Q: Tell us about your character Uhtred?
Alexander Dreymon as Uhtred
A: He is born a Saxon and doesn't have the greatest relationship with his dad. The only person he has in his corner is Father Beocca who he stays friends with throughout the whole story. When the Vikings attack he summons up courage to go against Lord Ragnar, who has just slain his father in battle. Lord Ragnar takes a liking to him and takes him up as a slave. He very quickly warms to the Viking ways, embraces them. Lord Ragnar becomes his father. He loves him and he loves his adoptive sister and his young brother Ragnar and when they are slain he is off on his own again. He feels a Viking but is not accepted as a Viking by the others - Ubba and Guthrum - and so his only chance of getting back his birth right is to go through Alfred.
Q: He's a multi-faceted character, right?
A: Absolutely. Every character does what he believes is the right thing to do for him even if he might have a bad conscience. But the greatest thing about Uhtred is that he never lies. He always tells the truth, is always upright and stands behind his actions. He is not a weasel. Whatever he might do or whatever allegiances he might follow, he is always straight about it.
Q: Did you know about this period of history before you got this role?
A: I didn't know much about it and I hadn't read the books. When I started to get involved with it, then I started to read the books. I loved them, though I stopped at book number five because I started to get muddled up with the scripts. I will finish reading them. I love Bernard Cornwell's work. I have learnt a lot from them.
Q: How did you prepare for your action scenes?
A: Before we started shooting I had horse riding lessons. I had done quite a lot of horse riding as a kid but that was ages ago and it was not very structured. It was just jumping on a horse and going for it. As a kid you don't have any inhibitions or any fears and it seemed really easy. I started working with our extraordinary stunt coordinator. He does natural horsemanship, which you may be familiar with through The Horse Whisperer, and he taught me how to make the horse walk, stop, run and trot, all of that without saying anything and without touching the horse, just through body language. The horse was basically glued to me. It was really cool.
Q: What about the sword fighting?
A: I have done martial arts my whole life so it comes easily but I have never done proper sword fighting. I have done a bit of Kung Fu and stuff like that so I knew about sabre work but never this sort of sword fighting. I learned really fast from our teacher. The battle scenes have been physically demanding and you always come out with bruises and knocks and stuff.
Q: And what about Uhtred's relationship with King Alfred?
A: It is a love-hate relationship. The relationship with Alfred is really complicated because Uhtred really admires Alfred for his intelligence and foresight and there's a lot of him that would like to be like Alfred in a way. But, at the same time, he hates Alfred's piousness. He hates the fact that Alfred kneels to this Christian God and that he denies himself any carnal pleasures, even food. Obviously, the biggest reason why I keep bowing down to him is because I know that he is my path to Bebbanburg. Even with the Danes, I know that I will never be completely accepted as a lord and I know the only way of getting back my birth right is through Alfred. So that is why I keep going with him and why I swear an oath to him. Once that it sworn then my honour is at stake and I am not going to break that oath.
Q: There are quite a lot of women in Uhtred's life, as the story progresses…
A: There are too many! Well, the first one is Brida, played by Emily [Cox]. She is not quite a sister because that would be gross! But we were captured at the same time and she is very much in the same position as me because she was born a Saxon and she grows up a Viking. We are close from the beginning and suddenly it dawns on us that it might be more. It's more about sex. We love each other but we are never in love; it's never really a lover's situation. When she leaves and she gets together with young Ragnar it is a bit of a shock at the beginning but I am genuinely happy for them because it makes sense and I love them both. Then I am more or less forced to marry Mildrith who is not the same sort of woman as Brida. She is a lot more pious and it is a very tender relationship. I do love her and I have a child with her that I love as well.
Q: At some point you meet Iseult…
A: We have had lots of fights about this, Mildrith and I. We have broken up when I met Iseult. She doesn't agree but we had broken up. You'll see the moment when we break up and when I come back with Iseult in tow. She is the one who reunites me with my pagan upbringing. It is love at first sight and she is a soul mate, stronger than anything. But I don't give up my wife and son for her. She represents that pagan way that I can't combine with my Christian lifestyle I have with Mildrith.
Q: What do you enjoy the most - fights, dramatic moments, tender moments?
A: There are so many. Just shooting on the horses for me was truly brilliant because as an actor you always endeavour to be in the moment. And the fact that you are on a live animal and are having a constant conversation with the horse is just amazing. He is constantly trying to push the limits and you constantly have to correct him. I love generally being out in nature. It is just so amazing. Those few seconds quite often before we are rolling and before the action comes, there is this complete silence everywhere and all you hear is some leaves falling or some birds chirping. That is brilliant.
