mark Estdale owns a recording studio in London, which is called OMUK. And his dream was always to have a studio in Los Angeles. And over the years before 2016, he had multiple productions out here, for various different games.

03:29
Trine C. Jensen
And I was always involved, in securing a studio, overseeing whoever was doing it, if he wasn't here himself, doing it to the standards that he wanted, sometimes involved in the casting, all that kind of stuff. And then when it actually came time for him to build a studio here, he asked if I would run it for him. And I said, sure.

03:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And what do you do? What does it mean to be the vice president of a recording studio?

03:52
Trine C. Jensen
Well, the studio ended up closing down during COVID and he pulled all resources back to London, but in the years that we were here, what does it look like? Well, initially, as you probably know, with a startup, right? As vice president, you empty the trash, you make the coffee.

04:06
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You do everything.

04:08
Trine C. Jensen
Yes. You send the contracts to the agents, you orchestrate the castings and run the productions.

04:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You do everything.

04:15
Trine C. Jensen
You do everything, yes.

04:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Okay. How is a video game script different from a movie script? And how do the requirements for a voice actor differ from one who works on a movie, for instance, an animated movie?

04:30
Trine C. Jensen
I mean, do them one at a time. Because they're very different. The script in and of themselves is really the whole reason why we end up having to do things differently and why a thing such as voice acting has even evolved. A normal film is roughly a couple of hours.

04:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
If you're lucky.

04:51
Trine C. Jensen
Yeah, a couple of hours, right? About two hours. So, game play on Horizon Zero Dawn, which was the big game that we were working on in '15, '16, '17, and the DLC, which is the downloadable content that they produce between one big game and the next. So, to keep their fans engaged, they make something they call the DLC, which is something you can download, but it takes equally an amount of time to produce. Horizon was about 40 hours worth of game play. That's 20 feature films.

05:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Wow, yeah.

05:18
Trine C. Jensen
Right? We recorded, I think, about 750,000 words. And the equation that we use is, divide by 10, then you have a line. So that would be roughly 75,000 lines. So because we are dealing with these massive files, and the scripts are usually in Excel spreadsheets, because that way we can actually cost it out in a way that makes sense, it is just so enormous.

05:43
Trine C. Jensen
And then on top of just the sheer size of it, you have non-linear storytelling, right? In regular storytelling you have a beginning and a middle and an end, and you might have some flashbacks.

05:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And there's a plot.

05:54
Trine C. Jensen
And there's a plot. Yes, exactly. And in video games, you have sometimes, not always, one overarching story, but then you have all these side quests and then all these levels as you play and master one level and move on to the next one.

06:06
Trine C. Jensen
So the image that I usually like to use, I have it from Mark, is if you imagine a 3D map of something like the New York or the London underground, and then you try to tell stories through that. That's what the script looks like if you were going to map it out. And that's not how we're used to thinking of storytelling.

06:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
No, it's not.

06:26
Trine C. Jensen
So, that's one thing, right? And because of that, we don't send scripts out to the performers in advance. Basically, when they come into the booth, they have no preparation whatsoever. Sometimes you get cast in the role that you auditioned for, but a lot of the time, because casting is very expensive for the studios, what we will do is we will cast for, let's say, ten lead roles.

06:49
Trine C. Jensen
And then all of the people who come in for those ten roles that are very good, but not necessarily right for those ten, will still get cast, but they'll get cast in something that they have never seen. So ergo, when they show up in the studio, they're cast in a game that they've read maybe one paragraph about.

07:07
Trine C. Jensen
It's usually under a code name, right? They've signed a hefty NDA, signing away their firstborn. And then they have to play a character that they've never seen an image of or never read the lines for. Just like that. So that kind of gives you an idea of what it's like.

07:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So the voice talents of video game actors or voice actors are different from animation actors, for instance. What do you think is the main difference?

07:36
Trine C. Jensen
I think at the core of it, acting is acting, right? If you know your craft, then you can adapt it to any of the mediums. In terms of style between video games and animation, if you think of comedy and tragedy in theater, your animation is often slightly larger than life, and very much like comedy. Not always, but just as a general rule.

