Omar Rudberg is Sweden's best dressed man in 2023: "Clothes are my armor"

No Swedish man personifies the fashion image of 2023 better than actor and artist Omar Rudberg. He constantly pushes the boundaries between masculine and feminine in a lustful and inspiring way of dressing. His wardrobe is based on contrasts between hard and soft materials, undressed and dressed up. Minimalist and extravagant. A 24-year-old style icon and role model for an audience of millions.

There is a before and an after to the first time you fly business class to New York. The feeling already sets in when you glide past the queues at security or sip your first glass in the lounge. But it is only when you settle into your seat at the front of the plane that you understand the vastness of what is to come: Eight hours across the Atlantic with three-course dinners, wine lists, high-class service, airplane mode on your phone and oceans of time to catch up on all those movies and series you missed. Gin & Tonic, salted almonds and Top Gun – Maverick – yes, please. A luxury hotel at 900 km/h. I will never forget my first time when I was laid down and served champagne together with the waiter's specialty: strawberries with black pepper – a " game changer " that the waiter learned during his years at the Operakällaren. When Omar Rudberg lost his business class virginity in December 2022, the experience was turned up to eleven. The second season of the monumental Netflix hit Young Royals had just finished, and together with his co-star Edvin Ryding, he was on his way to the world's most famous talk show couch – The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. He was literally floating on clouds.

“We had a blast on that flight. It was a three-course meal, there were drinks, there were juices, there were desserts, there were face masks,” Omar says excitedly. “It was the sickest thing I’ve ever been through!”

Omar and Edvin were escorted by guards through a tumult of flashing photo flashes and screaming fans as they arrived at “30 Rock,” NBC’s legendary skyscraper at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan. The moment was captured on YouTube and social media.

"It was like one of those videos you see of Hollywood celebrities. The car door with tinted windows opened and in that second everyone started screaming our names. Fans and paparazzi were standing there waiting with their phones and cameras. It just flashed! It was almost sicker when we saw the video of it afterwards. We just looked at each other: Can you believe that's us? Is this happening?"

Host Jimmy Fallon met the duo in the box and wished them luck.

“It was nice to get up to the box after all that chaos, even though it was a hectic and stressful atmosphere backstage in the studio. But everyone was nice. Jimmy came into our box and was super nice – just like he is on TV. He hung out there for five minutes and hyped us up before he went out and started the show. Half an hour later it was our turn to go out.”

“I blacked out after the interview with Jimmy Fallon.”

The seconds before Omar and Edvin made their American talk show debut were filled with adrenaline and a taste for blood. But the worst of the nervousness disappeared the moment they heard Jimmy Fallon, in classic talk show manner, exclaim " Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome  ..." and they were allowed to step out onto the shiny studio floor in front of a live audience and millions of TV viewers.

"Edvin and I said to each other: Now it's happening! Now damn it! I was so terribly nervous. It felt like we were going to war. We heard him introduce us and the curtains opened, and from standing there hyperventilating and about to die, we just looked up, smiled, walked out and waved to the audience and hugged Jimmy. It was as if we were transformed. A lot of it was probably because there were two of us. It was a huge sense of security to have Edvin there. The interview lasted about six minutes, but it felt like two. Everything happened so quickly."

In the hallway on his way from the television studio, Omar met one of the evening's other guests – Janet Jackson.

"She came walking with an entourage of about ten people. I had to say: ' I just want to say that you're amazing. You're so cool. ' She replied: ' Thank you so much .' Partly because I love Janet Jackson and partly because it felt like meeting Michael Jackson. It felt so big. Then we went into our box and had some kind of blackout. We were completely exhausted. The program was to be broadcast a few hours later in the evening so we went back to the hotel and had dinner. Then Edvin and I went to my hotel room and sat on the bed and ate snacks and watched the program. It was completely unreal."

When we meet in Omar's music studio in Vasastan, Stockholm, the 24-year-old has a whopping 2.1 million followers on Instagram and soon the same number on TikTok. The followers are intensely engaged and belong to a young, high-spending target group, which has formed a long queue of large companies wanting to do commercial collaborations.

"It's great that it's like that. Still, I try not to go in too much and see what people write. There are quite a few DMs."

Omar fished out his phone and showed his Instagram inbox. During the interview alone, hundreds of people from all over the world had sent messages, and they continued to pour in in real time.

