Clive Standen Vikings Interview
Hi, Clive. Thank you so much for
taking your time. I just noticed that most of the main characters go
through some major transformation throughout the seasons; the hair,
the outfit, tattoos, but Rollo stays pretty consistent. Is he still
haunted by the past and not being able to move forward? Don’t get
me wrong; you’re fantastic. I’m just curious. [Laughs]
Yes. Well, he definitely – he’s - amid this season, I mean, there’s a lot more tattoos and things as he goes more down the rabbit hole of being a berserker, and you see more of that behavior coming out to the full front - but yes, I mean, Rollo really is the old school Viking. He believes in the day of his death and the length of his life was fated by the gods, and the gods are in complete control of his destiny. So that enables him to live his life with utter confidence in his religion. So I suppose he doesn’t really, or can either, change with the times so much as life would throw him down, and maybe Ragnar does. But also, I think Rollo is stuck in a rut. He’s gotten to the point where he starts second guessing everything, because he’s made so many mistakes in the previous seasons up until now that he’s – I think he starts to forget who he really is. Yes, he finds himself in conversations with Ragnar because of the past, and he’s trying to build bridges and get back in into Ragnar’s good graces. He’s now – when confronted with a question from Ragnar, he’s almost thinking, “What am I meant to say? I don’t want to put my foot [in it] again.” So he’s found himself almost as a lost soul, and something happens in season three, maybe midseason, where it certainly makes him realize who he really is and the part of his destiny, and until he starts embracing himself rather than trying to people please, he’s not going to achieve greatness. So I think that’s midway through season three, maybe Rollo might surprise you and you'll see a complete transformation, almost a phoenix in the flames.
Well, this is part of being a
berserker. The berserkers were known to take magic mushrooms to feel
this sense of high where they would almost have an out-of-body
experience and they wouldn’t feel pain on the battlefield. They
would almost have this red mist on them. It’s part of him
preparing him to enter this state, kind of, they’re eating these
magic mushrooms, and he’s almost tripping. He’s on an almost the
equivalent of an LSD trip. This man is one of their captive soldiers
who’s, in Rollo’s head, just sleeping with his leg on a really
strange angle; and it’s just really annoying him. He can’t stop
thinking about this leg that’s in the field of his vision. So
Rollo being Rollo and, yes, the berserker that he is, just tries to
just get that leg out of his world by cutting it off. [Laughs] But
yes, he’s completely tripping on magic mushrooms in that scene, and
you'll start to see more of that, the berserker, which is there’s a
bearskin berserk which – that wearing the – almost having the
mentality of the wolf or the bear, and that kind of almost becomes
more of his mantra or so. As the battles go on, he’s going to
gather up with his own team of berserkers – so it won’t be just
Rollo this season that’s the berserker; you'll see a lot more of
them.
During the scene where the Vikings
were fighting the Mercians, there is a moment that Aethelwulf bumps
into Rollo. For a solid two seconds, everything is really [stagnant]
and his men basically have a [stare-off]. Can you tell me if there
was something significant behind that scene? Was it the starting
something bigger between these two, like a shootout between the
Christians and the Vikings?
I think it’s more of a realization
that I think is in the middle of war on the battlefield, your
frenzied rage and for the first time, he’s so used to having to cut
down these Saxons, and then he’s confronted with a Saxon who’s on
the same team. So it’s that moment of just losing – everything
seems to come to a standstill for a couple of seconds, where you’re
suddenly fearing someone that only months ago is your worst enemy,
and now somehow you'll fight together. It’s more of a symbolic
moment to the battle, but it’s also – if you remember, he’s
also the prince that runs me down with his horse and his cavalry. So
there’s a realization as well as a vendetta between the two. But
you'll see, I think maybe you might see a bit more mutual respect
from the two of them, because both of them are living in the shadow
of their family members.
