Visit to her favourite TV drama was special request for last day of royal couple's Scandinavian tour
Fans of Nordic noir TV hit The Killing may want to look away – now. Not that the Duchess of Cornwall, visiting the set of the Danish thriller on Tuesday, was giving anything away about the new series.
"My lips are sealed," she said after watching part of the third series being filmed at a scrapyard in Lynge, a small town north of Copenhagen.
But as Sofie Gråbøl, who plays taciturn detective Sarah Lund, accompanied the royal guest, one crucial detail did slip. "It is still in the same style – but yes, it's blue," said Gråbøl of her equally famous co-star – the jumper.
The royal visit to the set, on the last day of a week-long Nordic tour by the Prince of Wales and his wife, was at the specific request of the duchess, said a Clarence House spokeswoman. Gråbøl said she thought this "surreal" but "lovely".
At a reception for the couple, the series's creator, Søren Sveistrup, said: "Prince Charles told me it was Camilla who introduced him to The Killing. He said it was one of the only things they could agree on seeing together."
Given the show's propensity for grim and gloomily lit sets, Gråbøl had warned the duchess to wear flat shoes while visiting. "This is not really an inviting place for a royal visit," she said.
And while the scene the duchess saw in production was "not really a dramatic scene," the actor admitted, Camilla, who described herself as an addict of the series, seemed engrossed. Afterwards, playfully grabbing Lund's replica toy gun, she pointed it at director Piv Bernth, joking: "It was me all along."
There was no possibility, however, of the duchess actually discovering who dunnit. "If only I knew. It hasn't been written yet," Gråbøl said at a dinner party at the royal palace in Copenhagen the night before the set visit.
Nevertheless, the duchess was in probing mode. "I hope we are going to see you again," she said to another actor, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, who plays a secret service agent working with Lund. Given that both Lund's previous sidekicks have ended up deceased, it was a pertinent point, though one to which she got no answer.
On the set, the duchess, accompanied by Denmark's Crown Princess Mary, visited the wardrobe department and got to rifle through Lund's whole collection of jumpers. "It [the jumper] took all the attention. It was wearing me," Gråbøl told her.
There's been a red one and, of course, the trademark cream-and-black one, a cardigan version of which was created by its Faroe Islands designers and presented to the duchess. "It's fantastic," she exclaimed. "Do not lose it," she warned as she handed it to a royal aide.
Sveistrup confirmed the news that diehard fans of Forbrydelsen, as the series is known in Denmark, have been dreading when he said this 10-part series would be the last.
"We have to stop while we are still good," he said. "We don't want to repeat ourselves."