MURDER ‘INK’
Katja Herbers & her vengeful ‘Columnist’
Katja Herbers’ murderous journalist in “The Columnist” is bad news for her critics.
The Amsterdam-born actress stars in the Dutch dark comedy-horror film as an opinion writer who tracks down and kills social media trolls who post misogynistic comments and death wishes about her — a satire Herbers finds both timely and intriguing.
“She’s so entirely fed up and she’s at her wits’ end, and I liked that,” Herbers, 40, told the Daily News.
“She just tips over. She goes into this kind of psychosis,” she continued. “You don’t ever see her in a happy place. She starts off in a very unhappy, frustrated place, and then she goes on these killing sprees, and is all of a sudden pretty happy. She’s able to write again. She feels pretty good after each killing, which is absurd.”
Herbers’ revenge-driven Femke Boots is introduced as a writer who can’t stop herself from reading the toxic tweets posted after her columns, including one in which she condemned a Dutch tradition that features a character in blackface.
At the start of “The Columnist” — available Friday on video on demand, digital platforms like iTunes and Amazon and virtual cinemas — Femke feels helpless after initially taking her concerns to unsympathetic police.
Herbers believes the movie shows “words really can hurt,” especially when they’re threatening.
“Those things are really, really awful, and I don’t think we really know how to deal with that yet because it’s new,” Herbers said of social media. “We haven’t had this for a long time. Femke, my character, goes to the police and they don’t really know what to do. They’re just like, ‘Maybe don’t read it? Maybe just cut your Wi-Fi?’ “
The movie feels especially relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic, with people spending so much time inside staring at screens, Herbers says.
“Anyone who’s in the public eye is getting these kinds of comments every once in a while,” Herbers said. “I know I have. I like the character very much because she’s so completely hypocritical. On one hand, she says, ‘Can’t we all just be nice, and disagree, but be nice about it?’ And she’s not able to do that. She’s helping her daughter with this free speech assignment, yet she ends people’s lives if they say something wrong to her.”
While Herbers says Femke is “in no way” a heroine, the actress believes audiences still cheer for her because they see the cruel comments she faces.
“In order to get to those extreme emotions, I had to stay sort of irritable,” Herbers explained. “I had to put up a bit of a shield of general discomfort around me because she wasn’t comfortable in her own skin and was just annoyed by everything.”
Herbers’ other roles include Emily Grace in HBO’s dystopian drama series “Westworld” and a leading gig on the supernatural CBS show “Evil,” in which she plays a forensic psychologist exploring strange occurrences. “Evil” is currently filming its second season, which Herbers says is “going to be even more bonkers.”
She enjoys portraying characters who go to extremes.
“Whenever the stakes are maybe high,” Herbers says, “that’s where the fun acting is.”