00:04
Sarah Holm Johansen
I chose the work of Adam de Coster.

00:09
Sarah Holm Johansen
This picture has two men looking at each other in some kind of a standoff. The background is super dark, and their faces is where the light is. It's about what you see, it's also about the feeling you get. And it's the same way I light my scenes.

00:23
Sarah Holm Johansen
A lot of the stories I do have evil, grief, sorrow, but also optimism, pride, elation, joy. I think it's because I'm fundamentally interested in the darkness of the human mind. You can do bad things and not be a bad person. You can do good things and be kind of a shitty person also. I've come across that again and again in my work.

00:47
Sarah Holm Johansen
I've based my entire career reporting on some of the most awful actions human beings can possibly partake in. And I'm still fully convinced that almost everyone is fundamentally good. We all contain light and dark inside of us. Sometimes they're at odds, sometimes they're fighting. Sometimes darkness wins, sometimes lightness wins.

01:12
Sarah Holm Johansen
The painting — I think it is really emotive and gets you thinking and feeling. As artists, if we don't do that, what are we even doing?

01:27
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. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Sarah Holm Johansen, an Emmy-nominated Danish documentary filmmaker. Welcome, Sarah.

01:50
Sarah Holm Johansen
Thank you so much, Tina.

01:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's wonderful having you with us. Sarah, you and I are looking at each other on a computer screen. I'm in LA and you are in New York. I'm sitting in my office and I look up from the screen and see palm trees outside. Where in New York are you? What are you looking at when you look away from the screen?

02:11
Sarah Holm Johansen
I'm sitting in a gear room filled with batteries and camera gear and podcast equipment. I'm at the Bloomberg building on Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, which is where I work. I think we're 30, 31 floors or something like that, but I'm only on the sixth floor.

02:29
Sarah Holm Johansen
If I look out the window, I see the hustle and bustle of Midtown Manhattan, people coming to and from lunch. Lots going on in New York as always.

02:38
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
No palm trees.

02:39
Sarah Holm Johansen
Not a single palm tree. We do have a heat wave at the moment. So everything is basically brown and fried.

02:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And humid, I'm assuming.

02:47
Sarah Holm Johansen
So humid. It is so humid right now. In here, it's 65 degrees. It's freezing inside everywhere in New York.

02:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Air conditioning.

02:54
Sarah Holm Johansen
Air conditioning, yes.

02:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What is your home environment in New York, Sarah? I always imagine, apart from the very rich, rather small apartments. What part of New York do you call home and how would you describe your home to the listeners?

03:09
Sarah Holm Johansen
I'm actually very, very lucky. I live in a three-story townhouse in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn. So it's similar shape to brownstones, but not as nice, more like a rækkehus vibe in Denmark. It is the reason why I'm so lucky that I have this place, that also has a little garden, which is pure luxury over here in New York.

03:33
Sarah Holm Johansen
Many years ago, my husband and I bought a condo also in Bed-Stuy. We bought it for pretty cheap, and then we sold it seven years later and made some nice cash off of that sale that we were then able to take along with our savings and put into this townhouse. It's my dream location really. It's decidedly not the suburbs, but it has that feel because there's so many families that live there and so many schools and the trains are right there.

04:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You can never leave.

04:02
Sarah Holm Johansen
I really can't. For anyone that knows what the interest rate situation is over here right now, it's high now. We can never leave. We have a very reasonable monthly mortgage. And also we don't want to leave either. So it works out, it works out.

04:16
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When did you arrive in New York? I would like for you to go down memory lane. What was the first feeling as a New Yorker?

04:25
Sarah Holm Johansen
I came as a tourist with a boyfriend. We were just here for two weeks. We were staying in a hotel in Herald Square, which is a horrible area. It's touristy, but not even the good kind of touristy. It is in Midtown. And I remember this feeling of wow, this is the heart of the city. This is as cool as it gets. And of course, you realize that Herald Square is most certainly not the heart of New York, and definitely not the coolest part of New York either.

04:49
Sarah Holm Johansen
And then the next time I came was maybe two years after that. Just myself and two of my friends rented a little apartment in the East Village, and came over here to stay for six months. We were still at university, but we were just gonna write our papers from over here. I don't know if you officially could do that back then, but we did.

05:05
Sarah Holm Johansen
We just hung out, went out all the time, partied a lot. It really wasn't until I got a proper visa to come and intern at 60 Minutes, and then staying, when I slowly started really feeling like I lived here.

05:20
Sarah Holm Johansen
When you come from a small town like I do, it's like you're on a movie set. You've seen all the movies filmed here, all the tv shows. I was obsessed with Sex in the City. I've been here for 17 years and I still have that feeling. It is just overwhelming in all senses of the word. There's so many people, the buildings are so tall, it is either so hot or so cold. It seems there's never an in-between. It's the city of extremes.

05:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was it that made you make the move to New York? One thing is liking it, dreaming about it. Another thing is actually taking the step.

05:53
Sarah Holm Johansen
The first time I was here with my friends from college, I met someone who knew someone who was a producer at 60 Minutes. And I loved 60 Minutes. And so I hunted this person down and called her all the time until she agreed to give me a tour of 60 Minutes. On that tour, I met some people, again, hunted those people down until I figured out how to apply for an internship at 60 Minutes.

