Young Royals stars dish on their “cringe” finale moment

After a series full of gut-wrenching emotion, the finale of Young Royals sent fans off with a healthy dose of sweet, sappy romance. For the stars involved, however, the finale may have ventured a little too far into cutesy territory, crossing the border into “cringe.”

Spoilers for the Young Royals finale below

Before Prince Wilhelm (Edvin Ryding) and Simon (Omar Rudberg) got their sunset ending, the finale saw no shortage of drama, with the two nearly breaking up over Wilhelm’s royal pressures. Part of what reunited them was a song that Simon wrote for Wilhelm, a callback to a similar fan favorite moment from Season Two.

Although the song is intended as a crescendo moment, Ryding and Rudberg described having a very different reaction to it in a new interview with Variety. “We hated it from the beginning,” Ryding said.

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“When I listened to the demo, I was tired and I was just like, ‘What is this? Am I going to sing this?’” Rudberg recalled. “My first thoughts were that this was really cringe. Like, would Simon really write something like this? Would he really use these words? So it took some time for me to like it, because we didn’t even have the time to rewrite it since we were filming it the next day.

“I was on you to tell them to change it,” Ryding added. “I told you, ‘You have to tell them! You have to refuse! Refuse!’”

“Yeah, I had played it for you, and you thought the same thing, right?” said Rudberg. “It was just cringe.

“I was like, ‘Why would anyone be moved by this?’” said Ryding. “I also think that the way we are in that process, we are always critical about what is happening to Wilhelm and Simon.”

With no time between shoots for major changes to the script, the pair decided to put their faith in the showrunners. “We just gave into this feeling of trust that this was right, and it is going to pan out,” said Ryding.

“We had to trust [co-creator] Lisa [Ambjörn] and everyone who was involved,” added Rudberg.

In the end, they came around on the song but not because it isn’t cringe. Because — let’s be real here — sixteen year old boys are cringe. “Hearing it now, it’s beautiful coming from this 16-year-old boy,” said Ryding.

“Singing is very personal for me, and if I don’t vibe with something, I’m probably going to hate it so much,” Rudberg explained. “But I had to understand that this is Simon singing, not Omar singing. This is Simon’s writing, not mine. So we just did it.”

At the end of the day, it’s the cringe that makes the moment all the more real. “Now that I’ve seen the whole context of the season, it makes sense,” Rudberg said. “You get that it is Simon writing in his room and from his heart. It is beautiful.”