Vikings returns to History this Wednesday, November 29th, with a two-part Season 5 premiere featuring the fallout and aftermath of last season's closing moments - namely, the accidental/on purpose murder of Sigurd by bitter brother Ivar.
With Season 5 also comes some new faces. Along with Jonathan Rhys Meyers' Bishop Heahmund (who we saw right at the end of Season 4), WWE Hall of Famer and former multi-time world champion Edge, Adam Copeland, has joined the series as Kjetill Flatnose, a stalwart warrior chosen by Floki to be one of the leaders of a group traveling to Iceland.
I spoke with Copeland about his brave new role, challenging himself in the world of acting, getting the Vikings accent just right, and his awesome Nordic beard.
IGN: Firstly, how did you come to land this role?
Adam "Edge" Copeland: [Wife] Beth and I were pregnant with our second daughter, Ruby, and I'd kind of taken myself off the books and cleared the schedule for the pregnancy and after the pregnancy until we both felt comfortable with me auditioning for things again. And I guess it was six weeks after we had Ruby that Beth said "Why don't you start reading for stuff again?" I was like "Are you sure?" but she seemed like she was okay with everything. I'd given my agent a list of shows I wanted to go for and Vikings was on the list because I watched the show and had been a fan of it for a while. It seemed like a natural next step and evolution for this new career of mine and sure enough I got an audition, read for it, and a week after that I was on my way to Ireland. Once it happened, it happened really quickly. The pieces fell into place at the right time.
What's been great about it, one of the things that drew me to it along with just being a fan, were the challenges that came with it. It's historical. It's a drama. It's a period piece. It's all of those things on top of the physical elements involved. I knew from an acting standpoint that it would give me a different set of challenges that I hadn't tackled yet. As you know from my wresting career, I like challenges. Anyone who gets into that job likes challenges, so that's what this felt like. And it's been a blast.
IGN: Now, pronounce your character's name for me.
Copeland: [laughs] Yeah, I know. There was debate, even up until we started filming, about how to say it. But Gustaf Skarsgård, who plays Floki, he had the best handle on the accent. He's brilliant. So it's "Shettel."
IGN: Haha. Okay, I was way off.
Copeland: Yeah, because it's K-J-E so you don't know if the J is silent or if it's a new sound.
IGN: You've done TV before, but this was the first time your role came with a whole new accent and way os speaking.
Copeland: By far, this role has been the most challenging. In terms of the physicality too, let alone the accent and the drama. Also, I'm dealing with a real historical character. So these are all things I've never dealt with before. The accent was one of the things I initially wanted to get down, first and foremost. So before I did the audition I got myself a coach so I could work on it and that allowed me to have a little bit of a grasp on it before I tried out. Then once I got here, we had a coach who read through my dialogue with me, for the first two episodes I was in, just so that I could feel comfortable with it. At a certain point we just stopped having the meetings because he said that I got it. And I haven't had much ADR with it either. I keep these hard and fast rules with it because the accent is an amalgamation of a lot of different accents. It's become a melting pot. It's part Finnish, it's part Swedish, it's got some Russian in there at times. And Slavic. It's not any one thing. So everyone has a slightly different take on it, but then the show also has characters from all different parts of the world, let alone all these actors from different parts of he world too.
IGN: Did you try and do a bit of research on Kjetill before starting. It's tricky because Viking lore can be part history and part myth.
Copeland: Yeah, I did some research on him and by all accounts he led a fairly peaceful life, and was a powerful figure, but that doesn't necessarily make for great TV so as [creator] Michael Hirst has been able to do, he's taken a bunch of characters who didn't always exist within the same era or timeframe, and he's been able to make them come together and inject realities of what their lives were within a common span. I don't know how he does it, personally, but it makes for great drama. And you know while watching it that some semblance of the these folks lives is being told. Because there are conflicting stories and a lot of history and sagas were passed down orally and there are discrepancies, you never truly know. It's like "Did Kjetill and Bjorn exist at the same time?" Who knows? It's hard to really pinpoint that. But that also gives the show the freedom to do what Michael has done with it. Because when there's no hard and fast account, you can create "What if?" scenarios.
IGN: Vikings, as a show, spans across years and countries and generations. How many people did you get to act with? Are you just part of one storyline with a few characters?
Copeland: That was one of the crazy parts about this because it is so huge and there are storylines and threads that take place in different places - there are still people I haven't met let alone interacted with on screen. That's still mind-boggling to me. But Kjetill's story, part of who he is, is a tale of isolation so that was something that was really fun to try and pull off. Because I don't think it's going to be what someone who's just following me from wrestling is going to expect. We explore a lot of different layers to this character before he maybe gets to where you expect him to go. He's a slow build, slow burn character, which was a lot of fun. I wasn't just hired to do fight scenes, and I loved being able to prove that I have chops outside of just being able to do a physical scene.
IGN: But there is fighting, of course, with weaponry you're not used to. What was that training like?
Copeland: The weapons stuff, yeah, was a new thing entirely and as with anything I've never done before I just walked in as an open slate. An empty canvas. I went "Okay, I've never dealt with swords before so you tell me how to do it and make it work and I'll put the work in to pull it off." What is universal from wrestling though, that I've found, is that all physicality like this is based on footwork. And if you can understand the footwork then eventually the rest of your body will come in line with that. And that seems to hold true with both sword work and axe work. When it comes to the hand-to-hand stuff, that's in my wheelhouse. I've got that. Show it to me once. What sequence do you want here? It's knees, it's elbows, it's headbutts, I got it. That's just purely reps and muscle memory. But the weapons thing, it was a challenge. And you know how I love me a challenge. Plus, any time I can add something to my tool kit, it's great. In wrestling, there was a point where I'd think "What kind of match haven't I done yet?" and I'd realize "I guess I have been in every type of match WWE offers right now." So then I'd think "What new opponents are there that I'd like to work with and help to teach?" So that's where I kind of was when I had to retire from WWE.
IGN: Not to downplay the beard, but as Edge you had an awesome beard. It was practically made for this show.
Copeland: [laughs] Yeah, even still, as if this week, because I posted a video for the New Jersey Devils, because they're my team and they'd asked me to come in for WWE night and I couldn't make it so then they asked just for a video and I'd just gotten out of swimming in an Irish quarry in 40 degree weather and sure enough people were like "Why do you have that beard? Why do you look homeless? Are you okay?" [laughs] I was like "Yes, I'm okay. Everything's okay. I just grew a beard for a role."
Vikings' fifth season premieres Wednesday, November 29th on History. Adam Copeland as Kjetill Flatnose will debut in Episode 5, "The Prisoner," airing December 20th.
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA). Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at http://ift.tt/2aJ67FB.
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