Natalie Golovchenko: She plays Dita in The Golden Swan and wants to take life with the same ease

Television viewers have known her for a long time from the series Ulice as Jarka’s sister. Currently, however, she can also be seen in the third series of the Zlatá labuť series, where she plays Dita, a young woman who will probably want to confuse the heads of all the guys around her.

It is said that Natalia Golovchenko was introduced to the popular period series, which goes back decades to the period of the protectorate, probably by fate. When she was scrolling through Instagram one day, she came across photos from the Golden Swan, and at that moment she just sighed that she would also like to play a role in the period story about people connected to the department store of the same name.

“The costumes are really wonderful, for example Kristýna Ryška has one better than the other! And just imagine, in about two months I received an invitation to the casting,” smiles Natalie, for whom the offer represented the first on-camera rehearsals for a larger role. “Just an opportunity I wanted to grab by the scruff of the neck,” she laughs.

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The fact that it is a costume series was only one big plus in her eyes: “I’m always very happy when I can get into a role with the help of a costume. And when it comes to a period project, it’s all the easier because of the clothes.”

And since the invited actors had the task of coming dressed appropriately, the costume helped her to control her nervousness at least a little during the casting. “I thank my best friend Karolína Srpková for him, whom I have known since my studies at JAMU in Brno. She lent me a beautiful silk dress from her great-grandmother. She is a scenographer and costume designer, and she also has her own fashion brand,” he explains.

She admires fashion from the 1930s and 1940s, although, unlike her friend Karolína, she is not that well versed in the history of clothing. “I especially like that fashion back then was much more feminine compared to today. The waist was emphasized, skirts were worn a lot… I feel as if women wanted to like themselves much more than today,” she adds.

She lived abroad since she was a child, but she and her older sister Valeria regularly visited relatives in Ukraine

However, he does not consider himself a special connoisseur, even when it comes to current fashion trends. She prefers to wear timeless pieces and likes to shop second hand. Her reward is the feeling that she is not wasting or spending unnecessarily. “I would like to have something like a thrift shop, where people would go for a coffee, choose a piece of clothing and have it adjusted or sewn on the spot. In short, it would make for a nice day,” he continues to dream.

And how close is the character of the manicurist Dita, who she plays in the Golden Swan, to her? Her positive thinking and cheerful nature are inspirational to Natalia. “He is trying to start a new life with a smile and draw a thick line behind the past. I like that and I would actually like to be able to take life with similar ease,” she thinks about a character who has experienced quite a lot of bad things in the past. However, her thick line is considered by Natalie to be too drastic.

“It seems to me that this closes off love and true feelings, so it just slides on the surface. Definitely in her case, I think it can be said that she does everything to make her feel good, but she doesn’t let herself in much,” he adds. She herself is convinced that it is much better to deal with a difficult past and not close it completely, because then one can take something from it into the future.

Of course, the actress must not reveal what will happen next with her Dita, but she hopes that she will warm up a little after all.

Thanks to the series, Natalie got the opportunity to show herself to the audience as a dancer as well. Soon after her new character appeared on screen, she performed a spirited swing scene. Although she likes listening to jazz very much, she has never been involved in jazz dancing, so swing was new to her. “But I really enjoyed the dance training before the shoot, but it was pretty wild because it was all so fast.”

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The Golden Swan tells about the events that took place during the Second World War, so the young actress with Ukrainian roots perceives the fates of the series characters very sensitively. “For me, it is simply impossible not to see parallels with the current war in Ukraine,” he points out.

The first days after the invasion of the Russian army were extremely difficult for her. She lived in stress from morning till night and was unable to think about anything else. She helped where she could. “I was translating, I was always carrying and driving something somewhere. It was a necessity and there was still work to be done. I hoped that the war would end soon, but as the fighting got longer and longer, I realized that I had to incorporate my normal life somewhere,” she explains.

Today, she no longer lives in all-day stress like before, but she is not at peace with the war. Watching the documentary Twenty Days in Mariupol was a painful experience for her recently, reminding her that the war is still an open wound for her. Over the footage of the destroyed city, she searched in vain for an answer as to what its fate might mean for Russia. “Why did Putin do this? What did you think? If he can’t have Mariupol, then no one will?”

He is currently trying to come to terms with what is happening in Ukraine artistically. She writes, works with sound collages, and soon she would like to give her efforts a final shape, either a film script or a dramatic text for the stage. “I need to get things out of myself that I think need to be talked about, it’s very important for me right now,” he adds.