06:17
Sarah Holm Johansen
I then went back to Denmark and spent a good six months just applying for this internship and the visa that came with it and scholarships and all of that. It was a very strenuous process. When I then got the internship, it was tied to a specific visa, I think it was called the J-1 Visa, and that really only allowed me to come over here for six months.

06:34
Sarah Holm Johansen
I moved over here, did the internship for six months, then you got an additional month to travel around. I so badly wanted to stay, but I couldn't. I tried to be in Denmark for a little bit. I really was just so miserable. I wanted to go back to New York.

06:47
Sarah Holm Johansen
And then I got a job as a producer, which I was completely unqualified for, I should say. And I think the host of the show would very much agree, although I very much learned on the job. And it was a show called Clement i Amerika with Clement Kjersgaard, one of my favorite Danish tv show hosts. And he hired me as a producer.

07:07
Sarah Holm Johansen
And I only got this job, and I think he would agree, because I had that internship at 60 Minutes on my resume. It was also the only thing I had on my resume. I was hired to help cover the election in the US. This was '06. We were covering the excitement leading up to the year that Obama won, the first year he won in '08, we were covering the entire primary season starting in '06.

07:30
Sarah Holm Johansen
And so it was me and Clement Kjersgaard, and cameraman and producer Nis Rasmussen, also from Danmarks Radio. And then eventually we were joined by another producer, Louise. And it was just the four of us making this weekly show that we had to create, and we traveled all over the country.

07:47
Sarah Holm Johansen
We were first based in Washington, DC, then we were based in New York, and then we traveled from there. And for that show I got a press visa. So I was allowed to work over here, but only for Danish media. So then we came back after doing this insane project, and I worked for Danmarks Radio for six months, maybe a little more, on another show about international politics.

08:11
Sarah Holm Johansen
And I just was so desperate to come back here. I just, at that point, knew that I really didn't feel I belonged in Denmark. And honestly, I never really felt I belonged in Denmark. But after having lived in New York at this point, on and off for a couple of years, I just knew that this was home for me, which is very odd to feel so strongly about a place. But I really did.

08:29
Sarah Holm Johansen
Then, Clement Kjersgaard connected me with a publishing house and we agreed that I was gonna write a book about New York. So then I went back to New York on the press visa and wrote that book and started freelancing for different Danish media. I worked for all the magazines. I wrote profiles of actors and actresses and did the junket circle and did some radio, linked up with another Danish journalist, and we did some television.

09:00
Sarah Holm Johansen
Basically, I just had a lot of stuff going on and between all of it, it barely paid the bills. It paid the bills just enough so I could still have my New York life. And I was still on this Danish press visa and it must have been maybe three or four years of doing this freelancing for all the Danish media institutions.

09:17
Sarah Holm Johansen
Whenever there was a breaking news thing, I was on. And I traveled a lot too because I did the junkets. And I really was not making a lot of money.

09:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I know exactly what that's like.

09:25
Sarah Holm Johansen
You've done the hustle, I'm sure. It was definitely a very real freelance hustle and I was barely scraping by. But I was having the time of my life and really very quickly found out, oh, at this bar, if you order a beer, you get a whole pizza for free.

09:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's a good deal.

09:41
Sarah Holm Johansen
It was a good deal and really fed me for a long time.

09:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Because you do need beer.

09:47
Sarah Holm Johansen
You do need food along with all the booze. I met someone, and eventually my visa was about to expire. I had this press visa. After not dating for very long, we decided to get married because it was either we break up and I go back to Denmark, my visa expires, or we move in together and we get married maybe a little earlier than we otherwise would've.

10:08
Sarah Holm Johansen
We were very much in love so it didn't feel that much of a stretch of the imagination. We got married down in City Hall, I got a green card, and that meant I was finally able to work for US-based companies. And the first job I got after I got my green card was really a once in a lifetime type of job, which I didn't realize at the time, because I'd never had another job in America that was with an American production company.

10:33
Sarah Holm Johansen
It was a field producer, associate producer position for a show called Years of Living Dangerously. And it was about climate change. And it was conceptualized by these two 60 Minutes producers that I had stayed in touch with. And they had sold this idea to James Cameron, the very famous movie director, and a lot of Hollywood royalty.

10:52
Sarah Holm Johansen
The idea was that every story would be led and hosted by a celebrity in an attempt to get people to care more about climate change, which seems crazy now, 'cause that's not really something people talk as much about anymore as they should. This must have been 13 years ago.

11:09
Sarah Holm Johansen
So with this job, for almost two years — it was based in New York — I traveled the world with the most talented directors, producers, camera folks that I have ever met, and associate producing this insane show. In retrospect, it was absolutely insane what we did. I believe it was eight episodes, and it aired on Showtime and ended up winning an Emmy for best documentary series.

11:36
Sarah Holm Johansen
And that was my very crazy introduction to how media works in America. The thing about documentary in the US, especially in New York, and probably in LA too, it's all about your network. Nobody cares where you went to school. Certainly no one cares where I went to school in Denmark.

