00:04
Vanessa Johansson
I chose a painting by Richard Mortensen called Propriano, painted in 1960.

00:12
Vanessa Johansson
It's blues and blacks and white and little tiny touches of yellow and red. It's full of very straight lines, and right in the middle, amongst all of these very severe forms and shapes, you have this element that is hand drawn, you have this softness right in the middle of it. I think everybody has a little softness in the middle no matter how hard we are on the outside.

00:47
Vanessa Johansson
My father has a real love for this artist, and has a Richard Mortensen on his wall in his living room, and it is his most prized possession. It belonged to his father, and when he died, this was the one thing my dad wanted.

01:05
Vanessa Johansson
The movement and the way the forms come together as a whole, it's just quite beautiful.

01:18
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.

01:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Vanessa Johansson, an American Danish film and theater actress and voiceover artist. Welcome, Vanessa.

01:44
Vanessa Johansson
Hi. Thank you, Tina. Nice to be with you.

01:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's lovely having you with us. I presented you as an American Danish actress. Is this a fair description of you? Do you feel both American and Danish?

02:00
Vanessa Johansson
Well, I certainly feel very American. I was born in New York City to a Danish father, who's from Copenhagen, and my mother, who's a New Yorker, back a few generations. I do feel definitely connected to Denmark, grew up with a lot of the cultural things, celebrations. I have a half brother, also, from my dad's first marriage, who is full-on Danish, very Danish. So there's some family there, of course. It's for sure a part of me.

02:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are a literary director and company member of the Scandinavian American Theater Company. How did you get involved? How were you introduced to the group?

02:47
Vanessa Johansson
So I was first introduced to Albert Bendix, who was one of the founders and the artistic director of the company for most of the time it's been around. He moved back to Denmark a few years ago, but he's still on the board and very much in the DNA of the theater company.

03:10
Vanessa Johansson
We had a coffee and we hit it off and he said, oh, you have to come to a reading, which I did. And shortly after that, I was cast in one of their staged readings that they usually do in cooperation with Scandinavia House, which is a Scandinavian organization in New York City. And I had so much fun working with them. It's a great group, shifted of course over the years.

03:40
Vanessa Johansson
I think I was first involved with them in 2010, so it's been a while. And it became a way to delve a little bit deeper into my Scandinavian roots artistically. I like staying connected to my Danish side, which isn't always so easy to do in New York City. And that was a really lovely way to combine my cultural heritage with something that I love to do.

04:08
Vanessa Johansson
I've stayed very involved with them over the years and done a number of readings and fully staged productions Off-Broadway and Off-off-Broadway and just met so many lovely artists through that connection — actors, directors, playwrights.

04:34
Vanessa Johansson
Also, because I deal with a lot of the literary side, I'm in regular touch with a lot of Scandinavian publishers and representatives of different playwrights in Scandinavia. So, it's like a whole other world that opened up to me through being involved with the SATC.

04:55
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is that what it means to be a literary director, that you are in touch with the playwrights, etcetera? What does that title mean, the literary director of the company?

05:04
Vanessa Johansson
It's shifted a little bit over the past few years because since Albert left, we've turned into a bit more of a collective where we're kind of all doing a bit of each other's jobs. But I still do maintain a lot of the job of the literary director, because I was doing that before.

05:21
Vanessa Johansson
So I will reach out to different publishing houses and get new, interesting plays from a whole range of playwrights. I do a lot of reading of plays and we talk about them all in the company, decide what we wanna move forward with, what we're interested in. And some of the nitty gritty stuff, getting the contracts written up.

05:45
Vanessa Johansson
Also, sometimes plays are translated into UK English, which actually can come across very differently than American English in a play. And so sometimes we'll need new translations, and so dealing with that — kind of anything associated with that part of the theater company. And it's been really educational for me, a big learning experience.

06:13
Vanessa Johansson
And I love to read. One of our missions as a theater company is to bring new contemporary Scandinavian plays to a New York City audience. And I'm often reading cutting edge new plays. So it's really exciting. And we get a chance to bring new playwrights who may have not otherwise had an audience over here, shed a little light on their work.

06:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You mentioned Off-Broadway, Off-off Broadway. Danes might not know what that means. You are a non-profit theater. How is it run differently from a for-profit theater? And explain the term Off- and Off-off-Broadway.

