Valhalla’ Shared the Show’s Biggest Behind-the-Scenes Secrets

How did the Vikings: Valhalla project initially come to you?

I was approached by [Vikings executive producer] Morgan O’Sullivan – he came to me and said that [Vikings creator] Michael Hirst was finishing up Vikings, but that they thought there was another part of the story to tell. Michael felt that Vikings was the start of the Viking era, but the last half of the Viking era that was very different from his story. I was really clear that I didn’t want to tell Vikings season seven.

I was extremely excited about the project, so I found a place we could come in with this new series and share a lot of the great things that Michael had in his series but with a new cast, a new tone, and new pace.

Netflix

Did Michael give you any rules you had to follow for a Vikings sequel?

He didn’t give me rules but he did give me a really wonderful piece of advice – he wanted a feeling of nostalgia when it was over and I understand what he meant. There is something very nostalgic about Vikings – those crazy pagan Vikings who had human sacrifices and stuff like that were actually a part of a really wonderful piece of history if you look at it from a different perspective.

It was a time when women could own property and divorce husbands and rule kingdoms, it was an egalitarian society, they didn’t really have a word in their vocabulary for racism, and if you performed you could reach any height that you wanted.

When we get to 1066 and William the Conqueror, all that went away very rapidly from history, so if you think about what Michael was saying about nostalgia, when you get to that particular point you will look back at this entire period, not just Vikings but Vikings: Valhalla, and think that it was actually a very cool time to be living.

Netflix

Did creating the series involve lots of historical research?

I spent months researching. Vikings has such a fanbase of people who really get into it and really love it, and I was forewarned about this, but at the same time I was one of those people, I was a fan, and I thought I knew a lot about Vikings.

The earlier series has much more of the mythology of the Vikings, we didn’t know a lot about that time, but my part of the series is set when people were putting things down on paper, we have more stories and history written down, so I knew there was going to be even more scrutiny about Valhalla than there was perhaps about Vikings.

I still continue to research, as there are papers coming out all the time from archaeological digs and sometimes we have to make adjustments, but I feel pretty comfortable right now about the 11th century, and I couldn’t say that three years ago!

One of the strongest characters in Vikings Valhalla is female warrior Freydis. How did you bring her to the screen?

What we know of Freydis comes from the sagas, and remember that those sagas were written 200 years after the fact, they weren’t written at the time, and they were written by Christians looking back.

We know Freydis was an uber-pagan, she never changed over [to Christianity] and just like her father held on to those old ways. So you have to look back at what we know about Freydis through that lens of a Christian looking back and trying to paint a picture of a wild woman, barbaric in many ways, and murderous in some ways.

There are a couple of different renderings of Freydis in the sagas and I’m trying to pull more about that powerful woman who had incredible bravery, and I also needed to find ways to dramatize the fearless pagan aspect of her.

Netflix

There are some huge battles and set pieces in Valhalla, including an impressive attack on London Bridge. Was staging that your biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge was that Vikings set the bar for big, epic set pieces and I was very conscious of that. For London Bridge, I remember putting the script on the desk and all my department heads kind of looked at it and said: ‘We’re really not going to do that, are we?’ and I said: ‘Yes, we are!’

It comes down to lots and lots of planning. I have photographs of everybody sitting around months before filming, just scratching their heads in front of little models and drawings.

Then you have to build four London Bridges and then you have to have people who really know what they are doing, you have to put part of the set in a tank, and it becomes a really big sequence. Kudos to a phenomenal crew, and episode director Steven Saint Leger who just got it done.

What’s the scene you hope fans enjoy the most?

I call it the ’round table scene’, it is in episode five and was shot by a wonderful Irish director, Hannah Quinn. It is my big De Niro scene from The Untouchables, where he walks around the table – except imagine a Viking walking around a table, you never know what is going to happen.

I love that. It looks very simple on one hand but it was an incredibly complex scene to shoot because of the camera angles.

You’ve already filmed season two, and there is a plan for a third. What can you tell us about it?

I am just finishing the editing of the last episode of season two this week and I am dying to get it out there.

Season three [which will shoot this summer in Ireland] is very exciting and my Vikings get out of Scandinavia, so we have lots of great surprises and stories for season three.

My story carries on past [a third season] and I would love more time to tell the full story, I would love more time to get to the fact that William the Conqueror puts an end to the Viking Age. That story involves Harald Sigurdsson and that story involves a lot of our characters like Emma and Godwin, so I am hoping that audiences love Valhalla and this cast, who are a brilliant cast, and we get the chance to tell the whole story.

Before Vikings Valhalla, you were well known for writing the screenplays of two blockbuster movies – Die Hard and The Fugitive. Would you ever want to go back and revisit those characters in new movies?

I would love to write another Die Hard, I really would, but I have not been a part of the franchise for a long time and it has taken on a whole other life. I do think there was something incredibly personal about the original movies and I would love to see some of that put back into it, the character-based part of it.

And as far as The Fugitive is concerned, I did write a sequel but Harrison said he would cut off all my fingers if I made it!

He had no desire to ever go back and do a second one and I don’t blame him.