08:00
Trine C. Jensen
Games are much more like your cinematic close-ups, right? So it's subtle, it's understated, and it's almost like you can't even hear their acting sometimes. It just sounds like they're talking. And this is obviously the stuff that's aside from all the death screams and the fighting, yelling, and all of that. But the actual conversation tends to be just very subtle and very understated.

08:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Are there celebrities in the world of voicing video games?

08:27
Trine C. Jensen
There's been a development, right? There is the voiceover community, which has its own stars, in the sense that they're not necessarily famous, right? Because we don't see them. But because games have grown to the degree that they have, now a lot of game developers would like Hollywood stars to come in and voice things, to the great disgruntlement of people in the VO industry, because then of course jobs that would have normally gone there are now going to other people. But so yeah, there are both the stars and then internal stars.

08:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is there an example of somebody, a Hollywood star, who's done a video game?

09:01
Trine C. Jensen
I'm thinking immediately of Lance Reddick, who actually died last year. It's very sad. Tall, African American man, very beautiful. And he plays Silence in Horizon Zero Dawn, which is this character that you can't quite figure out whether he's actually good or evil.

09:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Silence, who speaks.

09:17
Trine C. Jensen
Yes.

09:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you ever discover people? You hear about models who walk in the street and they're discovered by agents. Do you ever hear a great voice and think, aha, there's a new talent to approach there?

09:31
Trine C. Jensen
Yes and no. Because there's so much acting technique involved in voiceover acting, it's hard to just pull somebody off the street. I think you can do that maybe more with commercial copy, where they just get to be themselves, but you get the beautiful voice that you've heard, but they don't necessarily have to fit themselves into a character.

09:50
Trine C. Jensen
But we certainly hear voices and then, give them a gentle nudge to go take some acting classes and then come back.

09:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You also do a lot of motion capture work in video gaming, acting. Can you explain to those who don't know what that is, what motion capture means? It means a lot of electronic stuff on actors' bodies, but apart from that, people might not know how it works.

10:13
Trine C. Jensen
There's two systems of motion capture. One is called optical and the other one's called inertial. And what it basically is, is that you have the actor in a suit that has some sensors on it.

10:24
Trine C. Jensen
In the optical system, the sensors are recorded by cameras up to upwards of maybe 200 in the space. And then all of that motion, movement, is captured in data and then put into a game engine and essentially attached to the animated figures, so that the people in the video game move with the real actor's movement rather than an animator moving them.

10:48
Trine C. Jensen
And we also do it with facial capture, where it's just the face, and that can be done at the same time as the motion capture, or it can be done in the recording studio, where we do voice and face together.

10:59
Trine C. Jensen
And then we have the term performance capture, which is when we do everything together. So we're doing motion, movement, facial, and sound. And yes, there's a Danish company called Rococo that makes the most affordable inertial suits and they're used a lot in education because they are affordable and the other systems cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

11:19
Trine C. Jensen
And you can get a Rococo suit for, I don't know, somewhere between three and five thousand with the whole thing. So it's something that's actually affordable. It's also the equipment that we use, of course, when I teach in Copenhagen because they let us use them.

11:31
Trine C. Jensen
For me, performance capture is really fun because of the fact that you have to stage it. And because again, you're telling the story somewhat from the point of view of physicality. And so for me it marries all of the things that I really like working with.

11:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So have you done it yourself? You mentioned you like the physicality of performance.

11:53
Trine C. Jensen
I have not actually performed in motion capture. But I have performed in some video games just as a voice. Because when there's something I'm right for, I often get it, if I'm in the studio anyway.

12:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you play video games yourself? And if yes, does it appeal to you? Or do you just do it for professional reasons because you gotta know what this whole thing is about?

12:17
Trine C. Jensen
I don't play games. And I never have.

12:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Me neither, you can tell from the way I ask questions.

12:24
Trine C. Jensen
It's actually not that I don't want to. I've never actually spent the amount of time that it takes to get good at it. So when I've tried, I get killed, like in five seconds. And then it's no fun, right? So what I do is I watch over the shoulder of really good players. And I also, if I'm researching a game, right, there's so much available on YouTube.

12:44
Trine C. Jensen
And there's a thing that fans do, is that they will cut together the sequences of the games that we call cutscenes, which are the sequences that are not player interactive. So when you take all of those out and you cut them together into one piece, then they actually play just like a movie. And then you can really see both the story arcs and the character developments and everything of the whole thing.

