‘Queen of Hearts’ Star Trine Dyrholm to Play Tove Ditlevsen in ‘Dependency,’ Produced by Piv Bernth’s Apple Tree (EXCLUSIVE)
Leading Danish actor Trine Dyrholm, who headlined Oscar winner “In a Better World” and Sundance Audience Award winner “Queen of Hearts,” is to star in four-part miniseries “Dependency.”
Maren-Louise Käehne, whose credits include “Queen of Hearts,” “Blackwater” and “The Legacy,” has written the screenplay, which is adapted from the autobiographical novel of the same name by Danish poet and author Tove Ditlevsen.
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Apple Tree Productions, the Danish company headed by “The Killing” producer Piv Bernth and Lars Hermann, is producing the show, and Danish broadcaster TV2 is on board, Bernth told Variety at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival.
Ditlevsen will be played by four actors in four periods of her life, from the late 1930s to her death in 1976, with Dyrholm playing the author and poet in her final years.
The miniseries starts on the final day of her life as she tidies up her financial affairs and delivers her last manuscript to her publisher. The events of this day, culminating in her suicide, frame the miniseries.
Ditlevsen was born into a poverty-stricken family, but developed a strong reputation as a writer. She was married four times and became a drug addict, before going into rehab. “She always wanted something more,” Bernth said, “but writing was the love of her life.” In Danish, “Dependency” has the title “Gift,” which translates as both “marriage” and “poison.” “It’s a female story about trying to find your place in life,” Bernth said.
Dorthe Riis Lauridsen, whose credits include Netflix’s “Equinox” and “Baby Fever,” and “Chorus Girls,” is producing “Dependency” for Apple Tree.
The project was previously being developed by Nordisk Film, which is no longer attached.
Dyrholm’s recent credits include “The Girl With the Needle,” which played in competition at this year’s Cannes, and mother-daughter cruise ship rape drama “Birthday Girl.”
Bernth also told Variety that Apple Tree is reteaming with the creative duo behind feelgood period drama “Chorus Girls,” Ditte Hansen and Louise Mieritz.
Hansen and Mieritz are co-writing and will co-direct a comedy-drama series set in a shopping mall in contemporary Denmark with the working title “Feelings and Things.” Bernth said it will have the same underlying message as “Chorus Girls”: “We are stronger together.”
TV2 is a partner on the show, which will go into production next year.
Bernth said Apple Tree’s Danish-U.S. co-production about a Danish hit man, which was to have been co-produced by ITV Studios America, is on hold. The director was to have been Mikkel Norgaard. The writer is Eric Devlin Taylor.
Bernth also revealed that Apple Tree has a feature film in development, which has been pitched to Netflix, but its core business remains fiction series, she said.
Apple Tree is majority-owned by ITV Studios.
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