"The first few days after Young Royals premiered, Edvin and I sat and just stared at our phones the whole time. We just looked at each other and wondered: What the hell is happening? What's going on? People were just flying in from left and right. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok – my songs on Spotify started getting played a lot all of a sudden. So now I try not to go in as much. It gets too much otherwise."

We at Café have named you Sweden's best dressed man 2023. How do you feel about that?

"It's a great honor. I've seen these lists and past winners and thought I wanted to be there too. So it still feels really cool to finally get this credit. Because the older I've gotten, the more clothes have meant to me. It's a way to express myself and to feel like I'm my best self. For me, clothes are also a defense mechanism. My armor that makes me feel confident."

"Young Royals has changed my life. I knew it would be big, but not this big."

In parallel with the music career and influencership, the filming of the third and final season of Young Royals is in full swing. The youth series takes place at the fictional boarding school Hillerska where the young prince Wilhelm, played by Edvin Ryding, is sent after a clip from a drunken fight is leaked online. At Hillerska, the prince meets the less well-off Simon, played by Omar, which is the starting point for the next upper-class scandal; a forbidden gay romance that develops into a skyrocketing love drama about sexuality and class.

“These are intense days,” says Omar, leaning back against the mixing console.

How does it feel to end the Young Royals chapter?

"It feels a little sad, of course. Netflix wanted three seasons. Even the writers and producers felt that three seasons was perfect for this story. No one wants to milk the story and risk it getting worse and worse. Personally, I could have easily done five seasons. But the question is how would we continue. Would we continue to go to school? How long would Wilhelm and Simon last? Everything can be resolved, but it still feels powerful to dare to end it. It's emotional, but also exciting. Now that it's the last season and summer is coming, we're just going to enjoy it like hell."

What can fans expect from the final season?

"A lot of love, a lot of tears, a lot of laughter. A lot of all the emotions. The final season is both very beautiful and very difficult. Things will definitely happen and some people may have the occasional anxiety attack. The whole ensemble did a table read and read the final episode to each other the other day and it was very emotional. The season will offer many big surprises."

Your character Simon won't die?

“No, no. Nothing like that. No murders.”

Two expressions I came across when reading about Young Royals : “intimacy coordinator” and “ cocksock ”.

“An intimacy coordinator is someone who helps us choreograph intimate scenes. You can compare it to a stunt coordinator showing you how to take the steps and land if you're going to fall backwards. In the first season, it was really choreographed in detail exactly how our hands would move on each other's bodies. In this season, we're more comfortable and move more freely as long as we know which area to stay in. If I know it's Edvin's neck, it's not so important anymore exactly how I touch him there. A cocksock is a sock where you have your genitals and tie them together like a shoelace so you don't have to show off in front of everyone on set.”

"These kinds of comics didn't exist when I was growing up. LGBTQ was taboo."

It was Filip and Fredrik's production company Nexiko that scored the international hit when they launched the series in the summer of 2021 – and that despite the dialogue being in Swedish. Just like South Korean Squid Game , Danish Borgen or the series version of Snabba Cash, Young Royals reached a large global audience with the help
of Netflix's new democratized TV viewing. A navel-gazing Hollywood has found itself overtaken by the streaming giant that makes local inroads and produces films and series from all corners of the world instead of just focusing on the USA. Like when American rap star Cardi B posted on Snapchat that she was watching Swedish Clark , or British comedian Ricky Gervais who tweeted after the first season of Snabba Cash : " Just finished Snabba cash on Netflix. Fucking brilliant. The Wire meets Gomorrah and 4 Blocks. Check it out. The three movies are good too. " Local quality content has made Americans and Britons broaden their streaming horizons with the help of the noble art of subtitles, just as we Swedes have done for a hundred years.

“ Young Royals has changed my life. It has opened so many doors and given me so many chances in this extremely tough industry. I knew Young Royals would be big. I felt it in my whole body when my friend told me about it – that Netflix was planning a youth series about a Swedish prince at a boarding school. I immediately thought: There’s no question about it, this is going to be huge! But I never thought it would be this big. I was in LA a few weeks ago and was stopped on the street by both men and women, young and old. I posted a story on Instagram where you could see a building in the background, a woman figured out where it was and went there to meet me. In Los Angeles!”

The series has turned Omar's world upside down and helped him build his self-esteem.

