Stuti Gokhale
Directed by Jonas Åkerlund, Netflix’s ‘Clark‘ is a compelling crime drama TV series that delves into the life of the infamous Swedish robber Clark Olofsson, who gained international notoriety after the 1973 Norrmalmstorg bank robbery that resulted in the creation of the term Stockholm Syndrome. In the series, a journalist named Sussi Korsner arrives in prison to interview Clark while writing his biography.
In the process, Sussi ends up tapping into not just Clark’s elaborate criminal career but also his multiple relationships and childhood trauma. Since a majority of the characters are based on actual people in Clark’s life, viewers wonder whether Sussi exists in reality as well. Let’s find out the answer to that, shall we? SPOILERS AHEAD.
Is Sussi Korsner a Real Person?
No, Sussi Korsner is not based on any real person. She is likely a fictional representation of the journalists who may have interviewed Clark Olofsson throughout his life. In ‘Clark,’ Sussi arrives at the Kumla Prison in June 1980, where he is incarcerated after robbing 930,000 SEK from the Handelsbanken in Gothenberg. The on-screen Clark narrates that writers in Sweden are eager to write his biography, but he chooses Sussi due to her good looks. However, he is rather surprised when she refuses to give in to his charms, unlike some women he has met in life.
Regardless, Clark continues trying to flirt with Sussi, but she quickly establishes her no-nonsense nature and asserts that she means business. As their conversations proceed, he tries to paint a rather flamboyant picture of his life in front of her. Unabashedly, Clark boasts about his criminal escapades and countless brushes with the law but gets startled when Sussi asks him to delve deeper and speak about his childhood. This forces him to mentally relive the trauma he endured as a young boy at the hands of his father, and he refuses to disclose that chapter of his life to her.
Instead, Clark asks Sussi to focus on the good aspects of his life and write the book as per his wishes. Sussi soon realizes that there is more to what Clark is hiding. Despite his denial, she starts investigating more about his early days. Meanwhile, he constantly keeps evading her questions about his family and just states that his father is not worth mentioning elaborately in his biography. Later, Sussi asks him about his relationships with Maria and Madou, but her queries are again dodged by an annoyed Clark, who asks her to focus on his present and not the past.
For the next few years, Sussi becomes an active spectator of Clark’s life. Her perspective of Clark slightly changes when she notices him as a doting father to his and Marijke’s first son after his release from prison in 1983. But when Sussi tells him that she has been secretly interviewing his acquaintances and former girlfriends, Clark gets enraged and forbids her from contacting anyone except him. Clark feels he has the sole right to create the narrative for his book and wants to be depicted as a national hero than the flawed man he really is.
In his heart, Clark knows that he has wronged a lot of people, but to keep up his façade of being a celebrity criminal, he chooses to brush it aside. As the series ends, Clark is arrested again in 1984 for a drug-smuggling operation and sentenced to ten years in prison. Sometime later, Sussi visits him in prison and shows him the completed manuscript of his biography. However, she bluntly refuses to publish it and says that she is highly disappointed after knowing what kind of a person he really is.
Sussi then goes on to criticize Clark for being inconsiderate toward every person who tried to help him and says he only loves himself. Refusing to associate her work with such a man, Sussi takes the manuscript with her and bids adieu to Clark. In real life, Clark Olofsson wrote his autobiography ‘Vafan var det som hände?’ (What the hell happened?)) which was published in 2015. Thus, we can say that Sussi Korsner is just a fictional character that highlights the problems in Clark’s perception of himself and provides a brilliant contrast to the pompous image he has created in his mind.
Read More: Where is Clark Olofsson’s Wife Now?