I’m addressing the first question. I
think Rollo is a bit of a lost soul at the moment, because he knows
that – at the beginning of season two, we see that he tries in
everything to be this king for a day where he thinks he’s got it
all worked out and he’s going to get everything he ever wanted if
he battled his brother in combat. He very quickly realizes that he’s
fighting the one person that actually gets him as a person, the only
other one person that’s always had his back; and he can’t follow
through with it. So he spends most of season two trying to get back
into Ragnar’s good graces and the relationship will really never be
the same, but Rollo is trying. So as much as the battle is not truly
with Ragnar anymore, he’s still not content to be in the shadow in
Kattegat.
He’s in this village; he’s almost
having to pay for his past mistakes constantly; and the one thing
about Rollo is every time he makes one of these mistakes, at least
he’s tries to learn from it. But he’s gotten to the point where
he’s just trying to say the right thing, and he doesn’t get where
his destiny is going. He doesn’t want to be – he realizes that
his ambition – his deep, burning ambition is at the bottom of his
gut; it’s never going to go away. But I think he realizes also
that Ragnar is not the obstacle to him succeeding in that ambition.
It’s been misplaced. So now, he just needs to figure out if maybe
Ragnar can actually help him achieve his desire for his destiny. But
he’s definitely not content to stay in Kattegat in the – like you
said, the royal circles, because this is not fulfilling him.
In the past couple of seasons, the
relationship between Rollo and Siggy has been interesting. What do
you see see happening with that in the
future?
Well, at the end of season two - at the
tail end of season two, Rollo finds out that she’s sleeping with
King Horik and Erlendur, that she’s doing it for him; and anyone
who has ever been in love before, [Laughs] I think anyone can really
know that would never really compute in someone’s head. The
problem that lies in their relationship is that when they first met
each other, when Earl Haraldson was killed, Rollo goes to see her
when she’s packing with fear and she’s trying to run away, and he
says, “Look, stay. How would you like to be married to an earl –
another earl?” They almost enter into a marriage of convenience.
They enter into this mutual marriage of gain, so to speak, where
she’s had everything and lost it, and wants it back; and he’s
always wanted it and never had it. So he needs her to show him how
to achieve their goals. She needs him as her pawn in her plan to -
going to get everything back, to stay within those royal circles. So
it’s already kind of a relationship which is being set up on all of
the wrong foundations.
The problem Rollo has, or the mistake
that Rollo made is that he actually started falling for her, and that
was never part of her agreement. So now, he’s a little bit lost in
that relationship. He has feelings for her, but yet [Laughs] he also
is not sure [Laughs] if he wants to strangle her because of what
she’s doing to him, the manipulation that is playing out. I mean
that scene in season two when he finds out what she’s doing and he
does put his hand around her throat, it’s not – he’s more
emotionally charged because he’s been spending the whole time
trying to build bridges with Ragnar, and now she’s going behind
Ragnar’s back, sleeping with the king, trying to get something he
never even bought into, she never even consulted him on. So she has
her own motivations and it just gets really messy as far as Rollo is
concerned, because he can’t walk away from it, obviously, because
he’s now had feelings for her. So Siggy’s actions in series
three can really mess with Rollo’s head. [Laughs]
What kind of action can we expect
from Ragnar as the Vikings invade Paris?
What kind of action? Do you mean in
terms of onscreen stunts and action, or do you mean how he’s going
to react to Paris?
Both.
The Frankish soldiers have got ethnic
influences from all down through Europe down to the shipping routes
of the Constantinople. There’s crossbows that fire at them and all
kind of unknown weapons, lots of their siege weapons and anti-siege
weapons that the Vikings had never had to deal with, just lots of -
the Vikings are at the forefront of their technology with their
boats, and I like to just think of the Viking soldiers compared to
the Saxons, almost more like the modern Navy SEALs, like they’ve
been trained, they’ve been brought up with their axes and their
weapons, because they’re farmers and they used them on a daily
basis. So they’re ferocious and formidable when they’re in
battle, whereas the Frankish have got machine. They’ve got
soldiers that are trained in a certain way that the Vikings are not
used to. So these battles are ginormous in scale and scope. We’ve
got 4x as many stuntmen as we had when we first started doing the
show.