06:57
Vanessa Johansson
Oh, I know. I think there's even Off-off-off-Broadway. I actually am not kidding about that. I think that's true. Broadway, as many people know, is like the West End in London. It's the main commercial theaters. And Off-Broadway — it has to do with the number of seats in the house.

07:19
Vanessa Johansson
I'm an equity actor, so that's the union for theater actors. There's different contracts with equity. I don't wanna get too in the weeds with it 'cause it's boring, but depending on if it's Off-Broadway, Off-off Broadway, a lot of it has to do with expense.

07:35
Vanessa Johansson
Theater is so expensive to put up, and unlike in Europe where there are a lot of government subsidies and arts organizations that fund things, unfortunately in the United States, it's really an uphill battle getting productions funded. The boring part of what we do as a theater company, but also very much necessary, is fundraising.

08:00
Vanessa Johansson
And so Off-off-Broadway and all of that, it's definitely less expensive to do those kinds of productions. And while I'm an actor, I'm also a voiceover artist, I'm painting, I'm a mom. I have all these things going on in my life, that's similar to other members of the theater company. We're not only doing that and so we can't really devote our full time and attention to just the theater company.

08:30
Vanessa Johansson
It's morphed over the years as we've had kids and people are doing different things with their lives. And so how we function as a theater company has changed with us as we've grown with it.

08:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you have a home? Do you have a theater where you belong? Are you a traveling group who performs in different locations in New York? I can't help but think back to Shakespeare's time when they were traveling all over the place.

08:55
Vanessa Johansson
A traveling troupe. That's so romantic. So we are very lucky to have partnered over the years with Scandinavia House and almost all of our staged readings have been there. And they have some lovely spaces. They have a regular full theater that we use often. They have some smaller rooms we can use to perform, depending on what space makes sense for the project.

09:21
Vanessa Johansson
We've moved around in their facility, and we've performed a lot at Theatre Row as well, which is on 42nd Street in the middle of the Theater District. And we've moved around to some different theaters in the city. We did perform a couple of times at festivals in DC. But most of our stuff is in New York City.

09:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have appeared in many plays and virtual play readings.You were in My Name Is Susan, Pippi Longstocking, Kinder K, The Baroness. Which plays stand out for you?

09:57
Vanessa Johansson
We've done a couple of online readings, which happened over COVID to stay connected to our community and also stay active as artists through that insane time. Pippi Longstocking was one of those really fun ones we did. And we got involved with the Astrid Lindgren Foundation, of course getting their permission and they supplied us with beautiful graphics to use and everything. So that was something very new for us because we don't regularly do online performances.

10:30
Vanessa Johansson
But as far as a favorite, oh boy, that's really tough. I think one that stands out for me is a show that was an original show. We hired playwrights to write a short play and turned it into a whole production. I think there were four shorts in it? And it was called Bastards of Strindberg. And it was an original idea from our company, to give playwrights the space to respond to "Miss Julie," but make it modern, make it current, and they could focus on any aspect of that play.

11:12
Vanessa Johansson
And that was a really cool idea. By commissioning these playwrights, we got some really new and exciting writing. And we worked with some wonderful playwrights: Dominique Morriseau, who's blown up, David Bar Katz. There were a number of playwrights that have some renown, which was really cool for us too. And it was also a bit of a larger production because it was these four different plays, and to get all that together, there was a lot of, also, physical choreography, there was dance.

11:48
Vanessa Johansson
It was a really exciting production to be a part of and it checked all the boxes. And our mission, as far as working with a lot of new different artists, is really introducing an American audience to a different kind of Scandinavian play than they're used to. When people think about who were Scandinavian playwrights, they can only name Ibsen and Strindberg. They're these wonderful but old playwrights, you know? And so to bring a new spin, that was really cool.

12:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What is the most important thing you take away from being part of this company?

12:31
Vanessa Johansson
So much. There's many different elements. There's the wonderful part of just being involved with a really talented, motivated, lovely group of artists who want to make art in New York City, which is a challenge. And there's the cultural piece, obviously, right?

12:55
Vanessa Johansson
Not just in the theater company, which is, there are Danes and Swedes, but we work with people from all over Scandinavia, bringing new artists in for different productions. It's keeping connected to that part of myself and it feels very comforting and homey for me.

13:16
Vanessa Johansson
And I just think it's so cool that we're also focusing on new plays. So to really see what's at the cutting edge of Scandinavian theater. The plays have a very different vibe. And it's interesting to also find what is that sweet spot for American audiences. Some Scandinavian theater is so out there.

