THOMAS LA BARBERA CHRISTENSEN IS HAVING WAY TOO MUCH FUN BEING THE BAD GUY

The Danish actor brings icy precision, manicured menace, and a very specific sense of humor to NEON’s The Wrong Girls—while proving there’s a lot more to him than playing villains.

There are easier ways to make an entrance in Hollywood than climbing into a car with Kristen Stewart in the backseat, trying not to fanboy while simultaneously pretending to be a terrifying Danish criminal.

For Thomas La Barbera Christensen, that was day one on The Wrong Girls.

“I had to remind myself to stay in character,” he says. “Not fanboying. Focus Thomas!”

The moment is particularly fitting for an actor whose career has been built around doing the unexpected. Christensen has moved comfortably between daytime television, comedy, period drama, theater, design, and film, with credits that include General Hospital, Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, CBS’s 9JK, and David Fincher’s HBO project Video Synchronicity. Now, in NEON’s stoner action comedy The Wrong Girls, he gets to unleash an entirely different side of himself.

Directed by Dylan Meyer and starring Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat, the film follows Frankie and Molly as a seemingly simple situation involving a suitcase spirals into chaos. Christensen plays Axel, the impeccably composed leader of a trio of “icy, manicured, and terrifying” Danes sent to retrieve it.

His response to the role?

“Thank you, baby Jesus!”

It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate reaction to a movie that Christensen himself describes in three words: “Weed, Danes and blækspruttesæd.”

And yes, the squid is apparently important.

THE DANISH VILLAIN

What attracted Christensen to The Wrong Girls wasn’t simply the opportunity to play a bad guy opposite a major cast. It was the script itself.

“When we got the full script what captivated me was the script’s fearless comedic ambition,” he says. “Its world is meticulously constructed, balancing absurdity with precision, while the comedy emerges from a cast of deeply eccentric, morally ambiguous characters.”

For Christensen, that combination was refreshing.

Rather than trying to manufacture the comedy himself, he approached Axel with complete seriousness. The trick to making an intimidating character funny, he says, is not to play the joke.

“I make sure my character, Axel, is fully committed to his choices however comedic it’s supposed to be. The comedy is in the writing and then all I can do as an actor is commit fully to this character and have a rich inner life.”

That commitment gives Axel his particular flavor of menace. He doesn’t begin as a cartoon villain. He’s controlled. Precise. Completely convinced that he is the most competent person in the room.

Then things start falling apart.

“There’s something incredibly satisfying about playing a villain who begins as impeccably composed, icy, and in complete control, only to gradually unravel into glorious chaos,” Christensen says. “I love that arc.”

Naturally, getting there required one major adjustment: Christensen had to forget something he’d spent years perfecting.

His American accent.

FORGET EVERYTHING YOU LEARNED

Christensen is fluent in Danish, English, German, and Spanish, and he spent years developing his American accent. Then The Wrong Girls came along and asked him to throw all that work out the window.

Initially, returning to his natural Danish voice felt almost unnatural.

“It felt like undoing years of muscle memory,” he says.

Working with fellow Danish performers Thomas Nicholson and Thor Knai, Christensen began translating the dialogue and rediscovering the cadence of his native language. Something else returned along with it: Danish humor.

“Once we found that rhythm, the performances became playful.”

The Danish trio even had freedom to put their own spin on some of their dialogue, adding little Danish quirks along the way.

Which means audiences may want to pay attention when those subtitles appear.

“When you see the movie and read the subtitles, let me know and I’ll add more info to it,” Christensen teases.

TRYING NOT TO LAUGH

Playing terrifying Danish criminals sounds intimidating in theory. In practice, working opposite Alia Shawkat apparently made keeping a straight face considerably more difficult.

Christensen’s favorite scene involved Shawkat attempting to sell Axel the drugs inside the suitcase. Believing Axel doesn’t speak English, her character communicates entirely through exaggerated physical gestures and facial expressions.

“Just stupid, funny facial expressions and physical contortions,” he says. “She had me cracking up.”

He is equally enthusiastic about Shawkat’s improvisational instincts.

“She is such a comedic genius with freckles. She must get nominated for this movie!”

Stewart also left an impression, though for a completely different reason.

Christensen’s first day involved driving a car with Stewart in the backseat, where he could hear her acting out the fear of being abducted by Danes without actually being able to see her.

Later, on his final scene, the production found itself shooting on a dock at 3 a.m. in the rain. Christensen was lying on the ground while a harness was being attached, and Stewart was concerned about whether he was cold and whether he was doing okay.

“Kristen is such a kind soul with a wild spirit,” he says.

It’s a small detail, but one that seems to capture Christensen’s experience on the production. Despite the mayhem onscreen, he remembers the set as unusually joyful.

“It doesn’t feel like work, I just got to play.”

