How Jo Nesbø Changed His Own Detective Hole Story For Netflix's New Crime Thriller

3 days ago 12

Tobias Santelmann's Harry looking in thought under an overpass in Detective Hole season 1

Published Apr 7, 2026, 3:00 PM EDT

Grant Hermanns is a TV News Editor, Interview Host and Reviewer for ScreenRant, having joined the team in early 2021. He got his start in the industry with Moviepilot, followed by working at ComingSoon.net. When not indulging in his love of film/TV, Grant is making his way through his gaming backlog and exploring the world of Dungeons & Dragons with friends.

Jo Nesbø has taken it upon himself to bring his iconic novel character to the screen with Detective Hole, but he's not married to his own material.

The new Netflix series adapts Nesbø's 13-novel crime franchise, centering on the titular detective who, in the wake of the death of one of his colleagues during the pursuit of a deadly group of bank robbers, has been grappling with his sobriety and trying to find them. All the while, he has also been developing a relationship with single mother, Rakel, while trying to find a way to connect with her teenage son, Oleg.

Largely pulling from The Devil's Star, Detective Hole also sees Harry thrust into an investigation of a string of serial killings throughout Oslo, with one of the recurring clues being a small gem in the shape of a pentagram left under the victim's eyes. As he digs deeper into the case, he also finds new leads for the bank robbery case and gets closer to bringing down his archnemesis, the crooked officer Tom Waaler.

Tobias Santelmann's Harry looking intensely while running down a hallway with his gun drawn and SWAT around him in Detective Hole Vertical

The Last Kingdom's Tobias Santelmann leads the ensemble Detective Hole cast in the eponymous role, alongside For All Mankind's Joel Kinnaman, Until Dawn's Peter Stormare, Westworld's Ingrid Bolsø Berdal and Anders Baasmo Christiansen, among others. Having premiered March 26, the series has garnered widespread acclaim from critics, currently holding a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a stark turnaround from the response to Michael Fassbender's The Snowman adaptation.

Now, ahead of its Netflix premiere, ScreenRant's Grant Hermanns interviewed Jo Nesbø, Tobias Santelmann and Joel Kinnaman to discuss Detective Hole. When asked about finding a way to bring the character to life on the screen himself, Nesbø began by describing it as "exciting," but also expressed that he's "never seen it as an important point to bring the novel to the screen."

As such, when going into adapting The Devil's Star and his other novels into Detective Hole season 1, he explained that "you don't necessarily need to tell the same story," as long as one "can bring that DNA to the screen" of his novels. The creator/author also expressed that "I'm not married to the story" and found himself with a unique advantage going into developing the series:

Jo Nesbø: My advantage being the novelist and the writer of the books when adapting it was, of course, that I have no respect for the author, nor the story, so I can do whatever I please. [Chuckles] Also, I'm blessed with a bad memory, so I can't really remember the novel. Rereading it was like, "Oh wow, there's some cool stuff in here. Let's use it." And, "No, we don't need that." So for me, it was like creating something new.

Santelmann & Nesbø Found The Perfect Harry Hole Performance Together

ScreenRant: Now, Tobias, I'll turn to you because obviously Harry is an iconic character, but he's also so fascinating in that he always has his walls up, and yet we still get inklings of that tortured soul that's underneath. What is it like finding that balance in any given scene when you're performing in this show?

Tobias Santelmann: We had to find that together, I think, because the minute you have a camera on someone, and especially maybe closeup and everything, then you can't hide anything. The camera reads everything. So even a thought from me, you would read it as a viewer. So we had to find the small places, the places where it cracks a little bit. And also, of course, the editing is — we did it in several places to see what we would have to use or what we would need later on in the edit. We did several takes sometimes where I just held back everything and then a new take where I opened up a little bit. We played with it a little bit like that so that when they got to the editing room, they could sort of decide where to land it. Yeah. So it was a thing we did together. But I love the dark things. I'm quite a happy soul myself, usually, and to be allowed to go into a different mindset somewhere darker, it's fun.

Jo Nesbø: There's a line in there because, as you can tell, Tobias is this really nice, sympathetic guy. And Harry is this cold guy who's always close to the abyss. There's a line there where you are holding a gun, and you are asking your colleague, "What do you think makes a man shoot innocent people? " And he gives some suggestions, madness maybe. And then he asks you, "What do you think? " And you were there with a closeup saying, "To silence the voices." And it's like looking at you right there, "Okay, he's there. He's in the abyss now." That was chilling to see you that way. But then I didn't know you any longer.

Tobias Santelmann: Oh, wow.

ScreenRant: I've always loved the dynamic between Harry and Tom, this sort of cat and mouse mental chess game always going on between them. Tobias, what was it like approaching that with Joel? Then, Jo, for you, what was it like writing that with them and then even maybe making changes on the day once you've got to see these characters come to life?

