The new season of Vikings, History Channel's runaway hit historical drama, starts tonight. In the first season, we met Auslag, played by the Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland, wearing nothing but a fishing net and eating an onion, just as the Viking legend has it. Despite the questionable fashion, Sutherland's character Auslag managed to seduce and become impregnated by Ragnar (played by Travis Fimmel) in short order. We talked to the 32-year-old former model about what she thinks of her character's homewrecking ways and why she's so damn funny on Twitter.
ESQUIRE.COM: Can you tell me a bit about how you think of Auslag and how you approached playing that role?
ALYSSA SUTHERLAND: I looked her up because obviously we're all playing characters that existed, which is pretty cool, so I did some research of my own and looked into who her parents were. Michael [Hirst, the show's creator] had given me an outline of her growing up without having parents and I sort of based her upon that research and what Michael told me. I imagined this orphan girl and that influences a lot of what I did with her. I would like to think that people could watch her and not necessarily agree with the stuff she does but understand where she comes from.
ESQ: Aslaug is a bit of a Viking homewrecker.
AS: Well, yeah, but can we really use the term "homewrecker" when we're dealing with people from that long ago? I mean, when you look back at their culture, there were instances of polygamy, so I always go, Is she a homewrecker? I think that's a very modern-day approach to the material and I think it's a mistake just to think about it in those simple terms. For the time, it may not have been that outrageous.
ESQ: You play her in a way that's quite understated. Auslag doesn't jump into the scene, she defers to Ragnar's wife, Lagertha [played by Katheryn Winnick]. Was that a conscious decision to try to make her more relatable?
AS: I think what's really interesting on TV these days is that characters aren't just black or white. I love all shades of grey — I mean look at Breaking Bad, how awesome are these characters, because you see them do some really horrible things but you have so much sympathy for them at the same time. That's kind of what I'm striving for.
ESQ:In the new season, you've got this big baby bump and your costumes are so elaborate and amazing.
AS: I don't have any children of my own, so I got online and decided to look at all of the symptoms of pregnancy and the things that can happen to you. After this one night of going over everything I was like, Why do people do this?! I do work with the bump a lot of the time. It's funny because I started just naturally standing the way a pregnant woman would stand and people would point it out to me, with my hand on my lower back. I think because I kept seeing it I started to think that I actually was pregnant.
ESQ: What is it about the show that makes it so popular to a more general audience than what the History Channel brings in?
AS: What's really awesome about our show is that is still remains a family saga. I think that is so relatable to people even though we're portraying people from the late 700s. And then we've got these brilliant action sequences. I mean when you watch them they look so real to me. I think they've done the most amazing job with all of the battles. How can you not be excited by all of that action and then the drama as well? It's kind of a no-brainer.
ESQ: You're very funny on Twitter. When you see something and you think, "That belongs on Twitter," what is "that"?
AS: It's kind of like verbal diarrhea! You know what, I love entertaining people and that's why I'm doing what I do. I love making people laugh, provoking people, moving them in some way or making them think about something they've never thought about before, and I guess that's just sort of an extension of wanting to entertain. If people get a giggle out my tweets, then that's awesome.
ESQ: Well consider me giggling then. Vikings has had great music. The opening credits song is "If I Had a Heart" by Fever Ray, and the new season's ad is set to Lorde's "Glory and Gore." What kind of music are you into?
AS: I don't listen to the radio, which is probably bad, so I'm incredibly un-hip. And I don't know how I find my music... Well, I started taking pole-dancing classes a number of years ago as a way to exercise and have fun with some of my girlfriends, and my music taste really broadened! All of a sudden, when I was listening to songs it was like, well, could we do a pole dance to it? I don't know if I should be telling you that!
ESQ: I'm sure our readers won't mind.