Now, I would go so far as to say at
episode eight, which is a very action-based episode, the battle that
you'll see on episode eight is probably one of the best battles, one
of the biggest battles I’ve ever seen in a TV show; and I’ll go
so far as to say it’s probably even grander than Game of Thrones’
battles, Blackwater, which had double the budget that we had. The
thing is when you do something like the Battle of Blackwater, you’re
filming it at nighttime and loaded with CGI through smoke and
mirrors, because you can’t actually see very much. It’s easy to
have CGI boats coming out of the mist and things. We film our battle
in the middle of the day and we have hundreds of stuntmen jumping out
of the River Seine and trying to climb the walls of Paris, the City
of Paris; and it was just carnage when we filmed those days. There
were so many people. It was organized chaos. There’s hardly
anywhere to move and everyone was getting smacked in the face with
weapons and things, but it’s going to look really savage and
visceral and, hopefully, can be the big payoff that season three
deserves, because season three, in general, the scope of it is
massive.
The show’s become a juggernaut, so we
needed a massive climactic episode as the end of the season comes;
and I think that Michael Hirst and the stunt team and everyone
involved has really achieved that, and we broke our backs to try and
do it. [Laughs] But yes, Ragnar’s actions, he has to think outside
of the box, which he’s actually very good at doing, I think, as a
character. He always thinks outside of the box. He always kind of
does the thing you don’t expect him to do, and second guesses the
enemy, but he has to do a lot of that now, because I think he isn’t
underestimating the Frankish forces.
And Rollo, for the first time, gets a
whole army of berserkers, which is something, as an actor, Rollo has
been wanting for a long time. So it’s just not Rollo running into
battle with his beliefs. He’s got a whole band of berserkers,
life-sized, and gets to be the general.
So I’m curious to know, we’ve
seen the fan base for the series just grow enormously. How do you –
what are some comments that you have on that? What do you feel it is
about the show that continues to resonate well with viewers?
It’s one of those things where you
have no idea when you’re filming it, how big or successful a show
is going to be; and you can have a great time as an actor. It could
be like boys and toys, and it could be just fire all the way, and
then [Laughs] the show bombs. So we had no idea, because this has
been such a great show to work on, and the cast all get on really
well.
We’re such a bunch of eclectic
nutcases that we somehow really gelled so well. We’ve had a blast
making every single episode, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that
the show is going to be great, and now that it is doing well, it’s
just such a great feeling for me because I’m actually in a show I’m
going to be – when I have to read the script where Rollo is no
longer in it, or me and my death scene, or whatever it is, whenever
my time at Vikings comes to an end, it’s going to be really tragic
for me, because I’m having such a good time, and everyone as well.
I think what makes it original is that there’s nothing like this on
TV.
The only shows that people can compare
it to are fantasy shows, because they have the dragons and they have
the monsters and the dwarves and the elves and things. We don’t
have any of that, but because of the Viking belief system, and the
gods they believed in, it verges on the fantastical. You have these
amazing worlds. You have Asgard and Midgard and Utgard, and the
Vikings believed that the Frost Giants were in Utgard, and the
dwarves, and the gods came down the Bifrost, which is the rainbow.
You’ve got serpents like
[Jörmungandr] wrap himself around the world and bite onto his tail;
and Fenrir, the wolf that swallows the sun; and Hati and Skoll, the
two wolves that chased at the moon and the sun that were apparently
in a chariot, running away from these wolves they were chasing night
and day. These are all of the things that the Vikings believed in,
their life Yggdrasil held the three worlds together; and at the top
of Yggdrasil, there was an eagle that every time it flaps its wings,
it was the breeze in the air. These are things that these people
believed in. So we get to tie it all out and the screen. We had
these Viking characters the way they believed this is all true, and
the gods themselves.
So it does verge on something that’s
on – otherworldly; and because the Vikings did all the things they
did over the hundreds of years they did it, the conquests, the
action, the raiding, the adventure, the technology of the boats, it
suddenly brought in a completely different demographic they are used
to watching historical dramas on TV.