13:40
Vanessa Johansson
We can't just pick any play that we think is cool. There has to be a hook for the audience here to connect with because it can sometimes be too experimental. We think about that. We did a play, Off-Broadway. We were excited to present it, 'cause it was a new playwright that was becoming really popular. Nobody really heard of him here.

14:03
Vanessa Johansson
And it never got off the ground here. It didn't gel with audiences and it was really out there. And so for us it was ooh, how's this gonna land? And we learn over time what that kind of sweet spot is.

14:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Your father is the Danish architect Karsten Johansson, who had you and your sister and brothers after he moved to New York. Why did he move to the US? What is his story?

14:31
Vanessa Johansson
Oh, well, it's a bit romantic, I suppose. My mother was traveling with my grandmother, her mother, after she graduated from high school. And they were both very much free spirits and decided they would go to Europe for a few years in a VW bus. They drove around, and they wanted to spend some time in Denmark.

14:53
Vanessa Johansson
So they settled there for what was going to be just a couple of months. And my mother met my father there and they very quickly connected and they ended up getting married. My mom stayed there for probably close to two years, and then they moved to New York City where my mom is from.

15:17
Vanessa Johansson
And for a young Danish architect, it's a pretty — in the '60s — pretty exciting place, New York City. They moved here and my dad is still here. He makes a point though. He just has his green card. He never got citizenship because he says he feels that he is just fully Danish.

15:39
Vanessa Johansson
And while he loves America, he loves New York City, he doesn't feel that he's American and so he never wanted to get his citizenship, which — oh, I hope I'm not outing him now and ah, sorry!

15:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
No, if he's this firm, he must be okay with it.

15:55
Vanessa Johansson
I hope so. He's 80-something now, so. Yeah.

15:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I would like for you to go back a little bit and remember your childhood. How much were you all influenced by his Danishness back then? How much of his Danish roots and traditions did he bring to the US and to your home?

16:14
Vanessa Johansson
It's funny, because as one is blissfully unaware of a lot of things when you're a child, you only realize a lot of stuff when you're older, and so things that were just incorporated into our life and into our holidays, just culturally, ways of being — I didn't even realize were part of Danish culture until I was older.

16:37
Vanessa Johansson
So we had Danish Christmas, and my mom very kindly made all the very traditional Danish food. And there were some Danish American organizations here, the Seamen's Church, and there was a Danish Home for the Aged that very sadly went out of business a few years ago.

16:58
Vanessa Johansson
We went to the Danish Constitution Day celebration every year. And of course, food is such a big part of culture. We had a lot of open face sandwiches. I grew to like herring. When I was a kid, I hated it.

17:16
Vanessa Johansson
I actually just had my dad over last week and I had a big Danish lunch for him, and I collected herring from all different places in the city. And it was so cute. He sat down at the table. He said, oh, I feel like I'm home again. So yeah, a lot of things here and there.

17:31
Vanessa Johansson
The one thing my dad regrets, and he says this now, almost every time I see him, is he never taught us Danish. My mother actually learned Danish when she was in Denmark and was quite a fluent speaker. When they came back to New York and had children, it became their secret parent language.

17:54
Vanessa Johansson
We would hear them talking and would never really understand. There were some words here and there, probably bad words, so I won't say them now. But we knew "I love you" and "Daddy's little girl," phrases here and there in Danish, but certainly not much more than that. And a song, a lullaby, "Den Lille Ole," that he would sing to us.

18:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Did your dad also introduce you to Danish storytelling, like Hans Christian Andersen and stuff like that when you were kids?

18:22
Vanessa Johansson
Not really. Of course, I know of his stories. I would say there's the part of my dad that can be very closed off, and in some ways, I think, that can sometimes be a quality of Danes. And I have some of that. My mother was kind of the big influence for all of us as children, with books and film and theater, and that was really her wheelhouse, storytelling and all those different media. She's always been incredibly passionate about all of that.

19:04
Vanessa Johansson
And my dad, I guess obviously being an architect — he went to the Royal Danish Academy, studied architecture there. What I really appreciated from him and connected with him on, always, was art and visual stuff. Even just walking around New York City, he would say, look up, what do you see? And we'd talk about the tops of buildings and really little details.

