Katheryn Winnick & Jessalyn Gilsig

0:06I have something that will change everything. I want to know what's to the West. There are no lands to the West. Can't sail across an open ocean. I believe there's only. It's a show about action and adventure and the Viking culture and who they were, a lot of mythology and brotherhood. And really the heartbeat of it is it's a family saga. I think what's unique about it is it presumes to take on a subject that we don't know anything about, but we all have make assumptions about. And I think what Michael wanted to do is he wanted to find the humanity in the Vikings and instead of seeing them as these sort of concepts

0:55that we like to sort of cast as just all these like sort of fuggish grunting monsters. But in fact, they must have been people with all the same aspirations that we have for hope and love and connection and fear of loss and all the things that we all experience as people. Well, we're some of those preconceived notions that you had going in that maybe were dispelled as you got closer into the script. I guess if I thought about them, I thought about that helmet and I thought about the horns. And I didn't know about their belief system. I didn't know about believing in multiple gods. I didn't know that they believed in destiny, that they believed that there was a seer who could tell them where they were going and that there's something very spiritual about them that I had never even considered.

1:42And what's really exciting as an actor is to really explore that not as a concept or something that they did, but as something that you embody and that you believe and that you really have to embrace it, not with any judgment or preconceived ideas, but to really feel that experience of what is it like to think, I can't change destiny. This has already been written and I need to adjust with the information that I have. Doing my research on women who they were in their role in the society, they're actually very strong independent women. Really, I not only do I play a farmer, I also play a loving young mother, a woman who's in love with her husband and a partnership in their relationship with their

2:28marriage, but also a warrior and a shield maiden. Like that word shield maiden? Shield maiden and a shield maiden is a woman who fights alongside with the men and it's part of the shield wall and her role is to give orders and to see what's happening and really help instruct the shield to move forward or take back and also plug in the holes of shield walls. That was her immediate role in the shield wall. But I get a chance to play those different roles of being a woman and as our family gets more status and power than and my husband goes off to different rates, I have a lot more responsibilities with the community and in terms of decision-making and the political disputes that I had to solve. So it's a very challenging role and also absolutely awesome because I get to

3:15sink my teeth into it. I think one of the things that I really enjoyed about my character and that I think really played into this idea of there being clues everywhere, you just had to be aware of them. She is an observer, she's a watcher and she's a listener and she's there are a lot of scenes that I'm in where I don't speak, but my presence is not accidental that she's forever accumulating information and storing that information and that information will become ammunition or you know helpful in making decisions going forward. And I think when you're in a culture like that where you feel like there are clues everywhere, you have to be very attuned to everything that goes on around you. What drew you to Ziggy? How come you wanted to play this conniving

4:01queen-esque kind of bullshit queen technically? Yeah, not long ago she was going to. Um, I like Ziggy, she's exactly the kind of character that I like and then I think that there's another dimension to her that I have not been able to play before and so that was really exciting to me. I really like playing these characters that have an inner life and an inner agenda and that are that have a kind of plan that that is that is sort of working out that they're working out themselves and I think she's very much that. She and Earl Harrelson are a team and there's a plan and then there's Ziggy's plan

4:47and that's obviously just incredibly engaging just intellectually to play. I also just really liked that she was an adult, that she was a woman who had survived a lot that had lost a lot. She's lost her two sons and she her whole, all her security is threatened at this point and I think to come into a role she's had this long marriage, she probably got married when she was 12 or 13 but they're very very connected but there's a deep chasm between them because he's losing his will to fight for their position and because they've lost their children and to come into a role with all that history and all that backstory is such a gift and I don't feel like I've always had that

5:34opportunity it really is specific to this kind of piece that you would get that. You're talking about the Earl that played by Gabriel Byrne, do you want to talk about working with him a little bit? Working with Gabriel was such a gift to me because the way my role was written was that there were many scenes where it would only be sort of accurate if I didn't speak but I was there and the way that Gabriel received me as an actor was that instead of saying oh and then here's this prop which is a wife that's beside me he was acutely aware of when I was there and when I wasn't there and we found purpose in all of those choices and so he was completely keyed into me from the beginning and very early on talked about Lydiam and talked about the Teutescues and we talked about the

6:22Markosism we talked about how this was a collaboration that this was a dictatorship that had to come out of a team effort and the one person was going to be the voice piece when we would exit the scene we always had this idea that now we're going to talk about Ragnar and what's our move going to be and how big of a threat do we think that he is and what should we do next and so for an actor to embrace what's basically from much of the beginning of the series a silent role as a as a collaborator was exactly what you could hope for and I just felt so lucky that he saw me that way and that he that he took me in that way and we could we could build that relationship together I thought you'd have to become a good Viking expert now that you know there was a lot of research because for me I get really that's the part that I

7:09really love I love dissecting who Lyditha was she's based on a real person and my husband was a king of the Viking tribe so there's that history and that culture then and that's the fun part and understanding that that they believed in many gods and that really had a big influence in terms of their belief system and how they were reacted and how they interacted with each other and that had a big role for example being a warrior and being a shield maiden we believed in our culture believed then if you died in war if you died at battle your risen to go to Valhalla which is their version of of heaven so you needed to um die in battle and I made them that fearlessness

7:57actually gave them a lot of strength and I made them so powerful as as warriors where was all this training for all the fight scenes oh wow um my first love was martial arts I started Taekwondo at the age of seven I got my first black belt at 13 and started my own martial arts school at 16 and I had three school by the time I was 21 so it's so nice to be in Toronto because this is where I'm born and raised and coming back here after so many years of being living in the states it's it's nice to be home and and I got involved training actors and actresses martial arts and movie sets before as an actor and for me I got a chance to travel to Africa and New York and seeing what it's like to be behind

8:43the camera and seeing other actors and preparing them for their roles or through fitness for me it's been so nice to actually incorporate the martial art action side of my background as long along with character development and really good media roles so that's why I think Vikings is um I'm very proud of and excited so are you training stun people it was great just being on set because I actually did all my own stunts and we didn't need a stunt double is that for insurance the studio's allowed they did they wouldn't let me ride a horse unfortunately and I really wanted to do that um but it was great just but you know being a female warrior and being a shield man and it was interesting to be one of the only girls on set you know surrounded by these Viking men these 14 men I think the first three months I was the only girl so when Jesslyn came on board and

9:33having her play city was just such a nice relief to have one woman and women contact you know I show me some moves I want to learn something I feel like if I'm sitting beside you I need to learn some sort of all right grab me so someone grabs you like this so everybody out there you want to kind of get them first yeah and this is a hand-on so yeah so that that's one way or just twist your hand and get them out of the way one word Vikings awesome oh the camera's here too awesome in one word yes Vikings hot no um that's good um hot yeah why not i'd watch