11:56
Sarah Holm Johansen
I basically just learned the craft by just doing it. And truthfully, when I worked on the Danish show with Clement Kjersgaard, I had not the faintest idea what I was doing, truly. All I knew was that I was good at talking to people on the phone. And luckily, a big part of my job back then was to just keep calling people until they said yes to participating in our show, and then Clement took it from there and did all the interviewing.

12:19
Sarah Holm Johansen
Even with Years of Living Dangerously, I really learned on the job. I didn't know how to produce, I certainly didn't know how to manage the hosts. I worked with Harrison Ford, Leslie Stahl from 60 Minutes, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

12:32
Sarah Holm Johansen
I remember directing a scene with Harrison Ford in Indonesia. He's in the car and I use the term loosely because this was a very not safe car in Indonesia. He's in the seat next to some scientist, and I'm in the trunk of the car, 'cause the DPs, the camera ops had to film them. So there was no room for me, but I had to direct them.

12:54
Sarah Holm Johansen
So I was lying in the trunk of the car shouting things at Harrison Ford. That was really something. And then just the logistics of getting crews of that size from point A to point B was absolutely insane. I still think back on that experience and honestly I learned so much from those people that ran that show.

13:14
Sarah Holm Johansen
And after that it was just a pretty steady upward trajectory. I only really was an associate producer on one thing after that. And then I was made producer and then pretty quickly after producer, I was made director and now I direct and show run.

13:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
New York can be rough. The times that I've visited, the way that people talk to each other, the fast beat, when people are walking in the street, there's no "excuse me" if you run into them — how has New York treated you, Sarah?

13:43
Sarah Holm Johansen
My God, I have nothing. I've had my heart broken here, of course.

13:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That happens everywhere.

13:49
Sarah Holm Johansen
That happens everywhere. I'll tell you this, I've never not felt safe here. And I think in large part it is because there's always people around. I think New York appeals to a very specific personality type. I've had lots of friends live here for a long time and eventually leave because it's a lot. As I said, it's either freezing cold or way too hot. Everyone is rude. Traffic is a disaster. It's super expensive. There's so many objectively negative things.

14:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It stinks.

14:18
Sarah Holm Johansen
It stinks. Oh my God, right now it is ugh out there. There are so many objectively negative things I can say about New York. But it is also a place where if you have the right attitude towards it, you can really find community here. I've had many different lives in New York. I'm probably on my tenth life right now in New York and I'm sure I'll have many more.

14:38
Sarah Holm Johansen
I'm very happy with the one I have right now though, so I'll probably stick around in this one for a little while. But it is a place where you can always reinvent yourself. You can always find somebody to talk to. You make friends no matter where you go. You can stand in line at the grocery store and leave with someone's phone number that you then end up becoming friends with.

15:01
Sarah Holm Johansen
I struggled when I lived in Denmark — and this is a broad generalization, I have lovely friends in Denmark, a lot of my family is still there too — but in general I always felt people were a little bit closed down in Denmark. And even the good old Janteloven also, it felt like ambition could take you to a certain place and then after that it was a little hard to go much further than that.

15:28
Sarah Holm Johansen
I always struggled with that. I think that's just a personality thing. I just am very restless as a person and I always have been. And New York is the first place I've ever been where I don't feel that way. And I think it's because whatever I wanna do, whenever I wanna do it, I can do it. If I want to go to standup comedy at 3:00 am on a Tuesday night, that's available to me.

15:51
Sarah Holm Johansen
If I wake up with my kids at 5 am, that happens sometimes, and we're out of milk, no problem. I just walk three steps to the deli: milk, coffee, smiles, the deli cat. They're all there.

16:05
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Deli cat?

16:06
Sarah Holm Johansen
Yeah. The bodega cat is a real thing here. They all have them. I just have never been anywhere else in the world that made me feel that way. I'm so stimulated all the time and I think that can be a lot for some people. Even for me, sometimes I also need to take a step back and go into my house and hang out there for a little while. But truthfully, not very often.

16:28
Sarah Holm Johansen
The worst thing was the pandemic. Being in New York during the pandemic was awful. But New York has treated me well, Tina, I think, is what I am trying to say.

16:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Good. I'm very happy to hear that. And we started out talking about where you are right now, and that you are working in the documentary department of Bloomberg. What is it that you do for them? What does it mean to be a documentary director and producer at Bloomberg?

16:54
Sarah Holm Johansen
I'm still trying to figure that out myself. I've been a freelancer for 16 years, and during that time I've had so many different jobs for so many different production companies, for so many different networks. This is the first time that I've been in America that I have a staff job.

17:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are on a payroll!

17:12
Sarah Holm Johansen
I'm on the payroll.

17:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
With health insurance!

17:15
Sarah Holm Johansen
I have health insurance and it's great health insurance. I even have, for the first time in my life, paid time off, which is a mind-blowing experience for me, honestly. I started here as a freelancer. They hired me to direct a series about Wall Street called Bullish, hosted by a woman called Sonali Basak, who is a genius, she's one of their news anchors here.

