It is in a scene in the workplace comedy "Severance" on AppleTv+ where Tramell Tillman's character Mr Milchick tells the mythical story of Gråkappan, how a Swedish king used to disguise himself to find out his subjects' real opinions when he went out into the kingdom.
Tillman pronounces "Gråkappan" as - "graujschupan", which has gotten many Swedes to react with everything from horror and anger to great jubilation on the net, the actor said when he recently guested on Stephen Colbert's
on the American TV channel CBS."The way Milchick pronounces Gråkappan is a breach of Swedish law", writes a user on X.
According to the scriptwriters, the word was completely made-up and Tillman says he consulted Google to get the right pronunciation - but also "Pantertanter", the comedy series from the 80s.
It's one of my favorite series! Rose Nylund, played by Betty White, has Norwegian and Swedish roots, so I wondered how Rose Nylund would have said it. Because she says a lot of made-up nonsense words in the series.
So Tillman deliberately chose to pronounce the word wrong, for comedic effect.
I sincerely apologize to the Swedish people if I have slaughtered your language with my interpretation of a made-up word, says Tramell Tillman in the program.
But completely made-up is not the word, in fact, King Karl XI (1655-1697) was called Gråkappan because it was said that he used to ride around in disguise to see how his officials managed the kingdom.