19:34
Vanessa Johansson
The art and architecture of his youth was Danish modern, it doesn't get more, it's the best, right? I was introduced to a lot of that as a child, and for sure influenced the choices that I make as an artist, as a painter. And that is something that I take with me all the time.

19:53
Vanessa Johansson
My dad was kind of estranged from his family when we were little. He had a tough father, who was actually quite well known, Ejner Johansson (that's the American way of saying it), he was an art historian, writer. He had a tv show. Ejner had very strong relationships with the most famous artists of that time in Denmark.

20:20
Vanessa Johansson
And so he remembers as a kid having all these artists in and out of his flat and having this very dynamic childhood with a lot of interesting personalities in and out of his home, because of his father's job.

20:36
Vanessa Johansson
Sadly, they had a difficult relationship. When he came to New York, he really cut ties for a very long time with a lot of his family. And it wasn't until I was in college, I studied abroad in London, and I became very close with my aunt, my dad's sister, who's of course Danish.

21:00
Vanessa Johansson
She moved to London when she was young. And I became very close with her and her family in London and met my half brother who lived in Copenhagen at the time. And so as a young person, I really discovered that whole side of my family much more than I ever knew as a young child.

21:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How long have you been painting?

21:24
Vanessa Johansson
A very, very long time. I studied a little bit at the Slade School of Fine Art when I was in college in London. Art has always been a part of my life and it's something I love and I really want to explore giving more of myself to it.

21:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How is that different from acting, for instance?

21:45
Vanessa Johansson
Oh, that's a good question. There's this little bit of anxiety I get every time I start on a blank canvas. It's all white! What am I gonna do? I paint abstract mostly. I start out with a lot of improvisation and kind of more watery forms and do several layers of that kind of application.

22:12
Vanessa Johansson
And then I come in and very deliberately look at the color field that I have in front of me, and make choices about where these forms and shapes should go, and of course, the relationship of the color and everything. I love this mix of improvisation and then this very deliberate planning.

22:31
Vanessa Johansson
And hopefully it all comes together in the end. And there's similarity in acting, of improvisation, the unknown. Where is it going to end up? It's very freeing for me. I have full control over what is happening, and my imagination is the limit for it. I love that element of it.

22:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You grew up in Manhattan. How was your childhood home?

23:03
Vanessa Johansson
Yes, I grew up in Manhattan, and we moved around a bit as a kid, but up until I was nine, we lived in the same apartment, which was on 86th Street on the Upper East Side. It was in a huge apartment building, one of these white brick buildings in New York City that was built in the '60s.

23:24
Vanessa Johansson
We had a pretty small apartment, I would say, for four kids, but there were two bathrooms, thank God. Otherwise, we would've been in trouble. And we had a little terrace. And I shared a room with my older brother Adrian, and the twins, my little brother and sister Scarlett and Hunter had first cribs, and then bunk beds, in their room.

23:48
Vanessa Johansson
And it was really cozy. At the time that area in Manhattan was kind of like little Germany. And so there were a lot of German shops, Schaller & Weber and Bremen House. And we always partook in all of that yummy stuff. And it was a nice spot there.

24:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You mentioned your sister Scarlett. I've spoken to her several times in interview situations over the years, and she spoke about the love of movies and theater that your mother in particular shared with you when you were kids. How did that affect you and your choice to become an actress? So it seems your mother was pretty influential.

24:35
Vanessa Johansson
She was very influential, as mothers can be. She just always had a love for cinema and an incredible knowledge base. She is the type of person that could just talk about the history of film with a real deep knowledge of different directors.

24:54
Vanessa Johansson
And she loved musicals too. We watched all the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical movies. And when we could afford it, she would take us to Broadway. She loved seeing live theater. There's this half price ticket line in New York City, the TKTS, and so we would wait in line and see what shows were available that day. And that was definitely something passed down from her father.

25:19
Vanessa Johansson
My grandfather used to take her to see shows all the time, and so he had a real love for theater as well. And being introduced to all of that, being shown really very famous movies in the history of cinema, it affected all of us, whether or not we're in the business, and enriched our lives. We all love to sing around the house. We know way too many lyrics to too many musicals, if there is such a thing.

25:52
Vanessa Johansson
As far as getting into the industry, I took acting classes as a kid for fun for a few years, but never was like, oh, this is what I wanna do. Coz I've always had these two sides of me of being very academic, but also very creative. When I was in college, I ended up getting a liberal arts degree. I studied social history, I studied art, I studied all these different things.

