The guy who once swung a sword as Jaime Lannister just spent a real night underground in Ukraine. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the Danish actor famous for that role in HBO’s Game of Thrones, rode a Kyiv metro train and later stretched out on a folding cot while air-raid alerts kept the city on edge. Reuters photographs from October 28 show him in a blue UNDP hoodie, backpack at his side, sharing the platform with ordinary residents waiting out the threat of Russian missiles and drones.
Kyiv’s deep Soviet-era metro stations have doubled as public shelters since the full-scale invasion began. When the sirens sound, people grab bags, kids, and sometimes pets and head below ground. That night Coster-Waldau did the same. He later posted on Instagram Stories:
“Spent the night in the Kyiv Metro. Pretty rough night. I get to do it one night and tell the tale but for thousands of Ukrainians it’s a necessity to be safe during the shelling. We need to keep helping the civilians and uphold the rules we all agree on @undp.”
He has been a United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador since 2016. According to his interviews, the visit was aimed at maintaining the focus on the needs of Ukrainian civilians during the approaching winter season.
“All that matters is making people realize that there is this great nation which is doing well but needs assistance from the international community as winter is approaching,”
He said.
His schedule included more than the metro stop. On October 26 he visited the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant with a UNDP group looking at wartime challenges to the site. On October 30 he walked through the Comfort Town residential complex in Kyiv’s Dnipro district, damaged by earlier shelling, and spoke with residents. He also caught an excerpt of a one-man show by a war veteran and was spotted briefly at a bar in the Podil district.
These air-raid nights are not rare. United Nations monitors have documented a sharp rise in civilian harm. 2025 was the deadliest year for Ukrainian civilians since 2022, with 2,514 killed and 12,142 injured. The first months of 2026 continued that climb, driven largely by long-range missiles and drones. Those are nationwide numbers; they describe the climate in which Kyiv residents keep treating the metro as a second home, not the specific events of one October night.
For Coster-Waldau it was one difficult night underground. For countless Ukrainians it is still the routine cost of staying alive. Civilian protection and steady international support matter more than any single celebrity visit.