17:39
Sarah Holm Johansen
And she had pitched this show about how Wall Street is no longer just a place, it's an idea. And then there were all these different stories within these frameworks. And the showrunner who I knew from working on a Netflix show together a while ago that I directed, she reached out to me, she was at Bloomberg — now again, it's the network, it's always the network — and asked if I was free to come over here.

18:02
Sarah Holm Johansen
She asked me if I would be down for directing this series and I said yes, 'cause I thought it sounded really cool. I love working with hosts. It's something that I've just fallen into. I worked with Christiane Amanpour on a show, Mariana van Zeller, who's amazing, also, on another show. I've just been, not on purpose, I just fell into directing hosted shows.

18:22
Sarah Holm Johansen
And Adrianne, the showrunner, knew that. And so she reached out and I said yes. And I came in and I met the team and they hired me as a freelancer. And then I did that here for three or four months. And then a position was posted, a senior producer position, which here covers a wide variety of things. You show run, you direct, you produce, you work on scripts, all kinds of things, whatever is needed at that time.

18:46
Sarah Holm Johansen
It was a staff position and I didn't even know how any of that worked over here 'cause I never had one. So after months of tons of interviews, it was a very thorough background check where I was like, whoa, this is so intense. I think I had eight individual interviews, maybe seven. And then I finally got hired in February as their newest senior producer.

19:08
Sarah Holm Johansen
And so far so good. I basically just continued to direct that show and helped shepherd that through. I wrote one of the episodes as well and now that that show is almost done, we're finishing it as we speak, the next step for me is going to be directing a pilot that they're doing, and then showrunning a new series that they have coming up in Q1 and Q2, which are words I just learned, 'cause now I work for corporate America.

19:37
Sarah Holm Johansen
And that's it. So basically here you just do whatever the show needs. We do a lot of original, both long form and short form content. There's investigative pieces, it's all tied together by finance, tech, the future. It's a lot of that kind of stuff floating around. I'm still just figuring it out. They say that it takes about a year here before you're fully immersed in the culture and the terminal, which is how we work. It is so exciting. I really could not be any more grateful to have been given this chance.

20:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you have to be used to not being your own boss, which I know as a freelancer all my life, is gonna be a challenge, right?

20:18
Sarah Holm Johansen
I never really have been my own boss, because whenever I sign on to a project – say, there's a production company, right? And they will reach out to me, the showrunner will reach out to me and be like, hey, are you available? I have a show. We're doing this six part series. It's a travel series, it's hosted, it's for Netflix. Are you free to come in and meet with us? Then I say, yes, that sounds great. I come in, I meet the team, and then we say yes or no, depending on how the chemistry is, and then I'm basically given —

20:47
Sarah Holm Johansen
I'll just give you an example. I did a show, a four part series for Netflix about supply chains and how messed up they are for certain things. And this was for Netflix, it's a couple years ago. And basically, on my first day, I'm given a Dropbox folder filled with research that has already been done by the development team.

21:06
Sarah Holm Johansen
And they're like, what do you think about this idea? How about this idea? What can we make into an hour of tv? And then myself, the showrunner, my producer, basically sit down and try to craft a story out of these many different ideas we now have.

21:22
Sarah Holm Johansen
And so in that sense, I'm not really my own boss because my boss is the showrunner, the showrunner's boss is the head of the production company, and they answer to whatever network, in this case, Netflix. So I've always just been a hired gun, which is great because I do have the flexibility. If I wanna take a month long vacation, I just don't say yes to anything during that month, but I'm also not getting paid, so —

21:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I know, I know —

21:49
Sarah Holm Johansen
You know how it is.

21:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes, yes.

21:51
Sarah Holm Johansen
It's not all great. When I had my kids, it was nice. Not that I ever stopped working, but I could take three months off. My maternity leave was three months unpaid. But I could do that. If I really hated a project, I would quit it and then I'd just go do something else. But that's only happened one time. I've always been pretty good at honoring my commitment.

22:12
Sarah Holm Johansen
Every project is usually somewhere between six months and nine months. You never really get bored because you really only have nine months to immerse yourself in this topic and then you're done and then it's out in the world for people to see, and then you're onto the next. And then it starts all over again.

22:30
Sarah Holm Johansen
Development, and then you go in the field and you film everything. And then you come back and you write the episode. You work with the editor, you eventually lock the cut, and then you send that off and then you jump over to the next thing.

22:41
Sarah Holm Johansen
And I've just been bouncing around between basically five or six production companies that I've worked with over the last 17 years. And then within the production companies, they do all sorts of different things for all sorts of different networks.

22:54
Sarah Holm Johansen
So it's definitely different to be here at Bloomberg because they do it all here in-house. We're not really using freelancers. Not a lot, maybe a little bit, but everything is created right here in the original studio. So I'm super excited, it's cool to be part of something and actually see myself be here for the long term.

23:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you're also nominated for an Emmy. I mean, talking about being excited. How significant is that?

23:20
Sarah Holm Johansen
Very significant, and it's significant for everyone. So basically the Emmys are the Oscars for news and documentary.

23:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And tv.

23:28
Sarah Holm Johansen
And tv, yeah. Definitely not as glamorous, which I can now say for sure, because I went. The Emmys were two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, almost to the day. And the show that I had worked on was called Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller, which was about black markets. A really intense show, with a lot of really crazy access to criminal gangs all over the world.