Before Vikings came along, historical
dramas were in that bracket of Sunday night television where your mom
and dad would sit down and watch a bit of Pride and Prejudice, or
watch Keira Knightley in a corset. Now, you can sit down with your
parents, be sitting and watching these historical raiders kind of
colonizing and raiding half of Europe and [these early continents];
and I think it just makes so incredible [event] TV. The reason why I
speak so passionately about it is I would watch it even if I wasn’t
in it. When this script comes – when it came along, you just take
one read at it and just go, “This is immense. This is everything
I’ve ever wanted in a TV show.”
You mentioned a little bit ago that
Rollo gets to be the general, one of the generals in Paris. How was
that for you to play?
Well, I mean, this is what the one
thing that Rollo is good at. I mean he says, in his own words, “I
was born to raid and fight.” He likes being at the forefront; he
likes these. He’s not the – he'd be the opposite to the general
that sits at the battle on his horse watching and waving the
battalion through. He wants to be there leading by example in the
thick of the action with his men; and Ragnar knows that. We go back
to season two when Rollo makes those monumental mistakes and had to
go - with his comeback to his brother with his tail between his legs.
The first thing Ragnar does is ban him from raiding in England, and
leaves him behind with the old men and the women and the children;
that’s the best punishment for a character like Rollo, because it’s
the one thing that makes him feel alive, and he doesn’t get to do
it.
So in Paris, it’s almost like all of
his dreams come true. This is his one chance to get into Valhalla.
He can wade in there; lead by example. He can be the savage animal,
beast that he is in the battlefield, and prove to Odin that he’s
not the - just sitting at his table and feasting in Valhalla.
So when you go to character, you kind
of achieve the things that you think he wants in life with the
success in having a name for yourself, at least no one can take that
away from him. No one can stop him from having his day in court on
the battlefield and proving to the gods that he is worthy; so he
embraces that.
Also with Rollo, I mean with the
battles, I always think it’s some kind of form of self-harm, that
he has so much inside his head that he’s battling with, so much
emotional pain, so many mistakes, so many past failures, always
feeling second best, always chosen below others; this is that thing
he’s been running away from for so many years that the pain on the
battlefield is almost a displacement; it’s to divert his mind from
having to deal with the emotional pain. So, just as someone
self-harms and they might cut themselves to avoid the pain that
they’re feeling inside their head, Rollo is no different, and this
way of living as a Viking on the battlefield gives him the perfect
way to run away from his feelings, because this red mist can – he
can feel his pain.
You'll see a scene in season three
which involves Alexander Ludwig’s character, Bjorn, and Rollo, and
it was a big monumental scene for me, for my character, because it
really does come to the forefront that this self-harm of his that I
described, it really comes to the forefront of the story and he’s
going to go – almost go through some sort of physical therapy with
his nephew. Thats' about all I can tease with physical therapy.
[Laughs]
With every season, the fan [base is]
growing pretty much every day. So I know there are some like really
intense and devoted like dedicated fans. Have you had any crazy
encounters with any of the fans? Like do you have any fan stories to
share with us? [Laughter]
Well, the thing is that now I’ve got
– I wish I could tell about the other job I'm filming on, but
there's been no official press release here, so I get the job of not
being able to tell you what I’m doing. But I’ve got – yes,
I’ve had to kind of get rid of the long hair and the beard, and so
I look so different through all of that. It’s quite nice to be
able to kind of walk around and not really get noticed. When we did
the [TCAs] in Pasadena, this is - a lot of the press were there, and
I was dressed with my shirt and my tie on, and I think [Laughs]
Travis was teasing me all night, saying I looked more like the maître
d’ than one of the actors in Vikings. But it kind of worked
through, everyone left me alone. I had a couple of people that were
standing right behind me talking to George Blagden and saying, “Is
Clive Standen not here? Is Rollo not here?” [Laughs] I look so
different, no one recognized me, and I really enjoyed that feeling;
and that’s how it should be as an actor. You’re playing a
character, especially from what Rollo was so far removed from who I
really am that I get a bit of a buzz if no one recognizes [Laughs]
me.