Tobias Santelmann's Harry looking curiously at something in Detective Hole

Tobias Santelmann: To play with Joel on this was a great, great experience. Joel is a little bit like Tom when it comes to being unpredictable. He often does unexpected things. He could improvise a lot. So I never really knew how he would attack a scene, how he would go into it. And it was great fun because, I mean, every day was sort of a gift of some kind of crazy idea or improvisation or just a funny thing or look. It was great fun. And, of course, he could play more than Harry could, because Harry is quite whole. He doesn't give that much away. So even though I wanted to play along and be funny as well, I just had to be–

Jo Nesbø: And he knew –

Tobias Santelmann: He knew, yeah, "I could do whatever I want."

Jo Nesbø: What was it about that thing on the toy on your desk? Yeah,

Tobias Santelmann: Yeah, there was a little toy that had these cymbals...

ScreenRant: The wind-up monkey.

Tobias Santelmann: Exactly. That was there. And during the scene, all of a sudden, he took it up and started to play with it. It ended up in the series, but it's not in the script.

Jo Nesbø: He put it in front of you. And you could tell –

Tobias Santelmann: I was really irritated.

Jo Nesbø: You were annoyed for real.

Tobias Santelmann: Yeah, "I'm on the f----ng phone. Can you see?" It's a really irritating thing to do. Yeah, he had fun.

Kinnaman Will Keep Exploring Swedish-Infused Works After Detective Hole

Joel Kinnaman's Tom looking judgingly down at Tobias Santelmann's Harry in Jo Nesbø's Detective Hole

ScreenRant: It feels like it's been quite a while since we've gotten to see you flex your Swedish vocabulary on screen. How did it feel to return to those roots for this series?

Joel Kinnaman: It's been 15 years, which is crazy. When those numbers sunk in, I'm like, "What the f--k have I been doing?" And I think that feeling just got reinforced. Because a couple of months into shooting this, I really had the feeling. I was like, "Oh my God. I have a gear. I have another gear that I just haven't been using." Because it's just another level of relaxation and creativity that comes with Swedish that I just don't really have in English. I mean, I thought that I had sort of gotten to that level, because I remember when I moved to the States, I could feel a little stiffer in the language and I don't really have the same sort of creativity and playfulness. But I've been playing there for so long, so I feel like I got to that level. But then when I came home, there's something there that's still — I think the first 30 years of my life, I grew up in Sweden with my friends, imitating people, imitating dialects as a kid. It's just something that connects on a different level. So yes, I kind of made a vow to myself that I'll be doing Swedish work regularly moving forward. But it was really fun. And also coming to Oslo to shoot, I spent a year here when I was 19, working in factories and just trying to gather together some money to go travel. So I have a lot of good memories from here. It was a nice time to come home.

ScreenRant: And what a great series to kickstart getting more work in the world of Sweden. Talking about this franchise, how familiar were you with the novels prior? Were you a fan at all?

Joel Kinnaman's Tom Waaler sitting and looking somber in Detective Hole season 1 Vertical

Joel Kinnaman: I was a big fan of Jo [Nesbo], but I actually hadn't read the Harry Hole books. So my first connection with that was actually reading the scripts. Then I went back and started reading all the books. Yeah, I love Headhunters and a couple of his other stuff that's been adapted. And then when I got to read this script and just got to dive into the depraved world of Tom Waaler, that was really juicy, mouthwatering material for an actor to sink their teeth into. So it was really, really fun. And I thought it was so impressive. I think it's one of the best characters that Jo's ever written. He's written so much, so maybe I'm not the best judge of it, but he's so complex and has so many different sides to him that just make it really difficult to understand where he's coming from, what his ambitions are, and why he's doing things. I think Jo really gets it right where there are no clear answers. And that's how I think it's supposed to be. It's complex. Tom is not a guy that is centered and knows why he's doing things. He's driven by instinct, by his sexual confusion. And that's why he uses sex as a tool of coercion and control, and his hunger for power and dominance and his sadistic impulses feed into that. But at the same time, he's like a wounded child that was damaged at a young age that sort of set him off. But he still can feel empathy even though many times he acts without empathy. So there are a lot of different contradicting things that are going on inside of him that make it really fun to play.

ScreenRant: That actually perfectly leads into my next question. We know of Tom's corruption, but he has to keep it hidden from the people around him, from Harry and the like. What is going through your mind as your performer? Are you leaning into that sort of salaciousness that the audience already knows about him, or are you trying to play into that cat-and-mouse nature of it all?

Joel Kinnaman: No. I mean, you have to play the character's truth, not the story, right? So the story is hidden. And I think with Tom, it's like sometimes he acts against his own benefit, sometimes, because he's driven so much by his impulses, his sexual impulses or his impulses for power and dominance. That also happens with a lot of psychopaths. Tom's not a psychopath, but he does have some traits that they're so overconfident and impulsive that sometimes that's how they get caught if they are the more serial killer kind of psychopath. But yeah, it's really fun to play a character where you don't always understand why he's doing things.

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