How a pair of handcuffs inspired noir crime thriller ‘Black Sands’

Actress Aldís Amah Hamilton can thank a police officer — and a pair of handcuffs — for the inspiration behind “Black Sands,” the Icelandic crime noir series premiering July 20 on Viaplay.

“There is an Icelandic detective [Ragnar Jónsson] that has been on the force for 30-something years and he had this idea [for ‘Black Sands’] for the longest time,” Hamilton, 32, told The Post. “He wanted to write a TV series revolving around a young male police officer … and we actually met and started talking while I was doing another series and he was training me to handcuff people.

“He shared his idea with me and I really liked it and said, ‘Have you ever considered this police officer as a woman?’ He said, ‘No, I haven’t. I’ll think on it.’ A few days later we met for coffee so he could pick my brain about what it’s like to be a woman.”

That meeting resulted in Hamilton and Jónsson co-writing “Black Sands.” As the eight-episode series (already renewed) opens, police detective Aníta Elínardóttir (Hamilton) is driving back from Reykjaík to her remote hometown after 15 years away from her verbally abusive mother (Steinunn Ólína Þorsteinsdóttir) from whom she’s been estranged.

“[Aníta] is smart, educated and driven but at the same time very immature in certain aspects of being an adult,” Hamilton said. “She probably didn’t get what she needed as a child … she’s an adult but has so many toxic traits of a child.”

On the way to her mother’s house, Aníta gets a call from an old friend, police detective Ragnar (Þór Tulinius), who’s discovered the dead body of a young female on the black sands of the nearby beach.

The victim is a German tourist who was apparently traveling in Iceland alone; but when another young woman, also German, survives a savage attack nearby, it sets off the search for a serial killer.

“We always wanted to focus on foreigners [as the victims],” said Hamilton, who was born in Germany but moved to Iceland with her mother at the age of 2. [Her father is American — “we haven’t met since I was a child,” she said.] “Iceland is a very small country and we get a lot of tourists, about 1.5 or 2 million a year, and there are only 360,000 people here. We’re the ‘It Girl.’

“We’ve noticed — and it’s something that’s a very current conversation in our culture — that a lot of people coming to Iceland who experience some kind of crime don’t get the same treatment as Icelanders do,” she said. “We were thinking of this, and there’s actually a case here where two French sisters came to Iceland and one of them was murdered; they were both attacked but the other sister escaped.

“That’s kind of where we started this journey with the series.”

Hamilton said the arc for Season 1 changed slightly under the guidance of series director Baldvin Zophoníasson.

“He took the lead on this because we didn’t have any experience writing a series,” she said. “There was something missing in the final draft and he said, ‘OK, guys, hear me out, this is what I want to do — I want it to be heavily inspired by [the movie] ‘Seven.’ That had been his dream forever, and that’s kind of how the [Season 1 finale] came to be.”

Hamilton said she began acting more by happenstance than by desire.

“I lived a very traditional Icelandic life and didn’t necessarily want to become an actor,” she said. “I wanted to be a singer and a dancer, but transitioned into acting by accident at the age of 21.” Hamilton hoped to study abroad in China for a year, but met someone who encouraged her to audition for the prestigious Iceland Academy of the Arts.

“I auditioned and got in,” she said. “It’s quite hard to get in — it’s about an 8 percent acceptance rate — and I felt like I needed to give it a shot and that I could always do something else later.

“I just haven’t looked back,” she said. “I was a flight attendant for a few years and then COVID came and no one was flying anymore — and that was my sign to go full-blown into the acting thing.”

Hamilton was the first person of black heritage to be admitted to the academy’s acting program; subsequently, she was the first person of color to headline (and co-write) a TV series in Iceland.

“I was nominated for Best Actress [for ‘Black Sands’] for the Icelandic Emmys, which was a first for an actress of color in Iceland,” she said. “We want people to understand that [‘Black Sands’] is so important in so many ways. It might change the landscape of how people view our nation. In Iceland … all kinds of people are accepted, and we want to do our part to fight the fact that some people feel unseen here.

“We’re still small enough that one [series] can make a ripple in the water.”