After falling in love with a Swedish girl, Greg Poehler uprooted his life in New York and moved to Sweden. Here’s what he learned through the culture shock, which he’s now retelling on his NBC sitcom Welcome to Sweden .
Greg Poehler doesn't play himself on Welcome to Sweden, but the series — which ran its first season to high ratings in Sweden and is now airing on NBC — is heavily based on his personal experiences. Poehler plays Bruce Evans, a celebrity accountant who relocates to Sweden after falling in love with Emma Wiik (Josephine Bornebusch). The series explores the cultural differences Bruce faces when he meets Emma's parents, Viveka (Lena Olin) and Birger (Claes Månsson), and tries to adjust to Swedish culture.
Poehler, who moved to Sweden from New York in 2006, talked to BuzzFeed about his actual experiences as an American in a foreign country, and how they've informed his sitcom.
NBC
The language is REALLY hard to learn.
"It's still hard," Poehler admitted. "I speak Swedish at like a seven-year-old level. My six-year-old son's friends think I'm cool, and my eight-year-old son's friends think I'm a moron, a total fucking moron. So seven is the cut-off where I start to lose my audience." Swedish is a very different sounding language, Poehler noted. It also doesn't help that most Swedes speak English and would rather do that than try to converse in broken Swedish: "If I start speaking Swedish to someone and then they find out I'm American, they're offended that we're having this horribly difficult conversation we could have just been speaking English."
Everyone is beautiful. Everyone.
Sorry, no exceptions. "In the back of your head, you’re thinking, Well, how beautiful can they be? And it turns out, really fucking beautiful," Poehler said. "It’s weird. It’s almost like a new planet of hot people." According to Poehler, a Swedish 5 is an American 12.
And nudity is no big deal.
That's why you'll see it on Welcome to Sweden — er, the Swedish version, at least. "Nudity’s not a thing for them. I mean, it is a thing, but it’s a thing that’s constantly around," Poehler said. His kids swim naked all summer and then have to deal with their own culture shock when they come to the U.S. and have to cover up. But Poehler believes the nudity is actually a good thing: "Even at a young age, you can just see how accepting they are of nudity and their bodies."
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