24:53
Sarah Holm Johansen
We traveled everywhere. I went to so many different countries with this show. The host is this incredible Portuguese American female reporter who's been doing this for a long time. She is my idol. She's incredible. She hired me. Her and the team hired me three and a half years ago and I worked on two seasons.

24:14
Sarah Holm Johansen
And the season that was just nominated for the Emmys was season four. Season five is actually coming up. So this season was nominated, season four, for 29 Emmys, so we all got to go. It's a big reunion 'cause we haven't seen each other in a long time. And this is after we spent all these very intense months together traveling and covering these stories, in the jungle, in dirt fields, it's not glamorous at all.

24:40
Sarah Holm Johansen
So to see each other at the Emmys was amazing. Everybody was all dressed up, barely recognized each other. And then the show won four Emmys. So that was really incredible. I mean, it literally just happened. Yeah, so 29 nominations, four wins, really special, lasted until the very early morning hours.

24:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Nice!

25:00
Sarah Holm Johansen
It was incredible. And you're in that room with the best of the best, the most incredible reporters doing all this insane work. There were a lot of segments and pieces about the Israel-Palestine conflict and just really heavy stuff. So for four hours, the actual ceremony went on, I definitely shed tears, I think a lot of people did, and not just tears of joy over wins.

25:26
Sarah Holm Johansen
It was also a good reminder to see everyone else's work as well. It really feels like you're part of this, I think, pretty remarkable community of reporters and people in general that really put their lives on the line to report on these stories. And especially in America, it just feels it's never really been more important than it is right now. So lots of big feelings on that night. I'll be honest, it was a very emotional, a very emotional night, I think, for all of us.

25:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I watched "Sextortion," which was about teenage boys being extorted by scammers, who would trick them into taking photos of themselves naked, and then threatening to post them online if they didn't pay them. And it was very hard to watch, because some commit suicide, don't see an option out of it.

26:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Talk about creating docs like that. I know you're a professional, but you just talked about crying at the Emmys. I would assume that it's an emotional rollercoaster at the same time, you have to treat a subject fairly and balanced and not be too emotional when you make it. Is that a challenge?

26:34
Sarah Holm Johansen
Yes, it is a challenge and it's definitely a through line in my career. I've done a lot of very heavy stories. I had a while where I did like a lot of crime things, sitting in front of people whose kids had been killed. "Sextortion" was very hard. It was one of the episodes that was nominated.

26:55
Sarah Holm Johansen
Unfortunately it didn't win its own Emmy, but it was nominated. We were really proud of that episode. It was so hard to make. And I think it's a little extra hard because I have two sons. One is nine, the other is three. And you can see how technology already has a stronghold on them.

27:12
Sarah Holm Johansen
I'm sure you remember there were two parents interviewed in that episode. One was a mom from Utah whose son had committed suicide, and this was three or four years ago. And her pain was just, you can almost touch it, you can feel it in your whole. And I actually wasn't there for that interview. I was on another shoot, but I talked to her a lot on the phone beforehand.

27:38
Sarah Holm Johansen
I was there for the interview with the congressman, I think it was North Carolina. North or South Carolina. When we did the interview, his son had committed suicide after being sextorted six months earlier. This man is incredible and really works on bringing legislation that prevents this from happening, and he has had some success too. He gave us a tour, I'll never forget it. He gave us a tour of the bathroom where his son had committed suicide, his son Gavin. And there was still a bullet hole in the ceiling.

28:09
Sarah Holm Johansen
And this man, so stoic, trying to keep it together. The reason why he did it, the reason why he agreed to the interview, the reason why anyone that has been through something like this agrees to an interview like this about the worst time of their life, the worst part of their life, the biggest heartbreak that you can possibly imagine as a parent, is because they want to spread awareness and prevent it so that it doesn't happen again.

28:32
Sarah Holm Johansen
But I barely got through that. And talk about being professional. I'm also only human. I think there's definitely been times — that was one of those times — where we do it and you hold it all in, and then you excuse yourself to go get something from the gear van, is what I usually say. And then you just completely fall apart. I'm so good at this point, at compartmentalizing. I can fall apart for ten minutes and then be like, okay, this isn't my trauma, this is this man's trauma and he needs us right now to finish this up.

29:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
But then there's also the other side of it, because you go to the Philippines and you actually talk to the people who are doing this, and you realize they're poor. That doesn't excuse what they're doing, but you realize that they probably have a knife to the throat or something. How can you react in those situations, not get too angry because you can't react on that either, your anger?

29:26
Sarah Holm Johansen
No, and this has always been the hardest, the biggest challenge for me, I think. We went to the Philippines. Basically, the mom from Utah, long, long story, but we were basically able to trace the messages that her son had received from the person that had done the sextorting. We were able to trace those messages to the Philippines.

29:44
Sarah Holm Johansen
So in true Trafficked form, we went there to see what we could find out. And of course, we have obviously been on the phone with a lot of people in advance, but a lot of it also really does happen on the fly. We talk to sources there, they tell us about someone we should talk to. Then they tell us about someone else we should talk to. So it really is a very organic show, and very often you go somewhere to meet someone who supposedly knows something that just never shows up.