"The series has made me much more comfortable with myself. I'm not as insecure and feel more secure when I meet other people. I've noticed that actors have incredibly strong personalities – they have a screw loose – and I've tried to learn from that. I dare to be more playful and wacky. My clown side has come out more."

How do you view being something of a sex symbol?

"A sex symbol? When I hear that word, I think of Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe. But I know that people see me and Edvin as some kind of queer symbols, because our characters are in a gay relationship. It's an honor, but also scary because I'm not 100 percent knowledgeable about everything within LGBTQ. I don't want to be the one to carry the flag for that whole community - I feel like I'm the wrong person to do that. It's a heavy responsibility, but of course I stand up for all LGBTQ rights and hope that the series has led to positive change. If a series like this had existed when I was little, I would have also fallen completely in love with all the actors. But it didn't exist when I grew up. LGBTQ was taboo."

So who is he then – this multifaceted and colorful personality who can call himself an actor, boy band singer, solo artist, Latino, heartthrob, Gen Z symbol, LGBTQI icon, influencer and Sweden's best dressed man?

Omar Rudberg was born in 1998 in the port city of Puerto la Cruz in northern Venezuela. His mother Wilnur was a real estate agent (now a health coach and Zumba instructor) and his father disappeared with all the family's belongings when Omar was only one year old.

"I have so many memories from that time. Everything from the colors to the smells. I remember my mother and I's little blue house that we lived in. We had a pool. I remember her car. I remember my babysitter who lived with us. Venezuela is one of the most beautiful countries in the world with rainforests, snow-capped mountains, Caribbean beaches, deserts and endless oil and diamonds. It's a fantastic country. If good people had ruled Venezuela, it would probably have been one of the richest countries in the world."

Omar grew up in a matriarchy – full of energy, singing, dancing, food and clothes. How this has shaped him he leaves to others to analyze.

“I was the happiest little kid in the world. My mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and my aunts always took care of me. There were women everywhere. Everyone was beautiful and had red lipstick. Grandma always had nice clothes, high heels and perfect nails. My mother too – she was a real fashionista. Both mother and grandmother had dreams of becoming an artist and actress. Everyone has had it inside them.”

How were you affected by your father leaving you?

“I was only a year old when it happened so I have no memory of it. But what has affected me is that he took all our things, which means that all the family photos and videos from that time are gone. We can never open drawers and look at old things, baby clothes and photo albums, because all that is gone.”

Have you never seen him since?

“Well, my mother asked if I wanted to meet him after we left Venezuela. I was about ten years old and thought, ‘Why not?’ so we went to visit him. But after that I never saw him again. To me, he was a stranger. I have no connection to either him or his side of the family. He passed away from Covid during the pandemic.”

Omar was six years old when his mother met Swedish Thomas and they decided to swap Venezuela – which is still in economic crisis and is classified as one of the world’s most dangerous countries – for Sweden. The new family landed in the middle of Swedish melancholy – the forests of Värmland – which was a little too depressing for a Latina like Omar’s mother.

"For my mother, coming to Sweden was a huge shock. She was 33 years old and came from the sun and heat. She was used to walking around lightly dressed and eating fresh seafood on the beach. It was a completely different culture. In Sweden it was cooler – no singing and dancing. People were quiet. The summers were cold, and we won't even talk about the winters. But I loved it, for me as a child the change wasn't strange. It was just: Well, now we're here, fun!"

“I avoided the sun and drenched myself in school sunscreen to get a lighter complexion.”

The step from Venezuela to Värmland was too big. They agreed on a compromise and moved to Gothenburg instead.

“Mom really didn’t like Karlstad. It just didn’t work out and in the end she said: ‘Sorry, but I can’t live here.’ They chose between Stockholm and Gothenburg and landed in the latter because it was further south and felt closer to home. We ended up in the Kviberg district where I really enjoyed myself. The kids and teachers came from different countries and I met several from Latin America who could speak Spanish. We lived next door to two kids who became my best friends. They didn’t speak Spanish, but we still managed to communicate – somehow I understood them and they understood me. It was a nice life, but then we moved away.”

The next move was to Kungsbacka outside Gothenburg, where one had to switch to darker brushes to portray Omar's subsequent years. Even though we are well into the 21st century at this point, a Latin American boy with big curly hair who loved to dance and sing did not belong to the commons in the small community of Åsa. For that, Omar was punished with bullying and the worst kind of swearing on a daily basis.