Q: The scene when you and Harry McEntire [Aethelwold] crawl through the mud sounds funny…
A: Our costumes were completely clean and I thought, 'This is just not right.' But we did not have enough time to call costume to come in so I thought, 'Okay, we have to do something about it,' so I grabbed the first piece of mud I could find and started to throw it at Harry and got him to throw it at me and just as they called, 'Action!' I smelled the mud and looked at Harry. I said, 'You have covered me in shit!' I suppose it made it very authentic.
Q: Uhtred struggles with his identity, being caught between Saxon and Viking. Is that anything you have ever experienced?
A: Absolutely. I can so relate to that because I was born in Germany but then there is a large part of my family that is French. I grew up a little bit in Germany and then in Switzerland, then in France, the United States and in England and so it is weird. I hate it when people ask me where I am from because I don't really feel that I am from anywhere. I used to feel I was more French than anything. But I don't feel that way any more. I really don't feel like I belong to a specific country and it is so difficult for people to understand that.
Q: How does it feel to be involved in something as big and epic as The Last Kingdom?
A: It's amazing. With this you are in it all the time and you know what has happened before because you have shot it, or you have read the script 10,000 times and have been working on it. So the fact that the scale is bigger makes the whole thing easier because you are so submerged in it. And it is so much fun. We are not sleeping out in the woods but we are spending the whole day out there. And then during wintertime, all the exterior circumstances really made it real. We were really freezing and we felt the weight of the journey.
Q: Do you imagine what it would be like living in these times?
A: The first sex scene I shot with Emily was in a hovel, like a ninth century motel! When I saw the scene written I'd imagined it to be a little wooden room with a fire and a little bit of sunlight coming through the windows. There was one wall behind us and one wall on the other side and the rest was just curtains. It was completely open and there was rain dripping through the straw roof onto us. It was freezing cold, so cold that your breath was visible. We were outside, basically. The bed was standing in mud that was 10 centimetres deep. I am not exaggerating. There was nothing romantic about it. It was just really uncomfortable.
Q: Did the story seem very bloody and violent when you read the script?
A: Yes. My grandmother is reading the books at the moment and she keeps calling me and saying, 'They weren't very nice to each other.' I guess then, back in the day, that this stuff just happened.
Q: Are you surprised your grandma is reading the books?
A: Yes, but it is really cool.
Q: It must be a real boys' own adventure - something you'd have dreamed about as a kid?
A: Yes. You are on a horse everyday and playing with swords. It is every boy's dream. I had these fantasies when I was a little kid - that I would ride through the park next to my house on some sort of animal, with a group of people, and now it is reality. It is great.
Q: Which moments from the series have been the most shocking?
A: The most shocking moment is when I discover Oswald, who is my wife's servant, ploughing a servant girl in my bed. Oh my God, he was so amazing. What an amazing actor. He is so much fun and he really made that scene. I am really looking forward to seeing that scene. That was the most shocking moment - to see his bare arse pounding into somebody on my bed. Actually, probably the most shocking moment was the first day we were shooting. I walked onto a set of a ransacked village and they had these dead horses that had been impaled, lying around in the village. It did cut my breath when I first walked on to it. Obviously, they're plastic or whatever but they are so well made. That was shocking.
Q: Did you get any injuries during the fight scenes?
A: Yes. In the battle scenes we always get nicks and scrapes. The scar I have here on my face was a real one that I got from a shield that slammed into my face. We kept it. It has healed now but we keep painting it on a little bit because it works quite well.
Q: Apart from reading the books what other research have you done?
A: The books helped a lot but in terms of character prep I do a lot of stuff. I always like to live with a character before I take him in front of the camera or on to the stage and that was a lot of fun because Uhtred hasn't got any inhibitions. It is like the embarrassment gene has been taken out of him and when you walk around a city like Budapest in that frame of mind, you can get up to stuff that you would never do normally.
Q: What did you do?
A: I was just going round town messing with people. You can get into some really curious situations with tourists. There was one couple that were obviously in love sitting on this bench and there was a tiny little space between them. They had their packet of cigarettes in the space and I walked up to them and said, 'Sorry, do you mind if I sit here? Do you mind
moving up?' They moved their packet of cigarettes and I just sat there in between them and they were looking at one another, going, 'What's going on?' I didn't go around killing people or hurting people but Uhtred is very cocky and he doesn't mind looking like an idiot. He takes a lot of pleasure bugging people and I continue that on set. I have been playing lots of tricks on people!
THE LAST KINGDOM IS AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY AND DVD ON 14TH DECEMBER, COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES (UK)