Natalie Golovchenko grew up in the Czech Republic from the age of five. Until then, she lived with her family in the USA, where her mother left for a scientific career when Natalia was about nine months old. So she lived abroad since she was a child, but she and her older sister Valeria regularly returned to Ukraine to visit relatives.

“Every summer I used to go there to visit my grandmother and grandfather for the holidays. We had a cottage in the countryside where we spent practically my entire childhood. I haven’t been there all summer since I was fifteen, but we still went there, at least once a year. Until recently, we could theoretically go there whenever we wanted, but now that is no longer the case and I prefer not to make any such plans,” he confides. However, many of her acquaintances sometimes go to Ukraine for various reasons, even during the war, and they encourage Natalia to do the same. She believes it would help her mentally if she could see that people are trying to live normally despite the relentless Russian attacks. Especially in Kiev, where Natalie was born. However, she has not yet decided to do so. “Grandma now lives here in the Czech Republic with her mother. Both would also like to go to Ukraine again sometime, but the truth is that we keep putting it off,” he adds.

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She always experienced trips to Ukraine as a return to her roots. “It’s a bit of a different world. I have two personalities in me, one Czech and one Ukrainian. As soon as I cross the border, I suddenly become a different Natalie,” she says. However, one of her friends once told her that she still felt the influence of a third culture, the American one. The young actress emphasizes that the first five years of living in the United States gave her excellent English basics.

She likes the vast and multifaceted country, so she is tempted to return there from time to time and travel: “I lived in New York on Long Island for a while, but I got to know other states as well. Every corner is completely different there, and naturally I haven’t seen many of them, so I would like to get to know them even more.”

Although she is fine in America for some as yet unnamed reason, she cannot imagine living in the USA. However, the obstacle is not concerns related to the profession, as I first thought, because it is difficult for actors to establish themselves there. “Anywhere, because of the work, it would be great there,” replies Natalie. He sees the biggest problem in different temperaments. “I feel that mine is different, eastern, very sensitive. I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but Ukrainians experience everything strongly. When they laugh, so loud, when they cry, so intensely… Americans are closed to them. It even happened to me that when a problem arose, I didn’t know how to solve it with an American,” she explains.

It soon turns out that her mother views both nations similarly, and it is precisely for this reason that she returned to Europe with both daughters. She didn’t want them to grow up as Americans and wished to live much closer to the country where she herself was born and raised.

The mother of the young actress is a scientist, she deals with ticks and Lyme disease

“However, I only understood her reasons when I was an adult, I think I was twenty-five,” recalls Natalie, adding that her mother went from the United States to the Faculty of Science in České Budějovice. She deals with Lyme disease and studies ticks, which is how a large parasitological center attracted her to South Bohemia.

“The truth is that I also enjoyed biology a lot for a long time. Probably also thanks to the fact that my sister and I were led to it by our mother. But I wouldn’t say that her scientific career was a strong inspiration for me. As a teenage girl, I rather perceived the obstacles that she had to overcome in science as a woman and as a foreigner,” she reflects on the question of whether she wished to follow her mother’s path.

On the other hand, she spontaneously set out more in the footsteps of her older sister. When Valerie started going to the drama club, Natalia was also attracted to it. “We’ve both always been showgirls, but in the end, only I chose acting as a profession, my sister works in business,” she says.

Natalya’s mother talked her out of her desire to pursue an artistic career, she said she felt that it would be absolutely impossible to succeed in the entrance exams, and she did not want her daughter to be disappointed. “But as soon as I got to JAMU, she immediately supported me and today she is my biggest fan. Although grandma may be even bigger. Even though he doesn’t actually speak Czech, he watches all the series I play in!” he smiles.

She appeared in Ordinac v rozágárden and in Specialists, and apart from the Golden Swan, the audience has been meeting her for a long time in the daily series Ulice. Originally, she only came there for a cameo role as nurse Jarka in the office of dentist Blanca, played by Linda Rybová. However, over time, the screenwriters wrote down Jarča’s line, so Natalie is also happy that more regular work has emerged from a minor occasional role.

“I like Ulica as a commercial series, how it can still bring and uncover important topics, for example domestic violence and alcoholism were dealt with around the character of Blanka,” he reflects on the reach of the series, which has been broadcast for nineteen years.

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