13:06
Trine C. Jensen
So that's one way for people like me who don't actually play the games to see it. And then if you want to see the aspect of the game that's called the game play, which is of course, when the player is engaged in what they're doing and what are the different weapons that they can get and what are the different conventions of the game, then you can watch gameplay videos, which there are also a plethora of, and that's just simply somebody sitting there playing the game with a camera on, and then you're just watching over their shoulder.

13:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What motivates you to do the job that you do? You've done it for many years now, so I assume that you really like it.

13:38
Trine C. Jensen
I love working with creative people. And what we do together is really not that important. As long as I get to be in creative juice with creative people, and this is just the doors that happen to open up for me. And then I stuck with it.

13:54
Trine C. Jensen
I obviously went to drama school myself a long time ago, and I also teach it because I find in the teaching space that we have time to take the things apart and really look at what's working, what's not working. Why does it work? How can we make it better? And we don't, well, we rarely have that luxury in production, right? Cause we just got to get it done.

14:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Let's turn to the beginning. You grew up in Bagsværd. It's a part of Copenhagen, right? And you went to high school there, too. Was it always a dream of yours to leave Denmark and explore the world?

14:31
Trine C. Jensen
Yes, I think so. I think so. I left within months of graduating from high school. And I only came back for a short period of time to just gather enough energy and money to go again. And then I haven't really been home since, at least not to live.

14:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was it about that, longing to explore the world, that made it fascinating to explore it?

14:56
Trine C. Jensen
I'm not sure. My father was a captain and because of his work, we traveled a lot.

15:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Captain on a ship?

15:03
Trine C. Jensen
Yeah, on a cruise ship. And he worked in the Mediterranean most of my childhood. So, we would drive all the way down through Europe, various different routes through as many countries as possible. And then we'd spend time on the ship and then visit the various different places where the ship would dock.

15:17
Trine C. Jensen
And I just always loved variety and diversity, right? I like different kinds of food. I like different kinds of music. I like different kinds of languages and peoples. And so there's something in America where that's available every day, especially when you're in the big cities like LA or New York. And I like that. I like that confrontation daily with that which is different from me. And I think I would miss it terribly if I moved home, even though obviously Copenhagen is much more cosmopolitan now than when I left.

15:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you remember when you first stepped out of the plane and started your new life with a few suitcases in hand? What was it like? What kind of emotion went through you? Was it thrilling? How was it?

16:05
Trine C. Jensen
My flight into New York was delayed. I was 18 years old and I had no idea that when you're delayed, it's actually the airplanes' companies' responsibility to put you up. So I just jumped on another flight. They were like, your flight to Miami is not happening. It's canceled or you missed it, but we have one to Tampa. It's in Florida. And I just like, ok!

16:28
Trine C. Jensen
And then I went on this flight to Tampa and I called my mom. My mom and dad were in Fort Lauderdale at the time. And I said, I missed my flight because we were delayed, and I'm coming to Tampa. And she goes, well, I can't drive to Tampa to pick you up now. And so I arrived in Tampa with these enormous trunks at midnight and had absolutely no idea what to do with myself.

16:49
Trine C. Jensen
I took a cab to the Greyhound station and it was just sleazy enough that I didn't dare to go to sleep. So I just sat there all night with my two boxes until I could get on a Greyhound, which then took me across Florida. And it took the entire day. It's a trip that takes two hours by car. And I think it took seven hours.

17:06
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Because of all the stops.

17:08
Trine C. Jensen
And so that's how I arrived. And I almost want to say the chicken soup and the live chickens and the rest of it wasn't quite that bad. That was in South America. But yeah, so I arrived pretty frazzled, but also really excited to be here.

17:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Your mom didn't pick you up?

17:22
Trine C. Jensen
No, she didn't.

17:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Wow. She's teaching her girl to be independent.

17:25
Trine C. Jensen
I guess!

17:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You got a BFA in theater from The New World School of the Arts in Miami. What did the educational foundation mean to you? What did it give you to study there?

17:41
Trine C. Jensen
It gave me a — et håndværk — a craft, a skill. Tools. Yeah. It gave me a set of tools that I actually really wanted because I thought already back then that even if I didn't pursue acting, that they'd be very useful to have.