30:10
Sarah Holm Johansen
That happened all the time on Trafficked, all the time. So many times, so many nights wasted in all these different locations. But in the Philippines, we did manage to find some people that worked for the woman who allegedly led the ring that the person that had sextorted the Utah mom's son worked for. Sorry, that was a little bit complicated. But we, through many different channels, were able to find somebody that worked for that specific ring.

30:41
Sarah Holm Johansen
And working on this show Trafficked really taught me that everyone has a story. And very often, you go in there fully prepared to be so angry and indignant and you are, you go in there feeling that way. But of course, you can't show that. Obviously you have to be professional. But in my heart I felt that way.

31:05
Sarah Holm Johansen
And then as you peel back the layers, you start to understand that this was in one of the really poor parts of the Philippines. And in this particular situation, the way the people in this village made their money was by doing this. The government was corrupt, the local government was super corrupt. It was not out of the evil of someone's heart.

31:28
Sarah Holm Johansen
Now, the ringleader, on the other hand, I have different feelings for her. We didn't find her and we got close, but we didn't find her. I have different feelings towards her. She would find, a lot of the times, young men, a lot of trans men, trans women as well, and get them to do her bidding, to make money, in this place where there was very little opportunity to make money.

31:52
Sarah Holm Johansen
So I think one thing I learned in the whole process of working on that show over the course of almost two years is that you really have to be careful before you jump to conclusions about people. And I do think that corruption within the government is very often the bigger issue than the individuals.

32:12
Sarah Holm Johansen
I'm not trying to excuse anything. And I definitely felt a lot of rage, especially, I don't know if you remember, but we interviewed a person that was in jail for sextortion, who in a very callous manner, explained how he had basically talked somebody online to killing themselves.

32:28
Sarah Holm Johansen
That was very tough to get through. I even think Mariana got emotional during that interview, because she had just spent all this time with the parents of kids that this had happened to. We all had. And then to go and have this person just totally no, nothing there, just in an almost braggy manner, that was really hard as well.

32:49
Sarah Holm Johansen
But I think doing this work, this kind of investigative, really tough work, working with people that come from such a different background as myself, it makes me feel just fucking so lucky. It's just luck, that's all it is. It's luck where I was born. Everything is just luck. I'm lucky to be in the position that I'm in.

33:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's one of my questions. You're a New Yorker now, but you did grow up in Denmark. Has being around the world, seeing all this happening, made you reflect on your Danish roots?

32:23
Sarah Holm Johansen
So much, so, so much. I think when I left Denmark back in the day, I was like, oh, Denmark is boring. Ugh, there's nothing to do. Definitely, the many years and not just of these crazy travels all over the world and reporting on these kinds of situations. Also living in New York, where there's such a big difference between rich and poor here, and it seems to only be getting worse and worse —

33:41
Sarah Holm Johansen
I am full of gratitude towards Denmark and for growing up in Denmark. My God, I think back, my childhood of just gallivanting around from friend's house to friend's house, riding my bike, going to the pool. It was so wholesome. It really was so wholesome.

33:56
Sarah Holm Johansen
And there I was in my early twenties, just totally discarding that as boring, which is so spoiled. And definitely, the years have taught me that. And I work very hard with my own kids to give them all the best that I got out of my Danish upbringing and really try to teach them to acknowledge how lucky they are, how lucky we are.

34:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Sarah, you mentioned before that you got married, that you got a green card. I am assuming that he's American. So my question to you now is, do your kids speak Danish?

34:28
Sarah Holm Johansen
Not a word. I wish. But no. My husband's originally from Ireland. His parents came here from Ireland when he was ten. So we're Irish-American-Danish. I tried with my oldest for a little while, and to be honest, I worked a lot when he was born. I came home at seven or eight every night. So the time we all had together, the three of us, was limited.

34:47
Sarah Holm Johansen
So for me to speak to my son in Danish, it's not an excuse, but it is an excuse. And I never saw us moving back to Denmark. Certainly another country, maybe, but not Denmark. And it's nothing against Denmark. It's just I feel I lived there already. I love Denmark. I have so many wonderful memories.

35:05
Sarah Holm Johansen
I go there all the time. I love it there, but I don't want to live there, if that makes sense. So instead, they're learning to speak Spanish, 'cause it's a little bit more relevant to living in the US. So to answer your question, no, they don't speak a word of Danish.

35:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That is a disaster.

35:20
Sarah Holm Johansen
I know, it's a disaster!

35:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
No, I'm kidding.

34:23
Sarah Holm Johansen
No, but it's definitely something I feel guilty about every day.

34:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I'm just pulling your leg. You studied film and media science in Copenhagen. I imagine that you were very interested in becoming a filmmaker already at that point. I actually studied there too. So I know that our approach was mainly analytical, we didn't do much practical filmmaking. But how did your education in Denmark create a foundation for you to start your journey of becoming a filmmaker in your own right? Was that helpful, opening the door to this world?

