In his only British press interview, the Swedish star talks to Vicky Frost about life beyond the
maverick TV detective

Krister Henriksson is considering what he will miss most about playing Kurt Wallander, the
detective he has brought to life on screen over almost a decade. It is not the policeman's sense
of social justice. Nor the beauty of the Skåne landscape. Instead, it is the fights with the company
who made the films. "They thought I was a big ass, and I was. And I thought they were big
asses, and I can tell you they were big asses."

It's the kind of belligerent response one might expect from Henning Mankell's detective, though
Henriksson delivers his explanation with more of a playful grin than Wallander might. Saturday
marks the actor's final outing as Wallander for BBC4 audiences, but for a man who professes to
be happy to have left the rumpled detective behind – "It is sometimes good to press the delete
button" – Henriksson seems committed to him to the end.

He delights in discussing the clashes, his refusal to say certain lines, the scripts he thought
needed more work. These conflicts remain an essential part of the way Henriksson, 67, also an
acclaimed stage actor, works. They are what he enjoys about his job, he says, laughing. "I
always have fights with my directors about their ideas, because – I won't say my ideas are better,
but I think they are good enough." That tension spurred him on during 14-hour days of filming
Wallander in the pretty village of Ystad on the Swedish coast. "To endure it, you have to be angry
all the time. In a way, you have to be aggressive to stand it."

There is clearly tension between the actor's desire to try new things, and the acclaim Wallander
has brought Henriksson, in Sweden and internationally. The Swedish TV series features new
mysteries, created with Mankell, so it is not bound by the number of books that exist. But the
actor was determined this would be his last outing as the detective. "Even if they should try to
convince me to do some more, I'd really decided. This is it. This is the end."

The plots now give him no way back: in this final series of six films – he has made more than 30
– Wallander has been struggling with early-onset Alzheimer's. That's perhaps made it easier to
leave him behind, reflects Henriksson. "You have a communication with a part … And as Kurt got
Alzheimer's, the communication stopped in a way. I thought: 'We don't have anything more to say
to each other,' because it would be too complicated. So in a way I was relieved."

He had made his peace with the detective in advance of filming. "Before I started shooting I said
goodbye to Kurt," he says. "And I had made this decision and as an actor you can't be too
sentimental."

It is not as if Henriksson had spent his whole career pining to be Wallander. In fact, he initially
declined the role. The production company kept asking. Henriksson kept turning them down.
"Suddenly I realised when I said no, the salary increased. So I kept saying no," he laughs. Then
Mankell called the actor and the pair went for a walk in Stockholm. The author asked Henriksson
to at least read the books. "And when I read them I thought: 'Why haven't they asked me to do this
part before?' Because it was very much like me."

The pair share a tendency for crumpled – although on Henriksson, wearing an expensive-
looking jacket accessorised with jewellery and sunglasses, the result is more stylish than
dishevelled – but there are other similarities too. Mankell, Henriksson and Wallander are of the
same generation in Sweden. "Wherever you came from you had the chance to education,
however rich your parents were. It was a very leftwing time in Stockholm, so even if your family
hadn't the money, you could get the education. We all had an access to the future in a way," the
actor says.

That shared past shapes their attitudes towards questions to which Mankell repeatedly returns:
immigration, inequality, the breakdown of community. But if Henriksson feels an affinity with the
role, so too, one imagines, do other actors who have brought Kurt Wallander to screen – Rolf
Lassgård played him in films adapted from the books, while the latest set of BBC Wallander
films, starring Kenneth Branagh as the detective, are due next year. When the Branagh series
was announced, "I thought, well, we'd better pack up and go home now the BBC is coming,"
Henriksson says. "I was brought up with BBC productions, and the BBC is really cradle of the
crimes for [Swedes] … we all had an inferiority complex to the British in a way."

In fact, all three actors' portrayals are admired, with "best Wallander" debates prompting
sometimes furious and passionate debate. Henriksson comes out of those discussions pretty
well. He says he often wishes he could explain why British viewers have fallen so hard for his
portrayal. "

Has he been tempted to watch the other Wallanders? While in the role he wanted to avoid being
influenced in the wrong way by their performances. "You have to make up which Wallander you
are," he says. And now? "Now that I've stopped shooting it's something like: 'No that was a
period in my life. It's over, and I'm not interested any more.'"

He has another TV project – not a crime drama – with Mankell in the pipeline, while his next
projects will be on stage. But he is not interested in roles he is perhaps expected to take. While
in London he saw Simon Russell Beale as King Lear at the National Theatre. "An astonishing
actor, but I also thought, God, what a dull part. Because it's a part like Kurt Wallander: confused. I
think Lear is an Alzheimer's person too, and I don't want to do that in blank verse."

Instead he has plans for the anarchistic Karlsson, the star of three books for children by Pippi
Longstocking author Astrid Lindgren. He is determined both to have fun and not to be a coward
on stage, which is why, he says, he decided on a show for kids – unlike adults they are never
polite about a performance. But prod a little, and it seems there is a little more to his decision. "I
think why I'm doing it is, there's something in my life – I've been working so much, a lot, really
hard working, there's a lot I missed. And I divorced when I was younger," he says.

"I have led a Wallander life and so I haven't spent that much time with children, not as much as I
wanted to, and not even with my grandchildren. So this is a gift to them.