18:00
Trine C. Jensen
It gave a platform to stand on, a much better understanding of stories, storytelling, how they're crafted, and also various different ways for how to really present, whether it's storytelling or speaking. And then, I was already at the time very interested in directing. So they let me do quite a bit of that while I was still in school. And that was amazing. And I think I discovered that I like directing better than performing. And I like performing. It's fun. But I also find it much more stressful than being behind the stage.

18:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And how did this idea that you wanted to perform come to your mind? One thing is dreaming of going abroad, another thing is, I want to perform.

18:42
Trine C. Jensen
That goes all the way back. My mom dragged me off to the doctors because I couldn't sit still. And had it been today, I'm sure they would have said ADHD and then given me pills. But the doctor at the time said you have a bright and active child. There's nothing wrong with her. Keep her busy. So stimulate her and challenge her.

19:00
Trine C. Jensen
And so that looked like private school and gymnastics. And so that's kind of where it started. And then gymnastics turned into competitive rhythmic team gymnastics with lots of performances both in Denmark and in different places in Europe throughout all of my formative years. And then I transitioned into modern dance. And then I started doing drama as well, all the way back. I was 14 or something. So it's just always been a part of it.

19:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And the school in Miami, you mentioned, was a great platform to stand on later on with all the tools that you got there. Which class was the most significant in this regard? What was your favorite class?

19:38
Trine C. Jensen
I think physical theater. Because it brings together both my love of language, Shakespeare, and poetry, essentially, and also physicality and dance. It's where those two really come together.

19:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You also lived in New York. You studied at the very famous Lee Strasberg Institute. Is it everything that one thinks it is? People always mention, I studied with so and so at this school.

20:08
Trine C. Jensen
I had gotten cast right out of school in Miami in a film. And the film production had brought in a teacher to work with the whole cast. And he was one of the teachers at the Lee Strasberg School. His name was Geoffrey Horne. And I thought he was so fabulous that I just really wanted to study with him in particular. I felt that the technique emphasizes a lot on working with the senses.

20:32
Trine C. Jensen
And I found that that was really effective for me. I had not had very much of that in my drama training. So it was filling in a gap. And I learned some more stuff. And so I pretty much went from one school to the next. And then I took a break from training for a while. So yeah, I liked it. I liked it a lot.

20:51
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And how does one make a living in New York? I mean, it's a very tough city to live in.

20:56
Trine C. Jensen
Yeah, that's a good question. I got a very strange job. I was hired as a choreographer to teach the dancers in a strip club to dance.

21:07
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Oh! That sounds exciting.

21:09
Trine C. Jensen
It was very fun. It was some Texas oil tycoon who had bought the club. And his vision for it was to turn it into something like Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris. Like something with lots of feathers and can-can and topless.

21:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
A little bit classy.

21:25
Trine C. Jensen
A little bit classy and very much good dancing, but still topless. And very much a gentleman's club. And so that was my job to make that happen.

21:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And how was that?

21:38
Trine C. Jensen
It was very fun and it absolutely failed miserably because the girls make their money by hustling, not by being good dancers. So there was not a whole lot of interest. I had about a handful of them that were already dancers, and they came and worked with me every week, and that was wonderful.

21:55
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So what would you like to tell men who go to stripclubs about the real behind-the-scenes ladies who work there?

22:04
Trine C. Jensen
I probably would say watch out because they are much smarter than you think.

22:10
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's great advice.

22:11
Trine C. Jensen
At least most of them are. There were several that were master's degree and PhD students at NYU and financing it that way. But they didn't come across that way in the club.

22:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah. What brought you to Los Angeles then?

22:29
Trine C. Jensen
Well I always wanted to come out here. I think when you go to drama school in the US, you go to New York or you go to LA. Or you go to New York first and then LA. So that was just always the plan that I would somehow end up out here.

22:40
Trine C. Jensen
And I had a boyfriend. And he brought me out on the 4th of July weekend in '94. He had set out to make me fall in love with this city because he wanted me to move out here. So we went from Venice Beach to Malibu to Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear to the desert, all in a course of four days. I think we also went up to Ojai because he was just absolutely hell bent on, I'm going to show you everything this place has to offer and you will fall in love with it. And I did. And I moved out.

23:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's quite amazing because Big Bear is where you can go skiing and you went to the desert too. So he showed you that California offers you everything, right?

23:24
Trine C. Jensen
Yes, exactly. You can surf in the morning, and ski in the afternoon, and soak in hot mineral waters at night. That was basically the thing.

23:32
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The city of Los Angeles is also called the City of Angels, Sin City, and Tinseltown, for instance. How would you describe Los Angeles to someone who does not know it, who's never been, doesn't really have a feel of what the city is apart from what they've seen in the movies, maybe?

23:53
Trine C. Jensen
I love it here, and I always have, and that doesn't mean that there aren't lots of things about here that I don't like. Nobody likes LA traffic. But I think the thing that makes it really different from other cities that people don't necessarily realize prior to coming, is that we don't really have a city center. We have multiples. Various different parts of town have their own, so there isn't a — I mean, there is a downtown, but our downtown doesn't serve the purpose that downtowns normally do.

24:21
Trine C. Jensen
And then the other thing that I also think people don't realize is how much nature is here, and how much access to absolutely beautiful hiking, nature trails, mountains that we have, pretty much throughout the city, because it's built, right? We have the basin on one side, then we have mountains, and then the valley, and so there's just all these national parks pretty much everywhere, and then, of course, the ocean.

24:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Which of these descriptions would be yours? The City of Angels, Sin City, Tinseltown, or maybe something else?

24:53
Trine C. Jensen
For me, it's been the City of Angels.

24:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah, to me too. You were directing lots of independent theater productions on Theatre Row in Hollywood. Los Angeles is mostly known as a film city. How is the world of theater here?

25:11
Trine C. Jensen
It's changed a lot over the years that I've been here. I think there is more now, and I think the quality is higher. I still think from the perspective of making a living from it, either as a performer or as a director, that's still hard. Because much of it is hundred seat theaters, that kind of thing, where there's just not much of a budget. But there is a lot of it.

25:32
Trine C. Jensen
You have to go looking for it, or you have to know where it is. There's a company in Venice that's called Pacific Resident Theatre that's been there for 30 or more years. And it's absolutely wonderful. And it's this like group of just really good actors that put up very great plays pretty much year round.

25:48
Trine C. Jensen
And so there are these pockets, right? There's Theatre Row, then there's obviously the big productions that come through some of the theaters downtown, more like your Broadway shows and things like that. But it's certainly not like you would find it in New York or in London or even in Copenhagen.

26:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Now that you told me about the strip club experience, teaching dancers choreography, which I think is fantastic, have you had other jobs that are interesting like that?

26:18
Trine C. Jensen
Well, I got hired once as a bet runner in the casino down at Hollywood Park. And the guy was really excited because I apparently aced. They had some math tests you had to do very fast, you had to be very quick with mathematical aptitude. And he was fun and we just had this great interview.

26:35
Trine C. Jensen
And then I think as I was driving home, it just occurred to me that gamblers, because I remembered that from the cruise ships when I worked on them, are generally really surly people. And not very fun. And by the time I got home, I was like, I don't think I want this job. So I called him back, and so I never actually had it. But that was one thing.

26:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What do you think you brought with you from Denmark that made you more successful here? Qualifications or values that stood out and made you succeed?

27:07
Trine C. Jensen
It's actually something very specific. I went to Herlev Statsskole for high school, which at the time was Statens Forsøgsgymnasium. So that means the experimental school, for high school. That was funded by the Ministry of Education. And we had these combined degrees where it was a combination of both language and math rather than one or the other.

27:30
Trine C. Jensen
And we also had an enormous amount of group work, group examinations. And it was very clear that we were supposed to bring the bottom up. So we got two grades on all these group examinations. We got an individual grade, and then a group grade. And the closer you could get that together by raising up everyone, the better we had all done.

27:50
Trine C. Jensen
And I think that experience cemented in me the belief that the sum of us is greater than us as individuals. And so I come to creative work from that platform, right? It's not my vision as a director. I may have a vision as a director, but then it's my job to invite everybody that I work with into it and then get their contributions so that the final product is something that is far greater than my original idea. And I believe that in my bones that the sum of us is greater than we are as individuals.

