Danish prince’s playboy past caught on film

A new movie portraying the Danish prince’s secret love life leaves his wife devastated.

As she stepped out of her chauffer-driven car to attend an Easter church service last week, Crown Princess Mary of Denmark was forced to grit her teeth and smile at waving onlookers, despite grappling with news that has left her family life in tatters.

The 41-year-old Australian mother of four was left reeling when it was revealed in the Danish press that a movie exposing her husband Crown Prince Frederik’s playboy past is in the works, with researchers digging for dirt among his numerous past conquests. “My ambition is to tell the story factually and realistically and not only as a glamorous fairytale,” filmmaker Christian Tafdrup, who has finished a first draft of the script, tells Danish magazine Her & Nu.

Before meeting Mary, then a down-to-earth Tasmanian-born real-estate agent, at a Sydney pub during the 2000 Olympics, the heir to the Danish throne was known as a ladies’ man, with seven girlfriends and several more flings notched on his bedpost. It is believed that Mary, who has worked so hard to assimilate Danish culture and learn royal tradition, is devastated that his exploits could be splashed across the big screen.

But so far Christian has refused to confirm which secrets will be spilled in his film, except to say that it will cover Frederik’s early, hard-partying days. “I can’t tell which people in the prince’s life the movie involves, or what events we’ve chosen to tell,” he says in an interview with Danish newspaper Politiken.