Jan Stenbeck was the man who in the 1980s first shook up the mobile phone market and then crushed the Swedish TV monopoly with the start of TV3.
But despite Stenbeck being so widely written about during his lifetime, much of his private life was unknown to Jakob Oftebro, which made the role even more interesting for him.
Why was he so unhappy in the end? He got everything he wanted, but then he sits all alone and is sad. That's what makes the story almost like a Greek tragedy, says Oftebro.
Changed climate
Jan Stenbeck was extremely controversial during his lifetime. Equally disliked by the left for challenging the hegemony in the People's Home as loved in neoliberal circles for having eliminated monopolies and taken on the Social Democrats.
Jakob Oftebro doesn't think a drama series about Stenbeck's life could have been made by SVT when he was at the height of his fame. But the political climate has changed.
It was an incredibly different political thinking back then than it is now. But the world has become much more "Jan Stenbeck-like". That thinking and way of being has become the winning one.
The series portrays a CEO who is indeed rough and ruthless, but at the same time very human, struggling with his marriage and missing his children. It's a different image of Stenbeck than what emerged in the media during his lifetime.
"Fat suit"
Jakob Oftebro thinks that side must also be portrayed.
When you're going to tell a whole life, it wouldn't have been interesting with just the image of Jan when he's a brutal businessman. Because that's not entirely true either, and it would have been kicking in an open door. When you do research, you see that he was much bigger than that.
For the well-trained Jakob Oftebro, who previously played the agent hero Hamilton on TV, the role of Jan Stenbeck was also a physical challenge. Stenbeck became overweight in the end of his life, so Oftebro had to gain a lot of weight and also use a so-called "fat suit" to get a larger body shape and a mask that made him round in the face.
It was fantastic, otherwise it wouldn't have worked. The mask is also completely fantastic. I never weighed myself, so I don't actually know how much I gained. But for a while, I could only walk around in sweatpants, my other pants no longer fit, he says and laughs.
The entire series "Stenbeck" will be released on SVT Play on March 7 and will premiere on SVT1 on March 10.
Moved to the USA in 1964 and worked as an investment banker there. After his father Hugo Stenbeck's death in 1976, he took control of the family company Kinnevik, which then operated in the steel and forestry industries. Stenbeck founded the mobile phone companies Comvik and Tele2 in the 1980s, started the TV channel TV3 in 1987, which got several successors, and also the free newspaper Metro in 1995, as well as several other newspapers such as Z and Moderna Tider. Stenbeck passed away in 2002.
In Kista, northwest of Stockholm, where many telecom companies operate, there is Jan Stenbeck's Square since 2010.
The TV series is directed by Goran Kapetanovic, with a script by Alex Haridi and based on a biography by journalist Per Andersson.
Jakob Oftebro plays Jan Stenbeck. In other roles, you'll see Zoe Boyle, Malin Crépin, Irene Lindh, and Lars Lind.