"In Åsa, everyone was Swedish. It was a culture clash and a language clash. It clashed everywhere, honestly. That's where I started to have a really hard time. Especially because I started singing and dancing and spoke bad Swedish, while all the other guys played football. I couldn't talk to them. I spoke so bad Swedish that I had to skip a year, and it created even bigger gaps. Plus, I was darker than the other kids, which they bullied me for. The comments just got ruder and ruder, and in the end I avoided the sun and drenched myself in sunscreen to get a lighter complexion. My hair was curly, so I tried to flatten it with wax to look like the other guys in the class."

But it took more than that to break Omar Rudberg. At the age of twelve, he hung up his glitter jacket and danced into TV4's Talent and charmed the jury with his best Ricky Martin imitation. The clip took off and a couple of years later ended up in front of the eyes of the record label Artist House Stockholm, which was trawling Sweden for candidates for a new boy band. Omar was in seventh grade when he took the job and became one of the letters in the group The Fooo together with Felix Sandman, Oscar Molander and Oscar Enestad. First gig: as the opening act for the world's biggest pop star Justin Bieber in front of 48,000 spectators.

"It was just a few weeks after we formed. It was crazy and everyone was a huge Justin Bieber fan. We rehearsed really hard and one time I walked out of the rehearsal room and started crying. I was panicking and was afraid I wouldn't learn the dances and songs in time. But I made it. It was crazy to go up on that big fat stage. It was so incredibly big in there in the Globe and everyone in the audience was screaming at the top of their lungs. The noise level was crazy. I was 14 years old. It was a huge contrast to going back to school the next Monday and standing in line in the cafeteria with everyone staring. I just tried to hide as best I could."

After the three sold-out nights with Justin Bieber at the Globen, the journey continued at an equally furious pace. There was no time for high school. The band changed its name to The Fooo Conspiracy and later FO&O when one of the o's, Oscar Molander, left the group. But marked by the bullying at school, Omar often felt left out and misunderstood by the others.

"It was pretty scary. I didn't have great experiences with Swedish guys my own age. The other three guys came from Stockholm and knew each other from before. I was extremely shy, and the first time we met we were supposed to dance together. They were cool, but I can imagine they thought I was weird in my purple clothes and purple cap."

Today, the trio are better friends than ever and Omar had dinner with Oscar and Felix just the night before the interview to celebrate FO&O's tenth anniversary and "talk about old memories" (not really old memories, to be honest) at an Asian restaurant in Stockholm. During their four years in the spotlight, the band managed to release two albums, four EPs, countless singles, go on extensive tours, win Grammys, Rockbjörns and MTV EMA awards and compete in Melodifestivalen before splitting up in 2017 to pursue their own solo careers. Omar and Felix not only have music careers in common, but also each starred in an acclaimed youth series set in an upper-class environment on Netflix. Felix Sandman was a success in the psychological Djursholm thriller Biggest of All three years before Young Royals premiered – both series were awarded the Kristallen television award.

“We were just teenagers during the FO&O era. We didn't drink anything or do any crazy stuff like that. But oh my god, what fun we had! We laughed all night last night talking about everything we did.”

Did you get rich on FO&O?

"Not exactly. We got rich in ways other than money. When you're in a boy band, it's mostly other people who make the money. We thought it was great with the hotels, the trips and the experiences. Money wasn't that important when you were 14. We got to experience some incredible things. Today, however, I've started to earn a good living."

As a solo artist, Omar has competed in Mellon twice more, singing in Spanish, Swedish and English. Although his acting career has catapulted him to worldwide fame beyond his wildest imagination, it is music that is dearest to his heart. 

"It was hard to sing in Spanish and do the Latin American thing in Sweden. There's definitely an audience for it, but most people want to hear Despacito the most . But I've been on a journey since then and gotten to know myself and found a style that suits me. Today I sing in English. But even though I love the music, Young Royals means a lot to me. I have the series to thank for so much."

Has it been nice to share this whole crazy Young Royals experience with Edvin?

"Yes, it really has. It reminds me of the time in the band when we always had each other in the midst of all the chaos. It wouldn't have been as much fun doing it by ourselves. It would have been lonely. Just sitting there on the plane to New York, heading to Jimmy Fallon, and getting to share that experience with someone else. It was incredible."