But no, we have lots of funny moments.
I mean when we went to Comic Con, when I do that like Rollo usually
when Travis and myself standing together and it’s the two guys from
Vikings. We can’t really [Laughs] run away from it, because we’ve
got such a unique look. But I love it all. I mean I really am I big
geek at heart and the Comic Conference, this is like my mecca; I love
it. So when [Laugh] anyone wants to come over and a lot of people
get us in headlocks and things like that, and sort of challenges, and
it’s just – it’s fun and you have to embrace it, because I’m
very aware, as an actor, that in five years’ time, I’ll be
sitting and going, “I miss all that,” [Laughs] because you’re
no anyone anymore.
You were speaking about your nephew
Bjorn, and in the upcoming episode, he has kind of a big fight with
his father, and your character actually said something very poignant
to him in that moment. How do you view your character’s
relationship with Bjorn? Do you think that he understands him better
than his father?
Yes, I think he’s always – I mean
you’ve seen it right from day one in season one when you see the
relationship with Rollo and Bjorn. He is fond of his nephew and you
can see that scene when Rollo arrives on the rolling boat, and he
says, “Where is your mother and your father?” and the young Bjorn
says, “They’re having sex.” They sit down and they just sit
there and watched the sunset together. So there’s a definite bond
between the two; there always has been, and as much as Rollo has
resented Ragnar and resented everything he’s got in the family, I
don’t think he can’t love Bjorn; and maybe there’s more of a
reason for that in the past, but definitely, as the seasons go on,
Ragnar gets almost caught up in his own ego and he gets handed all
these things, the earldom, then he’s suddenly the king of Sweden,
and he hasn’t really got time to be the father that this young son
needs because he’s been away for four years with his mother, and he
had not had a father in his life. And Ragnar really doesn’t step
up to the plate. He just simply hasn’t got the time. He’s
having to deal with this newfound power and what comes with that.
But Rollo is overseeing – yes, he’s the lost soul; he’s the one
that hasn’t – he latches onto Bjorn, I think, and certainly he
sees that they’ve got this common need for each other. One needs a
father figure, and one almost needs somebody in his family life to
kind of - to nurture and to learn from. I think that’s the thing,
it very much is Rollo is almost like a father figure to Bjorn. I
think Bjorn has so much to teach Rollo that Rollo probably is
completely unaware of what might rub off on him.
Will the seer have any predictions
for Rollo this season.
[Laughs]
You’re laughing.
When we sat down with this – yes,
because we sat down at the beginning of season three, myself and
Michael Hirst, and Michael came out to me, “Did you know what I
realized in the break between season two and coming back to write
season three? It is Rollo’s never been to see the seer.” I
said, “Yeah, you’re right.” I thought it was I’d always –
I love John Kavanagh; he plays the seer, and I’ve always wanted to
have just a moment to latch with him; and I said, “Yeah, I know.
It’s that a long time ago. I just thought there was a reason to
it.” “No, I just – it just slipped my mind, and now I’ve
written a scene for you and…” So it will come into season three.
There will be a scene between the seer and Rollo, and for the first
time, I think Rollo actually – so this man that trusts innately in
what the gods have in store for him; it’s very interesting for him
to get to a place where he is questioning everything and feels like
he’s completely lost sight of who he really is. I could go as far
as to say he’s almost close to taking his own life; and the seer
changes all of that in only the way that a seer can, [Laughs] in his
riddles and his mysticism and his cackling [lore]. He kind of puts
Rollo in his place and I think it’s a really important scene for my
character and sets him on a completely different course for the
future.
That is super exciting. I can’t
even wait.
It’s one of my favorite scenes. I
had the same – I’ve always wanted to do a scene with John
Kavanagh. He’s an incredible actor and he didn’t let me down.
[Laughs]
HISTORY’s Hit Drama Series Sails Again for Season Three Thursday, February 19 at 10 p.m. ET
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