When Coster-Waldau and I reconnect on Zoom about two weeks later, he’s in Kanpur, the last leg of his India tour, understanding how Phool, an Indian biomaterials startup, translates temple flower waste into sweet-smelling incense. Before that, he witnessed a conservation team in Visakhapatnam rescue a king cobra from a village residence. “At 12ft, it was the biggest cobra the team had seen. I really understood why there is fear, the way it moves is otherworldly,” he says, adding that 50,000 people in India are killed every year from snake bites, which signals the need for a better relationship between man and nature.
Thankfully, the actor’s time in Odisha’s Bhitarkarnika National Park was less reptile-heavy. He was there to replant mangrove saplings that once held the sea back from flooding onto the land. Since this coincided with Rakshabandhan, the locals even had him tie what he calls a “friendship band of protection” on the little plants.
With his return to Denmark scheduled for the following day, I ask if he’s taking any souvenirs from India. “I have a bottle of water from the Ganges,” he shares, and no, it isn’t to wash away his sins or gain karmic points. “We were in the High Andes, filming an episode about replanting these trees that survive on glacier water. My wife and I brought a little sapling with us to Denmark, and we’re trying really hard to keep it alive. So I’m hoping some of this magic water can help it grow.”