28:28
Trine C. Jensen
And so, yeah, I think that has to do with why I have also succeeded in a field that requires an enormous amount of collaboration. Because games are so large. Like the last game I worked on was Rise of the Rōnin. It just came out in March. And it's a large shogun sort of setting game. And I think we were at least five or six directors, right? So there wasn't one director.

28:54
Trine C. Jensen
There's of course one that's the lead and that is responsible for the overall outcome, right? But it was a huge team of people working. And I think that being able to navigate in that environment and actually enjoying it is something I came with from Denmark and that has helped me.

29:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And that is an idea that permeates all of Danish society. We are in it together, we lift each other up, we have the social system. Don't you think?

29:17
Trine C. Jensen
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that's a part of my Danishness that I've never lost, even after what, almost 35 years here.

29:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah, no, it's ingrained in us. Do you feel connected to the Danish community in Los Angeles? And if yes, how so?

29:34
Trine C. Jensen
More now than I have in a while. When I first got here, I had a number of friends that lived out here that were Danish, but they all moved home and a couple of them moved home during COVID. So there was this lull where all of a sudden I didn't have much of a Danish community. And then now that I've joined Danes Worldwide, then all of a sudden I've tapped into another or a new Danish community here.

29:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And why did you decide to do that, become part of Danes Worldwide?

30:01
Trine C. Jensen
Because they hold the reins for the waiting lists for certain homes in Denmark that if you choose to move home, maybe later in life, you could get on those waiting lists. So that's what I did. And I'm not sure if I'm going to move home, but I thought I'd hedge my bets just in case. We don't know what's going to happen at the next election.

30:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's true. Let's cross our fingers.

30:23
Trine C. Jensen
Right.

30:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you think that expats share certain qualities and what are the things that we as expats have in common?

30:34
Trine C. Jensen
I've always thought about it a little bit like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, that Danes are like hobbits, right? We're like these little people with hairy ears and toes that live in caves in this cute little safe place. And then when we venture out and we go back again, we're not quite trusted, right?

30:54
Trine C. Jensen
Because we've been out in the wide world. And I think we take some of that with us, right? In some ways, Denmark is, at least compared to here, a very small town. And I think that is in us, even when we live in these great big international cities.

31:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So, Viggo Mortensen was miscast in Lord of the Rings. He didn't play one of the hobbits.

31:15
Trine C. Jensen
No, but he did play a very reluctant leader, right? He wasn't hungry for power, he was just the opposite. And I think that goes very well with Janteloven, the whole, you don't strive for it too hard. You let somebody else sort of lift you.

31:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Have you brought that along, Janteloven?

31:31
Trine C. Jensen
Oh yes, I think I've spent the last 30 years trying to undo it inside of myself.

31:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So that's ingrained in us too.

31:37
Trine C. Jensen
I think so. I think we learn to work with it. I think that when it comes to that particular thing, we can learn so much from American culture and Americans. They are so good at promoting themselves and selling themselves in a way that we are not really allowed to do in Denmark. And I think maybe a little bit of both ways is the sweet spot.

32:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How would you describe yourself to somebody you just met? If people ask me, I say, I'm Danish first, and then I remember, oh no, I'm actually Danish American. And I add a little story about how I ended up being that. What do you say?

32:18
Trine C. Jensen
I think I say I'm Danish. And then if they look at me funny, I say, well, I'm also American, but I think I'm Danish first. Yeah.

32:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Why do you think that is? Do you forget to say American? I do, too, when I start out.

32:33
Trine C. Jensen
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe also because people over here always say where they're from, even though their definition of being from somewhere is quite different from ours. Because when we say we're Danish, it actually means that we were born and raised there, right? When Americans say they're Polish and Italian, then it might mean that their great, great, great grandfather was born and raised there, but everybody else has been here.

32:55
Trine C. Jensen
So I think I like to say Danish because I'm really Danish. I came from there. I speak it, right? And then usually that ends up being the next question, right? Is that your first language? And it actually is.

33:05
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What is particularly Danish about who you are? Or is that hard to pinpoint? You mentioned something before, so you do know that that part of you is Danish.

33:14
Trine C. Jensen
The thing about collaboration?

33:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes, exactly. And being, I mean, thinking of "us" instead of "me." It's a very Danish way of looking at things.

33:22
Trine C. Jensen
Yeah. And I think that is very much in my bones. I think I love licorice in a way that you only can if you're Danish.

33:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The salty ones?

33:28
Trine C. Jensen
Oh yeah. The salty ones with ammonia in them. And I eat them to the point of red rashes that itch.

33:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And maybe the herrings, too.

33:37
Trine C. Jensen
Yeah, I like herring as well. What else makes me Danish? I don't know. There's a thing that we do in Denmark that I don't know that I've seen anywhere else. The way that we come together in celebration and whether it's confirmation, or weddings, which is more formal, or whether it's a 50th birthday party or a wedding anniversary.

34:02
Trine C. Jensen
There's a way that we gather and sit down and do food for hours. That I think is a form of togetherness that I'm not sure that I've really seen anywhere else. And not in the same way. And I really like that.

34:16
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah. And sing the same songs.

34:20
Trine C. Jensen
We make songs, exactly. We make songs for the person being celebrated, right? And we sing them together.

34:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah. You write lyrics to a well-known song, and then you sing it. I've never seen that here either.

34:31
Trine C. Jensen
Right, exactly. There are some of those things that I think are very Danish and very sweet, and maybe dying away, I don't know.

34:38
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What about the use of the flag? We do that.

34:41
Trine C. Jensen
Oh, that's right. We flag all the time, don't we? Everybody has a flagpole, and they flag all the time. Americans only flag at certain times.

34:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you use it for your birthday and all those celebrations. Yeah. It's not a nationalistic thing.

34:57
Trine C. Jensen
It's just celebratory. I think that's the same thing with a lot of the parties that we hold, right? Many of them have a religious background, but we don't really honor that very much. It's more an excuse to get together and eat and be merry than it is necessarily confirming, you know, how Christian we are.

35:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Because we're not that Christian.

35:20
Trine C. Jensen
We're not really all that Christian now. Even though we don't have separation of church and state, we're not really all that religious. I think it's a very secular country. It was actually one of the things that really surprised me about America when I came here. I was shocked at how religious of a country it is. I'm still actually a little bit shocked about that.

35:37
Trine C. Jensen
I mean, not to get too political, but just an issue like abortion, which has been a non-issue in Europe probably since I was a child, right? It was legalized and then that was that. And here, they fight over it every single time there's an opportunity to, right? And just in this last year, we've seen a lot of reversal of freedoms.

35:55
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's incomprehensible to us from a country like Denmark that they even discuss it. We as expats are in this odd situation where home means so many things. Sometimes it gets confusing. What is home to you?

36:12
Trine C. Jensen
Well, I do say I'm going home when I go to Denmark. And when I fly back to LA, I also say I'm going home. Because they both are.

36:19
Trine C. Jensen
What is home to me? It's a place where I feel safe with people that I love. And a reasonable amount of access to nature.

36:28
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My final question to you, do you see yourself living in the US for the rest of your life? And what would you like to achieve for the rest of your life? I know this is a huge question.

36:40
Trine C. Jensen
I have always had a dream or fantasy about returning to Europe. Not necessarily Denmark. I do like warm weather. Portugal seems very nice. I also have a daughter that was born and raised here, and while she is a Danish citizen and has a very strong connection to Denmark, she's also very much an LA girl. And I don't think she would like to live there. She likes to live here. And I don't know that I could settle permanently that far away from her. That just doesn't feel right.

37:09
Trine C. Jensen
And then to lead into the next question of what I want to do with the rest of my life— be as creative as possible in the work that I do. When it comes to directing, obviously telling beautiful wonderful stories, and in my teaching, facilitating greater performance for the people that I work with. And that may take me to other places than here, that work. And I'll go wherever the work is exciting.

37:33
Trine C. Jensen
Last year I got to teach in Germany at a film academy in Ludwigsburg. I teach every year in Denmark at the Scenekunstskole, which is the National Drama School, a performing arts school, and also at the National Film School. As these teaching doors open up to share the work that I've done in the professional world, I will go where they open, because I love doing the work that I do. And, yeah, we'll see.

37:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How fortunate is that?

38:00
Trine C. Jensen
Yes.

38:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Well, thank you so much, Trine, for your time. We really appreciate that you were part of Danish Originals.

38:07
Trine C. Jensen
Thank you so much for having me.

38:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Trine C. Jensen chose Henri Matisse's Zulma from 1950 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.