THE DIRECTOR WHO LET THEM PLAY

For Dylan Meyer, The Wrong Girls marks her feature directorial debut. Christensen says her greatest strength was knowing when to let her actors take over.

“She placed a tremendous amount of trust in her actors, giving us the freedom to fully inhabit our characters.”

Meyer’s direction, he says, was light but precise. When something needed adjusting, she communicated exactly what she wanted without disrupting the collaborative atmosphere.

And there was one particularly useful sign that the comedy was landing.

“Hearing her giggle after a take became my own quiet measure that we were finding the comedy she’d imagined on the page.”

For Christensen, that trust extended to the Danish dialogue. The actors were allowed to make the language feel natural rather than overly polished, giving the Danish characters their own rhythm and personality.

The result is a villain who can be threatening without becoming predictable—and funny without ever seeming like he’s in on the joke.

A CAREER BUILT ON VARIETY

If Axel feels like a departure for Christensen, that’s precisely the point.

His résumé doesn’t follow one obvious path. He’s worked in soap operas, comedy, period action, theater, and film. For Relic, he trained extensively in Zweihänder swordsmanship and performed an especially tricky sequence involving a backwards sword strike while hitting a sock hanging from a clothesline.

He practiced the move repeatedly during lunch until he finally nailed it.

For Christensen, that kind of preparation is simply part of the job.

“As an actor in L.A. I’m just happy to work,” he says. “Any exciting opportunity to play and work I would take it. Practice my craft, forge connections.”

Variety, he says, has always been important to him.

“I’ve always been a man of variety and need different ways of expressing myself. Often choosing the road less travelled.”

That mentality extends beyond acting.

THE JAZZ LIFE

For years, Christensen has been part of the world surrounding Herb Alpert’s celebrated Vibrato Grill Jazz in Los Angeles. He’s witnessed more than 2,500 live performances there and has even performed with a 15-piece big band.

The experience has influenced how he thinks about acting.

“The best performers make every moment fresh and exciting and emotional,” he says. “Even if you’ve done this hundred or thousand times before find a way to make it fresh.”

And yes, if a filmmaker offered him a singing role tomorrow?

“Of course I would sing in a movie tomorrow!”

His long-term ambition is even more specific: a vocal jazz album.

“The vocal jazz album has to happen. Otherwise I’ll kick myself in the gonads.”

Considering how many talented musicians he has encountered through Vibrato, it doesn’t sound like an impossible dream.

DAD, COACH, DESIGNER, FUTURE FILMMAKER

Away from sets, Christensen’s life is just as varied.

He’s a father of two, and his children remain far less impressed by his Hollywood connections than an outsider might expect.

“They just want their dad home for dinner and able to play soccer with them.”

He’s also spent years coaching and refereeing young soccer players, an experience that has apparently taught him patience.

“Coaching and reffing 7-8 years olds is pretty challenging. Shout out to volunteers and teachers!”

Then there’s fashion. Christensen has a background in graphic design, advertising, and fashion, and he’s currently developing his own label, hand-sketching designs, developing samples, and working directly with factories.

Unlike acting, he says, fashion gives him considerably more control.

“It’s very hands on and easier to control than acting.”

His creative ambitions don’t stop there. He’s developing an action-drama screenplay set in Greenland involving a marine biologist, mysterious wildlife deaths, geopolitics, Greenlandic culture, ancient mythology, and an Inuit heroine whose ancestral knowledge suggests some mysteries can’t be explained by science alone.

And then there’s the dream project.

An Indiana Jones-style adventure filmed across Europe.

His first sequence?

A nighttime camel chase around the Egyptian pyramids leading into a Cairo marketplace.

“It has to be dusty, dangerous and full of old charm adventure!”

Honestly, we’d watch that.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE DANISH BAD GUY?

Christensen has already decided he isn’t finished with Axel.

Asked which role from his career he’d like to revisit, his answer is immediate:

“I’m ready for Wrong Girls 2!”

It makes sense. Axel has all the ingredients of a character audiences could have fun seeing again: the immaculate appearance, the Danish royal crown pin on his lapel, the devotion to the Danish royal family, the escalating frustration, and—somewhere in the middle of all that—the mysterious handmade squid prop Christensen would most like to steal from the set.

But if Hollywood doesn’t call with a Wrong Girls sequel, there are plenty of other possibilities.

He’s still chasing the vocal jazz album. He’s building a fashion label. He’s developing a Greenland-set thriller. And somewhere in the back of his mind is a Bond villain.

Specifically, Goldfinger.

“I would give my take on Auric Goldfinger!”

For an actor who has spent his career moving between languages, genres, countries, and creative disciplines, it feels less like a stretch than a logical next step.

After all, Thomas La Barbera Christensen seems most comfortable when he’s doing something unexpected.

And perhaps that’s the real appeal of Axel.

He isn’t just a Danish villain.

He’s another stop on an unusually adventurous career.

Photo credit: David Zaugh