Sebastian Stan: Nuance is inherent to who we are

Sebastian Stan thinks "nuance is inherent to who we are".

The 44-year-old actor plays a conservative Romanian father who faces religious discrimination after relocating his family to his wife’s progressive hometown in Norway in Fjord, the new legal thriller film, and Sebastian has explained that compassion is at the core of the story.

Speaking at the New York Film Festival, Sebastian - who was born in Romania and immigrated to the United States at 12 - reflected: "This is my point of view, just about movies and the times that we’re currently finding ourselves in.

"We have to have the courage to recognize our own flaws, no matter what our belief systems are as human beings, and how that might affect our judgment of each other, and also how it pertains to raising the next future generation, our children, to whom we are ultimately in service.

"We have to remember that there’s more to it than just simply being right, and that doubt still serves a purpose and nuance is inherent to who we are."

Cristian Mungiu, the director, explained that Fjord is inspired by real-life cases in Scandinavian countries.

The filmmaker observed that Fjord encourages fans to have "a tolerance for people in the minority, even when [they] don’t agree with their opinion".

Cristian added: "This film is not made only after investigating one case. I investigated several cases, and I noticed this pattern where families [were] coming from more conservative societies to Scandinavia.

"In most of these cases, you don’t really know what kind of violence it was, or if there was violence. Most of these decisions that people need to make involving children are based on assumptions, and when you base your decisions on assumptions, your own stereotypes about the values of the other can make you unbalanced in one direction."

Sebastian stars alongside Renate Reinsve in Fjord, and he previously admitted that he loved working with the actress.

The movie star - who previously worked with Renate on 2024's A Different Man - told Deadline: "Renate is such a gifted actor and she’s so generous, not only as a person, but as an artist, and in terms of how she works, it’s very collaborative and she gives everything to every moment.

"Obviously, we’d had A Different Man and that was great. This was going to be a very different relationship and a different way of working from that. But I’m such a fan of hers, obviously from [her film] The Worst Person in the World.

"I remember Cristian asking me what I thought about working with her, and I just said, ‘You’ve got to hurry up and get her. It’s going to be great.’ So that also just felt very natural the way everything was coming together."