The Day We Thought We Nailed It—But Hadn’t
“I always get a bit self-conscious talking about the hardships of filmmaking because then I feel like a spoiled fucking brat,” says Skarsgård. “Everyone’s like,
‘We know you had your assistant waiting with a coffee.’”
Nonetheless, The Northman presented more challenges for its star than a typical Hollywood movie does. In the scene leading up to the raid, Skarsgård’s character, Amleth, and his fellow berserkers are hyping themselves up for the following morning’s pillage; they switch off their human minds and become beasts of war. “Technically, it wasn’t the most difficult scene,” says the actor. “But what made that one tough was the transformation.
The characters go into a trance and turn into their spirit animals.” He compares it to a Francis
Bacon painting: “They revert to something primal.”
Over the course of one night’s shooting, the actor and his co-stars powered themselves on pure adrenaline. “It’s exhausting doing it one time, but then you do it over and over again, and it’s wet and cold and you’re just in it, letting go of inhibitions and throwing yourself out there,” says Skarsgård. After more than 20 takes, they finally got the shot. The performers were elated; they could take off those wet pelts and head toward the cars that would usher them off to their beds.
But before they pulled away, the first AD arrived with terrible news: A drop of rain had landed on the camera lens, ruining the take. They would have to do more. On the walk back to the set, Skarsgård remembers, the 12 drained berserkers were “crying like children.” They didn’t have a choice. They stepped back into the pelts and prepared to go again.