The Wrong Girls: Christensen on Villain Role in Ensemble Stoner Comedy

Posted in: Interview, Movies, NEON | Tagged: The Wrong Girls, Thomas La Barbera Christensen

The Wrong Girls: Christensen on Villain Role in Ensemble Stoner Comedy

The Wrong Girls star Thomas Christensen spoke to us about the Neon ensemble stoner comedy, playing a straight Danish villain, and more.

Published Sun, 30 Aug 2026 18:47:08 -0500
by Tom Chang
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Last updated Sun, 30 Aug 2026 19:04:29 -0500
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Article Summary

• The Wrong Girls star Thomas La Barbera Christensen reveals how he landed the Danish villain role of Axel.
• Christensen praises director Dylan Meyer and explains building Axel through backstory, language, and Danish quirks.
• The Wrong Girls mixes straight-faced menace and chaos, with Christensen nearly breaking during Alia Shawkat scenes.
• Christensen shares favorite The Wrong Girls moments, from ensemble chats on set to Axel’s wild squid death scene.

In the fine tradition of Seth Rogen stoner comedies, NEON's The Wrong Girls is one of a kind with its talented female leads, Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat, playing two co-dependent best friends, Frankie and Molly, living paycheck to paycheck and bong rip to bong rip, who get caught in a case of mistaken identity that throws their lives into chaos. When they stumble upon an experimental substance, they find out they're way in over their heads as they're on the run from Danish enforcers led by Axel, played by Thomas La Barbera Christensen. The actor spoke with Bleeding Cool about the opportunity to play a role where he speaks his native language, working with writer-director Dylan Meyer (Moxie), the stacked ensemble cast he got to work with, including an Arrested Development reunion between Shawkat and Tony Hale, and his favorite scene involving a mollusk. The following contains spoilers.

The Wrong Girls Stars Thomas La Barbera Christensen on Playing a Straight Villain in a Zany Stoner Comedy

BC: What intrigued you about The Wrong Girls, and how did you get involved?

Christensen: When I got that audition from my agent, I was thrilled because I saw "a Danish villain" in an independent Hollywood movie, so I was like, "Wow! This is exciting. Okay, I really want this one," and then I sent in a self-tape that I did with my good friend, Brian, and then forgot about it. A couple of months later, my agent tells me that I'm on hold for this project, and I get even more intrigued. "Okay, great, then it was interesting. I had my own little mental process of visualizing what I wanted to do, why, and how cool this could be, and then things slowly started happening. They got back to me. I had a meeting with Dylan over Zoom as a callback with the casting office, Chrystie Street Casting, and I had to send in tapes in Danish. I had to send in tapes in English. I'm originally from Denmark, born and raised. They specifically wanted Danish villains, and then, yeah, when I got the job, I was just doing the happy dance downstairs next to my kids.

What's it like working with Dylan as a creative?

Well, she's really cool. She's a really calm, well-spoken, and chill girl. She's very comfortable to work with, so it was a joy. Also on set, she knew what she wanted, and if she had any corrections, she would say them very specifically, and she was just a really calm, chill, amazing woman.

When you're playing Axel, aside from the script, was there anything else you channeled as far as that helped your performance?

Yeah, I wrote a backstory, and I imagined who this guy could be, who he was working for in Denmark, who his boss was, why they wanted what they wanted, what his intention was, and the guys next to him- who were they? I'm being very specific with the character, then going back and seeing certain Danish clips and movies that I know. Then Thomas [Nicholson] and I translated our own lines into Danish. Dylan asked us to do that, and they probably have someone checking it as well, so we just had a blast translating into Danish and doing little Danish quirks and stuff with it.

Given how serious the role you play, were there times when filming some of those comedic scenes got to you and broke down during some takes?

Yeah, I remember specifically with Alia. We were inside. When we were inside the mansion, and my character pretends not to speak English, right? She's like doing all this, like, "Have you ever had drugs?" or whatever she says in, like, an acid trip. She was doing all this freaking miming (waves his hands) in front of me. I had to be very serious, stare at her, and shake my head. That was hilarious because she would be, she would be improvising. I broke a couple of times when I had that scene with Alia, for sure.

What did you like working with Kristen and Alia, and the way they carried themselves on screen with their chemistry?

Yeah, I can see it from the first day being on set. We're obviously not always together. They have their space and so on, and I can see that they were tight, that they were friends, and have done things before together. I definitely got the idea that they're very tight in the scenes already as we came in doing our parts as the Danes. They had already worked through certain things that I could see that they had a great dynamic, and knew each other, not to mention already having that telepathic thing that they have in the movie

You got such a talented ensemble here going here, and you got some pretty big star power there with Cate [Blanchett], Tony [Hale], LaKeith [Stanfield], not to mention Seth [Rogen] and Kumal [Nanjiani] voicing cats. Did you have any chance to talk with any of them to perhaps poke their brains and strike up a conversation in between your scenes?

Yeah, for sure. Talking with Alia, we both have kids; she had a one-year-old at that point. We're talking about that, and also with Kristen, I remember she was doing the first cut of her movie, her directorial debut, 'The Chronology of Water.' She was going through the book; I could see her working on that, and we were talking about that. LaKeith had his own heater with his name on it. I thought that was fun. I didn't get to chat as much with LaKeith, but a little bit. He has a really cool car that we were talking about. With Tony Hale, we had a good talk at the mansion there. We were outside in the backyard and talking about acting and our careers, things like that, so he was a really cool guy. I had a great talk with Tony. He was a very nice dude.

What are some of your favorite scenes from the film? How was the stunt work? Was it run-of-the-mill?

Yeah, I had a big scene at the end with a squid. I'm not going to reveal too much; I don't know, and this thing is hand-built, right, with lights in it. This van pulled up, stopped, and then out came these six or eight arms, like 20 feet long. I'm like, "Okay, there's the thing, okay, we're going down to the dock, and this is my last scene. It's my last day of shooting. It's 4 a.m. in the morning. It's raining at this dock in San Pedro (Los Angeles), and I knew I had to die, right? My character's dying."

Dylan was very chill. She was like, "All right, this is the most important scene you've ever done. This is your scream of death." It's like, "Yeah, yep, I know, okay." I had to psych myself up for that scene, and that felt like a lot of pressure, and then when I saw it, it was fairly simple. Just building up that thing was fun, and Kristen was there next to me because I had a harness on. They had to pull me next to the camera, and she was like, "Are you okay, dude? You've been lying there for 40 minutes. Hey, guys, can we get this done? He's just lying there in the rain and the dirt," but I was happy. I was like, "This is great. That's what I want to do."

What's next for you? Are there any genres or maybe more comedies like this one you want to do or do more of?

Yeah, for sure. I do love comedies. I love that way of playing things seriously that aren't serious and bouncing up against other actors with that kind of comedy. I also enjoy dark comedy. I think the world needs more of it. Yeah, I definitely love to do more comedy. I'm looking forward to it now that I did a movie in Danish. I'm looking forward to working more with my Danish filmmakers and Scandinavian filmmakers, and I have a movie called 'Hard to Say' that's coming out very soon. I'm in a movie called 'Reset' with Lucy Liu is part of, that just went to Montreal. I'm excited to see what's coming my way, you know? I'm just ready to rock and roll.

The Wrong Girls, which also stars Geena Davis, Kate McKinnon, Thor Knai, ZacK Fox, and Sugar Lyn Beard, is in theaters.

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