The blue syringe pens zipping along the factory assembly line pass by in a blur; it’s only when the machine briefly slows that their labels come into focus: Ozempic. Almost identical white pens, labeled Wegovy, move down a nearby production line. Both look unremarkable. But to the factory owners—Denmark’s $351 billion drugmaker Novo Nordisk—the Type 2 diabetes and obesity drugs might as well be made from spun gold.
Tucked amid farmland 26 miles north of Copenhagen, in Hillerød, a town better known for its 400-year-old castle, Novo Nordisk’s pharmaceutical factory is a world apart from the celeb-fueled weight-loss craze its output has spawned in the U.S.—Hollywood, in particular. At the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles in March, host Jimmy Kimmel gazed out at the audience of glittering movie stars and evoked howls of laughter by saying, “Everybody looks so great. When I look around the room, I can’t help but wonder, ‘Is Ozempic right for me?’ ”
