I veckan stod det klart att de tre låtskrivarna Savan Kotecha, Fat Max Gsus och Rickard Göransson nomineras till en Oscar för balladen ”Húsavík” i Netflix-serien ”Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga”. Savan Kotecha har arbetat med flera stora stjärnor som Britney Spears och Ariana Grande och han har precis flyttat till Östermalm. Vi ringde upp!
Where were you when you heard “Húsavík” has been nominated for an
Oscar and how did you react?
– I was in the studio in Stockholm listening through ideas for another film I’m
going to work on. It was a fun moment, one of my co-writers of “Husavik” was
down the hall and he’s a fairly new/young writer, so I ran to his room and
banged on the door and screamed “Call your family, you’ve got an Oscar
nomination!!” It was fun.
You have already been nominated for a Grammy and a Golden Globe – what
does the Oscar nomination mean to you?
– To me, the Oscars are the ‘holy grail’ of entertainment awards. So this is by
far the most exciting thing I’ve been blessed enough to be up for!
How is this song special to you and did you know immediately that it was
going to be a hit?
– There were a lot of versions we did of the song
since the movie script and the character arcs were developing constantly before
they started shooting. At the time before they started shooting we were just
trying to get the balance between emotion and comedy right. In the original
script when Sigrid hits that big long note at the end, the audience was going
to all have an orgasm! But when the director saw how much heart Rachel McAdams
brought to the character, we all realized it needed to be more emotional. Once
I saw one of the edits of the movie in the editing room, I got goosebumps and knew
we had something special.
Favorite Oscar song of all times?
– Gosh … there’s been so many. I really love “Streets of Philadelphia”, a lot of the Disney winners like “A whole new world” or “Can you feel the love tonight’ . I thought “Shallow” was such an incredible song as well.
Will you be at the Oscar via Zoom or how will the event happen this year?
– That part I don’t know. We’re living in Sweden right now and if I go it means my wife can’t go (because of our kids) and I would really want to share it with her. So if I can Zoom it, I may prefer to do that and experience it with my wife and kids.
Oscarsgalan 2021 sänds den 25 april och kan i Sverige ses i TV4, TV4 Play och C More.