35:57
Sarah Holm Johansen
Yes, for many reasons, but the biggest was during film history studying, I really fell in love with film, I really fell in love with the arts of film. We would sit, I'm sure you remember, we would sit and watch movies basically all day sometimes. And that was your schoolwork. And then of course, yeah, we had to analyze them after.

36:16
Sarah Holm Johansen
And I did, of course. I did everything I was supposed to do. But what I really loved was when the lights turned off in that room and you could just sit back and watch movies. And I've kept that up. I watch so many movies. So that was the first seed that was planted.

36:32
Sarah Holm Johansen
I was always interested in: why does the framing of this shot make me feel a certain way? From school, that was a big part of the analytics of it. So that was the first part of it. And then I took a course in, what was it called? Cultural journalism, I think. And it was writing. And that was the first time when I was like, huh, journalism. It wasn't journalism. It was writing about culture. And then I took, what do you call it? Tilvalg, I can't remember what it's called.

36:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Tilvalgsfag.

36:56
Sarah Holm Johansen
Yeah. And this was specifically about entrepreneurship.

37:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I guess that's extra curriculum.

37:03
Sarah Holm Johansen
Those three things together. And then the real thing really came when I moved over here and then found myself suddenly adjacent to this 60 Minutes internship. And to be honest, it wasn't like, since I was five I've wanted to be an investigative journalist. No, I wanted to live in New York. I had the skillset schoolwise to apply for an internship here. I thought 60 Minutes was cool and I thought it might look cool on my resume. And that's as far as it went for me.

37:33
Sarah Holm Johansen
But once I was there, fully seated, it really took off for me. That is when I knew I wanted to do investigative journalism and I also knew that I wanted to combine that with my love of filmmaking. I didn't want to be a narrative film director. I don't think I would've been very good at it either. I need a hook in reality really to create something good.

37:52
Sarah Holm Johansen
I've just never been the person that wrote screenplays. Instead, I would go out and take notes about people I met and randomly start a conversation with anyone I could possibly start a conversation with. Always been very curious about the real world, real people, real issues.

38:09
Sarah Holm Johansen
So that's how the University of Copenhagen really started my love for the language of film, which I then was able to later take the language I had learned there from analyzing so many movies and apply them to how I did documentaries.

38:29
Sarah Holm Johansen
I'll give you an example. I did a story for a show called Sex & Love Around the World, and it was hosted by Christiane Amanpour. And my episode was about the changing roles of women in Lebanon. We flew to Beirut and did this, still one of my favorite things I think I've ever done, some sort of a survey of what it's like being a woman there.

38:52
Sarah Holm Johansen
This was for CNN Originals, so this was a series for CNN. And before we went out, one thing we had to do was to submit, what do you call it? basically a deck that would show the EPs at CNN, what we wanted this to look like. And the showrunner who was very cool, was like, just do what you want. And I was like, huh, interesting.

39:14
Sarah Holm Johansen
I was like, okay, cool. I was a huge fan of Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, specifically the movie he had made called The Neon Demon, which was about the modeling industry in Los Angeles. Obsessed with how this movie was made. And so I found a lot of inspiration. I'd watched that movie already four times.

39:31
Sarah Holm Johansen
I watched it four more times just because I knew that there was something visually that I wanted to replicate for this episode. And it struck me, watching it for the eighth time, his use of reflections, his use of mirrors, his use of really intensely saturated colors. I did some screen grabs and then what we would do, and what we pretty much always do, is we sit down with the camera team.

39:54
Sarah Holm Johansen
I was very lucky to work with some extremely talented camera operators and DPs. And we sat down and I was like, okay, I think we should film it like this. And then I come with all my ideas — I have pictures, style guide, a whole thing. And then we worked together. Of course it was never going to be filmed exactly like The Neon Demon.

40:12
Sarah Holm Johansen
It's about finding inspiration and pieces of art you really appreciate. And my inspiration was very specifically this movie. So the way we did it was we would, for example, we filmed a scene with Christiane Amanpour interviewing three women about what it's like being single and dating in Beirut.

40:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Oh yeah, I watched that.

40:30
Sarah Holm Johansen
And this scene is my favorite scene I've ever filmed from the way it looks. We spent four hours setting up. It was this incredible outdoor bar. I wanted there to be a lot of really intense color on the women, and I wanted the color to change. The DPs fashioned this giant round light that they hung above the women during the conversation, and put different colors, it's called gel, a round piece of colored paper, almost like wrapping paper.

40:58
Sarah Holm Johansen
And they wrapped it around these lights and then set up a bunch of other lights to create softness. When you look at the scene, you wouldn't know if I didn't tell you, because it looks like it was just part of the bar environment, but it wasn't at all. We made it look like that. And the colors throughout the episode are very highly saturated.

41:15
Sarah Holm Johansen
So any chance I got, I used mirrors, reflections. Any chance. They were so sick of me at the end. We did so much with mirrors, but it really worked. It's the way that film history taught me to think of what you can do. If you can do a little extra and that can be part of telling the story. I think you felt something when you watched it, and I think you should always strive for that, even in documentary.

41:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Thinking back now to the young Sarah who was growing up in Horsens, a very provincial town in Denmark, I have to say.

