Famke Janssen has spent most of her career playing characters who could vaporize a villain or out-maneuver an entire intelligence agency before breakfast, so seeing her in Amsterdam Empire—as a betrayed pop singer in glitter-bombed couture, plotting revenge behind a perfect cat-eye—is its own kind of thrill. The Netflix series drops us into a Dutch weed empire on the verge of collapse, thanks largely to the implosion of one Jack Van Dorn and the spectacularly ill-timed affair that sends his wife, Betty—Janssen’s character—into a tailspin that’s half operatic heartbreak, half scorched-earth campaign.
“The showrunner said there was only one person he wanted to play this part,” she says, and smiles the kind of smile that suggests she’s still not entirely buying the flattery but happily took the gig. Being the first actor onboard meant something new: leverage. “I became an executive producer, which allowed me input I’ve never had before. I could help shape Betty. I didn’t want her to be just this angry whirlwind of a mean-spirited person. Nobody can relate to that. But a woman whose humiliation becomes public, whose husband has a child with someone else? That’s devastating. I wanted all of Betty’s anger to be rooted in that hurt.”
And then there was the language. The series is shot in Amsterdam, and Janssen, famously cast for decades in American roles, finally gets to act in her native Dutch. “It was a huge hurdle at first,” she admits. “I associate acting with English. But doing it in Dutch, with Dutch culture woven through everything… it actually brought so much more to the character.” She even dubbed the English version herself—because if you’re going to watch Amsterdam Empire dubbed, she’d prefer you hear her voice. Matching the mouth movements rather than playing the emotion was “a completely different challenge,” she laughs. “I learned a lot.”
Betty, of course, isn’t just a woman scorned. She’s a former pop star with exactly one hit—Forever Torture—from twenty years ago, and a wardrobe suspended somewhere between club-kid whimsy and high-stakes chaos. Janssen didn’t plan to co-design the costumes, but the job sort of drafted her anyway. “I had such a clear idea of who Betty was and how she had to look,” she says. “At some point I realized—I’m just making people execute my ideas. That’s literally what a designer does.” The resulting outfits aren’t merely decorative; they’re emotional armor, time capsules, and running commentary.
“She wants to feel relevant and not be forgotten,” Janssen explains. “And the last time she felt truly seen was when she had that hit twenty years ago. There’s a childlike nature to her, and it comes out in her clothes. Little girls on the street wearing stripes, stars, tutus, socks, Converse—all at once—because they don’t care. They’re creative and free. That’s Betty.” As the series moves forward, the colors deepen, the silhouettes sharpen. Betty grows—not a lot, Janssen jokes, because the woman is constitutionally allergic to adulthood—but enough to register the shift.
Then there’s the music video. If you thought the brief clips shown in the series were all there was: sorry, no. Janssen went full pop-star fantasy. “We shot a whole music video,” she beams. “I sang, I danced—everything. I trained so hard, because it couldn’t just look good now. It had to look like it was filmed twenty years ago, like Betty in her prime.” Her choreographer, Vincent Vana, is a TikTok megastar and, crucially, a perfectionist. “We worked nonstop. His ass was fine—mine disappeared from all the dancing,” she jokes.
The full-circle nature of the project isn’t lost on her. “Going back to my home country, acting in Dutch for the first time, being creatively involved at every level—it all came together. It wasn’t forced. It just kept growing.” Playing Betty even made her re-examine parts of herself. “I realized after shooting that I still dress like I did as a kid in this old photo with my grandmother. Socks, patent leather shoes, little dresses… I’m still that child in a way. And sometimes a character teaches you something like that.”
She absolutely savors the show’s heightened moments—the chaotic breakdowns, the operatic plotting, the scenes that require an actor to dive into emotional absurdity and swim around in it like it’s a warm pool. Some actors can’t go there. But the truth is, no one goes there quite like Famke Janssen—certainly not in a Dutch revenge dramedy wrapped in neon, weed smoke, and pop-video glitter.
Amsterdam Empire already feels like it’s building toward something unhinged, stylish, and weirdly heartfelt—the exact place where Janssen does some of her best work. And Betty? She’s not done yet. Not even close.
Watch the full interview above and then check out the trailer below.
