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."
The final episode of Wallander airs on Saturday on BBC4 at 9pm. The DVD box set is released on 23 June by Arrow Films' Nordic Noir label