There’s a lot going on in the title of Peaco*ck reality series The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. It’s a little uncomfortable, but facing your own mortality isn’t exactlyeasy.
“I love all those words together,” says Amy Poehler, who produces under her Paper Kite banner and also narrates the series. “It is meant to be provocative, and it is also very Swedish in its title. The Swedes like to get to the point. It’s gentle and it’s art, and also — we’re all going to die.”
The show is the brainchild of Queer Eye‘s Scout Productions and is inspired by Margareta Magnusson’s New York Times best-selling book of the same name, which helps readers embrace minimalism through the Swedish concept of döstädning, or death cleaning. Essentially, it boils down to ridding your life of possessions that no longer serve you so your loved ones don’t have to rummage through all your crap after you’re dead.
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Each episode, a trio of Swedes — organizer Ella Engström, designer Johan Svenson and psychologist Katarina Blom — spend a week helping someone from the greater Kansas City area sort through their stuff and unpack their feelings about it. (There’s a Marie Kondo sparking-joy vibe — but with R-rated humor and no shortage of double entendres.)
The death cleaners were strangers prior to the casting process, but Engström tells THR they became fast friends, chatting via WhatsApp and phone calls and meeting up in person whenever possible to get to know one another before filming started. “We complement each other very well,” she says, adding that she’s the one tasked with talking to people honestly about their stuff and whether it still serves them. “I give them that kick in the butt that they need, but I also give them a big hug and a big smile.”
The first episode centers on a 75-year-old former lounge singer named Suzi, a rambunctious redhead with a proliferation of penis paraphernalia that she’s collected over the years during her travels.
“I’m a prisoner of my possessions,” she explains in the episode. “I think they’re treasures. They’re priceless to me, but it’s keeping me from moving on with my life.”
There’s also a rack of vintage sequined costumes, a framed picture of Kevin Costner amid a massive photo gallery and some family heirlooms, including quilts made by her grandmother.
“The show isn’t about, like, hoarders and getting people to dump all their stuff. It’s really about [asking], ‘Do you want to go through your things to figure out what about yourself you want to share with other people?’” says Poehler. “She can live her whole life with [the quilts] in her basem*nt, or she can wrap them in beautiful paper, put them in a very cool box, write a note about what her grandmother meant to her and give them to her nieces.”
Later in the season, the cleaners visit Doug, a single dad whose fiancée of nearly a decade has never seen his basem*nt and says she won’t walk down the aisle until he pares down his Polynesian-inspired tchotchkes and Oscar Mayer Wienermobiles (yes, plural). Svenson explains that Doug — whose dining room is a full-on tiki bar — has become hemmablind, Swedish for home-blind, and has let his house become “a flea market gone wrong.”
Poehler, whose brother Greg lives in Sweden and is a writer and consultant on the show, says finding the right tone for her narration was a challenge. “We really want this show to be a celebration of life, and there’s a lot to laugh about,” she says. “We’ve all had a psychologically tough couple of years, and we really wanted to make a show that was entertaining, that made you feel all these big feelings, but also didn’t take itself too seriously. We really wanted a human show, and human life is a lot of laughs as well as a lot of heartbreak.”
Despite death being a one-time event, döstädning is something that can — and Poehler suggests should — be done intermittently throughout your life.
“Swedish death cleaning can happen every year,” says Poehler. “It can be the kind of thing where you realize, ‘I don’t know if I’m that person anymore. I don’t know if I’m in finance anymore, now I climb glaciers and I want to death clean all the stuff that doesn’t make sense to me anymore.’”
Taking time to go through a lifetime’s worth of possessions — your own or a family member’s — is a bit like time-traveling, Poehler says. “So many people go through their loved ones’ stuff and realize too late that they want to ask them about it,” she says. “Tell your stories now.”
Engström says people shouldn’t get so caught up on the “death” part of death cleaning. “Don’t be so afraid of the word ‘death,’” she says. “It’s a very good way to look at your life, here and now, and see what serves you. The home should be a reflection of you, and it should be the place where you can recharge your batteries.”
Ultimately, the show is a mix of practical advice on how to start cleaning up in your own life — like using something as simple as red and green stickers to sort through which things should stay and which can go — and big-picture life lessons.
“The stuff that you surround yourself with can give you great meaning, and it can also keep you stuck,” says Poehler. “The takeaway, really, is that you have one life, and it’s never too late to try to figure out how you want to live it and be the architect of it.”
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
