King Of Cool

As Jaime Lannister, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays arguably the most important character on the most popular show in the world. But he and millions of other Danes would like you to know that doesn’t mean he’s good. Or special. So chill

- Alex Pappademas

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau spent about a decade of his life playing Jaime Lannister, easily one of the 20 or 30 most central characters on the sprawling, money-minting HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones, and as of last June, that is no longer his job. You’d assume somebody in that position would have some thoughts about what it means to go through that experience and have it end, and he does, in his own pragmatic, evenkeeled, presumably classically Danish way. But right now he needs to make a decision about whether to accept the mushroom coffee.

“Is it going to get me high?” he asks.

“No,” says the dude doing the coffee proffering, sort of apologetically. He’s management tier at a competitive ax-throwing range in NorthHollywood; Coster-Waldau and I have just thrown hammer- sized single-blade axes at a wooden target for about as long as it’s possible to do that for fun. There’s a pending liquor-license application on the door – tell your god to ready for blood – but at the moment all Coster- Waldau wants is a hot drink, and all they have is an adaptogen- rich brew of ground-up Cordyceps mushrooms in water.

“It’s wild,” the dude says. “Caffeine usually has, like, a spike” – with his arm, he mimes energy going through the roof – “but this just feels like I’m in a good mood.”