Martin “E-Type” Eriksson dislikes looking back on his life. Despite that, it was a natural choice for him to accept the role in “Stars at the Castle.”
It's one of the few programs where you actually get to tell your own story fairly unchallenged, he says.
Together with swimming star Sarah Sjöström, actor Johan Hedenberg, artist and presenter Lotta Engberg and TV personality Lasse Kronér, he makes up this year's gang in SVT's program where famous Swedes talk about their lives.
No one took a seat.
That particular composition was particularly attractive for the E-Type:
"I've been on quite a few shows where you put different people together. But in this particular group, no one took up extra space or refused to talk about certain things and it was very frictionless," he says.
In "Stars in the Castle" in particular, it has become a kind of custom to talk about past traumas and dark chapters in life.
For the E-Type, however, it was difficult to bring out the darkness.
"I've lived by the motto of having a huge windshield and no rearview mirrors. I'm a black belt in not looking back," he says.
Therefore, he informed the production before filming that he did not want to talk about what happened to his then one-year-old daughter last year when she swallowed a toy battery, something that ended in emergency surgery, tube feeding, and care on a respirator.
In the end, he still talks about the incident during his day on the program.
"I absolutely did not want to talk about this terrible accident. I break down, go dark, and lose all creativity from it. But then I realized that I actually had a huge opportunity to inform others, because this is a danger that lurks in many homes," he says.
Got to reflect
For Sarah Sjöström, it was nerve-wracking to be on the program, mainly because she was worried that her life story wouldn't be "interesting enough."
"Everyone else is such incredible storytellers. It was hard to know if my life was interesting enough. I had to reflect a lot beforehand so that my story wouldn't just be about what it's like to win medals," she says.
Sara Haldert/TT
Facts: "The Stars at the Castle"
TT
Participating: Lasse Kronér, Johan Hedenberg, Sarah Sjöström, Martin "E-Type" Eriksson and Lotta Engberg.
Premiere: January 1, 2026 on SVT.