41:50
Sarah Holm Johansen
How dare you, Tina?

41:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I'm from Odense, so I can, I'm similar to you, I'm just playing here. Reflecting back on this girl, how has she changed since then? And how do you still recognize this young woman who grew up in Horsens?

42:06
Sarah Holm Johansen
Oh my God. Oh, so much has happened since then. I lost both my parents —

42:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I'm sorry.

42:12
Sarah Holm Johansen
So that was a lot. It's okay. But obviously, everything about Horsens, I associate with them and my childhood. When they passed away, it was also as though some of my connection with Denmark was severed. My brother, whom I'm very close with, lives there, two of my best friends still live in Denmark. And that's why I go to see my nephews, I go to see my brother, his wife, my two friends. And of course also just to see Denmark, 'cause Denmark is awesome.

42:36
Sarah Holm Johansen
But, that Sarah has not changed all that much. I gotta be honest, the same things that drove me back then was restlessness and joy of life. I don't know if those two things can even be combined, but they somehow are. This consistent curiosity that sometimes I wish it was a little less pronounced, to be honest, 'cause it means that I'm always out there looking for the next interesting conversation, the next good story. It can be a little exhausting, frankly.

43:10
Sarah Holm Johansen
And I have two kids that I also have to be a full-time mom to, obviously. But I've always been inquisitive, curious, happy, almost too happy, easily excited. And then combine that with a really intense restlessness that I've always had, that I still have. My kids definitely anchor me and my husband too. When I lost my parents, I lost that anchor, in a way. Starting my own family and growing into motherhood has been my new anchor, if that makes sense.

43:43
Sarah Holm Johansen
But the fundamentals of my personality have not changed since I was 16, at all. I'm maybe a little more responsible now, I like to think, but really not a lot. I'm so grateful for the upbringing that I had. My parents, bless them both, they really allowed me to do what I wanted, go to France for a summer, do this, do that.

44:06
Sarah Holm Johansen
God, it must have been so hard being my parents. And they really just were along for the ride. My brother was a lot more chill than I was. And they were just always there for me, fully supportive. When I decided I wanted to move to the US, fully supportive. Never once was there a single, oh no, but we're getting old, who's gonna take… never.

44:25
Sarah Holm Johansen
And I think there's no way that I would be where I am today if it wasn't for their constant support. And also always telling me, you can do literally whatever you set your mind to. And growing up with that message is so amazing because I've been in so many situations that I was in way over my head, completely unqualified for. Some of the jobs I applied for, I don't even understand why anyone would even look at my resume twice.

44:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I think that's your own feeling, Sarah. I think you were highly qualified.

44:59
Sarah Holm Johansen
I appreciate that. But I think it's because growing up like that really makes you feel very confident in your own ability. And I think so much of this is also how you present yourself. And I think, I hate to say it, but men in general, sadly, are still better at this than we are.

45:12
Sarah Holm Johansen
Maybe it's an American thing, but I hear it all the time, men go in and negotiate a salary that's higher than what they probably should get. And women oftentimes downplay their own abilities. And it's such a bummer. And I've been so aware of this, and I think it's something that I have sort of nailed, not always. Now I just go in and I just ask for an insane amount of money because then you can negotiate your way down. But it took me 15 years to learn that skill.

45:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So my final question, we've already touched upon it, but to round things up, because we could go on forever. Where do you see yourself spending the rest of your life? And now I'm talking about when your career is over, restless Sarah needs to rest.

45:57
Sarah Holm Johansen
Wait, what? I have to stop working?

45:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes. You have to settle down. Where would that be? You have an option like Ireland. That doesn't sound too bad.

46:06
Sarah Holm Johansen
Oh, no. Ireland's too cold for me. I could never.

46:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Where will we find Sarah?

46:11
Sarah Holm Johansen
In the perfect world, Sarah will have maybe just a tiny little place in New York, so I can always come back. I would love to stay close to my kids. Who knows where they're gonna end up? If I really had to settle down and you were really serious that I couldn't work anymore, maybe south of Europe.

46:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I am serious.

46:29
Sarah Holm Johansen
Ugh. I don't think I could ever go anywhere with no people. So I think my answer to your question will be wherever there's a lot of people around, because there's no way I'm ever gonna be the person that spends my days gardening. I don't see it. I wish I was, but I am gonna need some people to talk to.

46:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are gonna need the stimulation that we talked about before.

46:54
Sarah Holm Johansen
I think so. Unless you change in old age. Who knows? Maybe.

46:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You will not change. On that note, Sarah's not gonna change. She's not gonna stay restless, she's gonna look for stimulus for all her life, for the rest of her life.

47:06
Sarah Holm Johansen
Oh, maybe.

47:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Thank you so much for being part of Danish Originals. We really appreciate you being with us.

47:13
Sarah Holm Johansen
Thank you so much, Tina. It was so fun.

47:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It has been a lot of fun.

47:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Sarah Holm Johansen chose a work Attributed to Adam de Coster, Two Sculptors at Night in Rome. Double Portrait of Francois Duquesnoy and Georg Petel or To billedhuggere ved nattetid. Francois Duquesnoy og Georg Petel from 1620–1623 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.