Access data in Dictionary from NSCountedSet objects - swift

Question

I have an NSCountedSet consisting of String objects, if I iterate over the set and print it out, I see something like this:
for item in countedSet {
print(item)
}
Optional(One)
Optional(Two)
The countedSet is created from an Array of String objects:
let countedSet = NSCountedSet(array: countedArray)
If I print the array I see something like this:
["Optional(One)", "Optional(One)", "Optional(One)", "Optional(Two)", "Optional(Two)"]
Now, I want to use those counted strings to access data in a Dictionary, where the keys are String type and the values have the type [String : AnyObject]. If I print the dictionary, I see all the data.
However, if I use of the objects from the countedSet to access the dictionary, I always get a nil value back:
for item in countedSet {
let key = item as? String
let data = dictionary[key!] // Xcode forced me to unwrap key
print(data)
}
nil
nil
But
let key = "One"
let data = dictionary[key]
gives me the expected data.
What am I missing here, how can I access my data from the countedSet objects?
UPDATE: solved thanks to the comment from Martin R. The String objects were originally NSString objects (obtained from NSScanner), and I was casting them wrongly:
let string = String(originalString)
after I changed it to:
let string = (originalString as! String)
All works fine.