26:15
Vanessa Johansson
'Cause I was just interested. I'm like, oh, there's so much to learn. And then I took some acting classes as well, and I thought, I really love this and I love how it challenges me. I really love so many things about it. You can share these intimate parts of yourself and really share empathy for people in different situations.

26:39
Vanessa Johansson
And I think that is so powerful in any art, when you can help people feel things that they wouldn't necessarily feel, or feel for things or people or situations that they wouldn't necessarily feel. That is what I really connected with acting. And voiceover work shares that as well.

27:03
Vanessa Johansson
I went to The American Academy of Dramatic Arts after I graduated from college and that's a conservatory in New York City. I studied there for a few years and then I went out on my own and got to where I am today.

27:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Was the education everything you hoped for, and how did it prepare you for what was to come in the real world, so to speak? It can be very hard being an actor because you're freelance and you have to work hard to get each job.

27:35
Vanessa Johansson
Oh, for sure. Yeah, it's a cutthroat business, as most jobs in the arts are. When you're in school, you're in this little cocoon of how glorious the art is and feeling everything, and then you get out and you're like, ah. So I would say that particular school actually did not really prepare us very well for the outside world.

28:00
Vanessa Johansson
Fortunately, I had my mom and my sister who were already in the business, and so I had a good idea of what it was like. Though, of course, with most things, you don't really know until you actually go through it yourself.

28:16
Vanessa Johansson
So yeah, shortly after I graduated, I moved to LA. I was there for, I think, close to five years. And I did the whole LA thing. I was auditioning, I was doing independent films, I was waiting tables. It was very authentic.

28:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Very LA.

28:40
Vanessa Johansson
It was very LA. The weather was good. Yeah. It was very LA.

28:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are an award-winning voice actor and you have over 60 credits on your CV. How did you discover that voice acting was something that you liked?

28:55
Vanessa Johansson
I've always loved creating characters and part of that is embodying the voice. And even when I was a kid, for my little brother and sister, I would make up characters. The pillow would talk, the sheets would talk, all these characters, and they all had different voices. I do that with my kids now, we never stop playing.

29:17
Vanessa Johansson
I've always enjoyed learning new accents and figuring out the mechanics of your mouth and how you make different sounds. And when I was in acting school, my voice education was something that I took very seriously and really just loved.

29:37
Vanessa Johansson
So when I knew I was going to go down the path of acting, I always knew voice would be a part of that path. I didn't know how exactly, but when I got my first agent, I went to the voiceover department, I said, I wanna hang out here too. I started going out on voiceover auditions. It's pretty natural for actors to do.

29:59
Vanessa Johansson
When I came back to New York, I got a voiceover agent here. And I just started booking more and more work and I started getting into narration, which I'd never done before. And I am a big reader, and I love telling stories. It's just fun for me.

30:21
Vanessa Johansson
In addition, the practical side of it is, having two young children and having a home studio, I can do all of my work. Occasionally there are jobs I have to go into studio for, but I'd say 95% of my work I can do from home, and the majority of that is on my time. As a working mother, I mean, that's glorious, right? It really suited me in many different ways.

30:51
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And now that you're talking about your home studio, I can see you. The listeners cannot. Maybe tell us where you are.

30:59
Vanessa Johansson
It's a secret location.

31:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's top secret.

31:03
Vanessa Johansson
So my home studio has moved around a bit in my apartment as we've brought human beings into the world. Generally, I live in the West Village in Manhattan. And more specifically, it is in a now converted large closet. It's not as bad as it sounds. It does have a glass door, so I get light, I can see people. I'm not in a coffin here, it's very comfortable. And I spend a lot of time, and I call it my box. I spend a lot of time in my box.

31:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have narrated all kinds of books, fiction and nonfiction. What is your favorite so far?

31:48
Vanessa Johansson
Oh boy. My favorite type of book to read is historical fiction. I love historical fiction. The quality of the writing is most important. If it's a really good gripping story with fun characters, that's the best. I think the writing is paramount. Throw in a couple of fun accents, and I'm good to go.

32:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How do you do research for your work? How do you get inspired? What makes a good voice actor, and how is your process different from other kinds of acting?

