Martin (Mikkelsen) and his three close friends are teachers at a secondary school and they are all finding the going tough. Then one of them discovers a Norwegian psychiatrist’s theory that maintaining a blood alcohol content of 0.05pc makes you more creative, efficient and relaxed. As that translates to a couple of drinks, the four buddies vow to bring this practice to the workplace, secretly topping up throughout the day so as to remain at all times ever so slightly plastered.

Initially, their plan works, but trouble brews when they decide to up the ante, and it seems blindingly obvious that if four men take up professional drinking, at least one of them is going to find it very hard to stop.
“It is a real theory that a psychiatrist brought to the table about eight or 10 years ago,” Mikkelsen assures me. “And I mean it doesn’t take a genius to see that after two glasses of wine or two beers, you know the conversation lifts, we get the balls to pick up the phone and make that call we would never otherwise dare to, we hit the dart board better than we ever do after 10 beers, or zero beers, right?

“So there’s actually something in there, there’s a reason why alcohol has been around for six or seven thousand years. It’s always been a tool for creativity, or just daring, you know, loosening up your shoulders, so these guys, they put their mind to testing it. But there is obviously a big difference between two beers and two bottles of wine, and that’s where it goes wrong.”

Secret drinking regime
Mikkelsen’s character has lost his way as a teacher, and as a man. “Yes and he’s not even aware of it until he sits down to this birthday party at the beginning of the film, and it dawns on him that he’s standing on the platform and the train has left. And he becomes full of self-pity: he’s in a bad spot, he’s forgotten why he loves his family, he’s forgotten why he loves his wife, or his job.”

When he and his friends start their secret regime of daytime tippling, Martin quickly regains his zest for life. “Yeah, he starts to fly, and he becomes a much better teacher, or actually the teacher he used to be, and he’s also a better husband and father. So, yeah, at the beginning, the experiment is definitely a success, at least for him,” he says.

Did he and his co-stars do any method-style research into the various states of tipsiness? “Yeah,” he says, “we did a boot camp! Not just to see what it was like to be drunk because the four of us — and including the director — we had enough experience to cope with that, but we wanted to test out specifically what happens at the specific levels they’re trying out, like 0.05pc, 0.08pc and so forth.

“We wanted to see what happens to your speech, and the way you move, and we shot all that on video and we had a great time doing it.”

But acting drunk is hard, and the trick, they say, is to play someone pretending they’re not drunk. “It’s true that, to a degree, you will try to hide it, like you would in your personal life, if you come home straight from work but you dropped into the pub first. And that’s the trick for the early stage of this. But of course later on we have to go into the Charlie Chaplin level, more ballistic, and for that we just watched a ton of YouTube videos of Russian people who were hammered. Very inspiring.”

Is it harder to play a little bit drunk, or very drunk? “I think it’s easier to be a little bit tipsy, the little speech slur, and a little more precise in the movements; you walk a little bit more straight than you would normally. Everything becomes a little stiffer, and I think that is easier than to go for full-blown crazy-don’t-care.”

But for all its initial high spirits, Another Round is not flippant about alcohol and the misery it can cause. When the four men ramp up their experiment, drunkenness and familial irresponsibility have a big impact on all their lives, and addiction rears its ugly head.
Was there much controversy about the film when it was first released in Denmark? “We have a lot in common in Ireland and Denmark when it comes to drinking and the way we sometimes go all in for it,” Mikkelsen tells me, “but it can be a problem too and we did expect there to be some debate about it.

“But it was released during Covid and after the lockdowns, and I think people were just craving life again, so really wanted to watch it, and for that reason the debate has been surprisingly small — people have embraced it for what it essentially is, a life-affirming film.”

Mikkelsen’s performance is the heart of Another Round: his stillness, and ability to soundlessly convey deep emotions, are remarkable. But acting wasn’t always the plan: he spent almost a decade working as a professional dancer, and turned to drama comparatively late.

“I did my first film when I was 30,” he recalls, “and I wasn’t even graduated at that point. So yeah, I graduated very late, and I think that was good for a lot of reasons. I was a very immature man/boy/whatever, still am, so that timing was good for me.”

Does he mind that English and American directors always ask him to play villains?

“Not at all. To be honest I did not grow up watching French films, I watched American films, adventure films, and all of a sudden I got the offer to be part of that childhood thing, have a sword in your hand, sit on horseback and do cool things, which was marvellous.

“My own base was rooted in Danish drama, and I also had that side of things, and everybody was saying you have to choose, and I thought why do I have to, why can’t I be both, you know?

“And so I really enjoy the contrast. I approach it that way still, and if for the rest of my life I have to play a baddie over there because of my funny accent, I’m fine. It’s better than not playing anything over there.”

Bond scene
Was it hard, at first, going from European arthouse films to large-scale Hollywood productions? “Well, I had to get used to the fact that I wasn’t just best pals with the director, and that I couldn’t just call at four in the morning because I’ve had a great idea. That’s not how it works over there. I’ve figured it out at this stage, but in the beginning I was a little bit frustrated that we couldn’t just go rock and roll with everything.

“I remember there was an episode with me and Daniel Craig when we did the Bond film, and we rehearsed the torture scene and we had so many great ideas, and at first the director Martin Campbell was very open to it, and used a lot of it. But at a certain point he said ‘guys, guys, come back, it’s a Bond film!’ We had both come from independent movies, and he needed to just remind us what we were doing there. It was a good lesson, because you can’t go all indie on a Bond film.”

When we speak, Mikkelsen is in London working on Fantastic Beasts 3, on which he was drafted in to take over the part of Gellert Grindelwald from Johnny Depp. A tricky assignment, one would imagine — did he make reference to Depp’s portrayal, or try something completely different?

“A combination, really. I watched what he did, and I read the scripts, and watched what he did again, and then together with the director we discussed how we can create a bridge between what he did and what we’re gonna do.

“Obviously I can’t just copy it. I’ll have to find my own way, but then again we have to find some link. So we found some things that could link those two worlds together. But having said that, I’m taking no pleasure in taking over from Johnny Depp — he’s a wonderful, fantastic actor.”
Mikkelsen, meanwhile, is very proud of Another Round, a remarkable film that was completed under a shadow due to the death of Thomas Vinterberg’s daughter Ida, who was killed in a car crash aged 19 four days into the shoot.

“I’m proud of the film because of what it ended up being,” he says, “but also because of the journey, that journey was obviously the most brutal journey we ever had on a film, and heartbreaking.

“So that was a tribute to Thomas’s daughter and I think we all finished the film just to make her proud.”

‘Another Round’ is out in cinemas from July 2