32:33
Vanessa Johansson
I used to go to the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library and they have a huge selection of accents right on tape. And so I would go there and I would listen and practice. And now of course everything is online. If there's an accent that I don't know well, or something I need to brush up on, you can go on YouTube and type in whatever it is. There's the accent challenge, which is something a lot of people do, and it's a list of words and phrases that people will speak in English with their accent.

33:13
Vanessa Johansson
In addition to that, studying voice and vocal technique, I have some insight into the mechanics of how to make certain sounds, where your tongue is positioned, opening or closing certain parts of your mouth or your soft palate, your throat. That goes back to theater school. That's all stuff I learned years ago. And I find all that so fun. It's so fun.

33:39
Vanessa Johansson
And how is it different from other kinds of acting? When I'm working, most of the time I'm by myself. And I would say that's a huge difference. I'm not with the crew. I'm not with my theater buddies. It can be isolating. And one reason I really prefer working in studio, even though it's not as convenient, obviously it's not flexible, is that I love working with directors and sound tech and getting feedback.

34:13
Vanessa Johansson
So when I do have the opportunity to go into studio, I will request it depending on who I'm working with. And also there's the physicality of it. While I am physical, when I'm narrating, as much as I can be, I am sitting in a chair. I'm limited with how much I can bring my body into it.

34:31
Vanessa Johansson
And when I am doing jobs sometimes for animation and I go in studio, I am often standing because your body informs so much of what is coming out of your mouth, right? If you're doing a video game and you need to punch, you need to actually do the punch to have the sound come out and sound authentic. So sometimes it's necessary to stand, especially if you're doing more physical things in the story or with the project.

35:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You're running, for instance.

35:04
Vanessa Johansson
Oh, totally. Yeah. How do you fake that? It's ahah! ahah! ahah! It sounds ridiculous, right? You need to actually have a bit of that in your body. I was just gonna say, video games. I've worked on a bunch of video games, they can be so brutal on your voice, you just made me think about that. You're doing all these screams and fight sequences and ugh! ugh! so that's one of the more challenging jobs to do.

35:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You acted with Scarlett in Manny & Lo from 1996 and —

35:34
Vanessa Johansson
Oh my God.

35:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you were her director when she did a voiceover narrating Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

35:43
Vanessa Johansson
Yeah. That was fun.

35:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How is it working with family and in particular, her being your little sister and you being the boss, when you were directing her as a narrator?

35:53
Vanessa Johansson
Oh, it was the best, I told her what to do. It was actually really funny because we recorded in a studio and there were representatives from Audible, and everybody wanted to make sure they got what they needed. And I was directing. When you're recording in a studio like that, the actor is inside a booth, there's a big glass wall, they have their recording equipment.

36:19
Vanessa Johansson
On the other side you have the sound tech and director, and with all of the computer equipment and whatever. And so on my side there was a big red button. And every time I pushed this button, it would interrupt her and she would hear my voice, and it was so glorious. I tried not to take advantage of it too much. We had so much fun doing that.

36:39
Vanessa Johansson
Scarlett's so talented obviously. And she had really just, on the fly, created all of these voices. We discussed some of them, does this work? Should it sound more like this? And it was super fun. It was super fun working together. We're buddies, we get along really well, and are very supportive of one another.

37:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My final question to you. You've lived in New York and LA and in London. Could you ever imagine settling in Denmark?

37:09
Vanessa Johansson
My dad asks me this now. Now that he's over 80, he's like, if you weren't in New York, I would be back in Copenhagen. So I don't know if that makes me feel bad, but he's actually said to me, do you think you could live there? And I'm like, dad, is that because you wanna move back? And he's like, yes. So he's feeling very, of course, homesick, as he gets older, and he romanticizes —

37:38
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Because he's been away for a long time.

37:39
Vanessa Johansson
He's been away for a long time. I don't know if I would live there permanently because I think I would get homesick, but I could definitely see spending like a year there, something like that.

37:51
Vanessa Johansson
My cousins who grew up in England, they feel very connected to Denmark. They used to go there all the time as children. I know my cousin wants to move to Copenhagen. So I don't know, maybe we could all spend a year there together and like have our kids frolic?

38:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Family reunion in Copenhagen.

38:16
Vanessa Johansson
Family reunion.

38:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Well, Vanessa, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate that you were part of Danish Originals.

38:25
Vanessa Johansson
Of course! Yes. Thank you so much. That was very fun.

38:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It was lovely having you.

38:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Vanessa Johansson chose Richard Mortensen's Propriano from 1960 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.