Jeppe Beck Laursen (Haesten) takes us behind the scenes of The Last Kingdom

The Last Kingdom season 4 is coming round the corner. Before it starts, we talked to star Jeppe Beck Laursen, who plays one of the show’s most hated villains: the Viking leader Haesten. In the first part of our interview, Beck-Laursen — who is nothing like his character, for the record — talks about the toughest scene he’s had to film so far, discusses his favorite movies, and tells a story involving a horse you do not want to miss.

But first, Beck-Laursen told us about the casting process on The Last Kingdom, having joined the show in its second season. “It was daunting as hell,” he said. “I know Tobias Santelmann (Young Ragnar), we’ve worked together a couple times, we live in the same city, and cheer for the same team. The whole audition process was so quick for me, it all went down for me in like a week or 10 days. And that was about a week before we started shooting. I’d seen the show, and I loved it, I love stuff historical shows like that, I’m a bit of a nerd.”

"I was actually shooting a Norwegian kids movie in Budapest when I got the job. I had two days off from shooting that film, and those exact two days were the read throughs for season 2. So everything just came together perfectly."

Still, there were stressors to deal with once Beck Laursen was officially in the door, some of which came courtesy of his fellow castmates. “I remember I came in the green room, and there was lunch,” he remembered. “I looked around and thought, ‘OK, there’s Aethelwold (Harry McEntire),’ and we started talking. Harry, brilliant, wonderful, wonderful actor and I love him. But he started feeding me stories about people that had been fired during the read-throughs, and people that had been fired after a week of filming [Laughs]. He made me super nervous. So I just went in 150%, and I could have toned it down for the read-through, but I was afraid I was gonna get fired.”

"But, it was the biggest production, aside from Hansel and Gretel, and you go in there knowing you’re gonna be part of this for some time. I was optioned for so many seasons. I was scared and joyful at the same time, and it was an experience I’ll never forget. Thanks to Harry, he made it a little more scary than it had to be. But I got him back."

Now there’s a story we wish we could hear sometime.

Then the cameras started to roll, and things got really intense. “My first fight scene on the stairs when Uhtred finds me. It was 40 degrees Celsius, and I’m wearing like four layers of wool and leather. We shot that scene for like, six hours, and the poor guy feel down the stairs like 16 or 17 times. The stunt guys on this show are amazing, and they don’t get injured a lot, but after falling down the steps that many times you’ll feel it any way you do it. I remember I drank like, five liters of water, and I never went to the toilet once, and it all came out. I sweated it all out. It was so crazy hot.”

That doesn’t sound like any fun at all, although the story has a happy ending. “I was going straight from that, to doing the battle scene where the peasants are revolting,” Beck Laursen remembered. “So I was sitting in the makeup chair to get reset, and I said to the second AD, like a joke, ‘You know what we need on days like this? Ice cream.’ And like, 15 minutes pass and there are people handing out ice cream to everyone.”

Also a challenge: filming during the winter. “Winter time in Hungary is freezing. I’m from Norway, and I can do cold, but in Hungary there is something weird going on. It’s so humid, that the ground can be muddy and frozen at the same time, it’s so weird. The cold just creeps into your bone marrow, and it’s gonna take a long soak in a tub to feel warm. But we’re doing what we love, so can’t complain really.”

Image: The Last Kingdom/Netflix

So that’s the physical stuff. As for the most mentally challenging sequence to film, Beck Laursen pointed to another season 2 scene, the one where Haesten attempts to take advantage of Aethelflaed (Millie Brady).

"To go in to do that to Millie you have to dig into your darkness to get to where you want to be for the scene to be good. So that was the most challenging for sure, my process to get that. I was really happy though, during that process I found out really I was a good guy (laughs). It was hard to go in and be that narcissistic, murdering rapist. It was really funny though, Millie came up to me and said, “You’re so scary, but you’re not,” and I took that as a huge compliment."

On a lighter note, we asked Beck Laursen if what we’d heard from his castmate Adrian Bouchet (Steapa) is true: Is Mark Rowley (Finan) the worst rider on set? Beck Laursen gave us more than we bargained for:

"I’ll tell you a story about a horse, it has nothing to do with Mark. I talked to Thea Sofie Loch Næss (Skade), because it involves her I wanted to clear it with her first. First of all though, Mark is not a lousy rider. He’s our boy so we have to mess with him, but I’ve seen Mark horse whisper before.But, here’s the story… In the battle of Beamfleot, when we’re standing on top of the hill and Skade tries to escape and I ride after her, hit her with the blunt side of my axe, pull her over to my horse and ride off. What really happened was, when we’re doing a close up of this, and I’m sitting my horse, Joker, who I love. But if he was a person, he’d be a 14-year-old who just discovered his sexuality, he’s neutered now, poor thing.So I whack her (Thea) over the head, bring her over to my horse, and the horse handler takes her horse out of frame. But, when I’m about to exit frame, that horse is there, and I kind of feel my horse, Joker, say “thanks boss,” and he mounts him. So I’m sitting there, on a horse, who’s trying to mate with the other horse, with an ax and the reigns in my left hand, and Skade in the other hand, and yeah, there we are.So the whole set erupts “NOOOOOO!!!” But, I never felt we were in danger because I had control over the horse. I just didn’t want Thea to fall down in the mud, between the hooves, that was my only concern. So yeah, I’ve been on a horse that tried to mount another horse in costume. That’s my horse story. The horses have personalities and they want screen time too. Afterwards, Joker felt so bad. I fell off when the handlers came up, and I swear, he was just really embarrassed and super shy [laughs]. I’ve never seen him like that, before or after."

This is why we always ask about the horses on set. That’s where all the best stories are. Luckily, no one was injured. But who knows what would have happened if Mark Rowley had been behind the reigns? (We kid, Mr. Rowley.)

Image: The Last Kingdom/Netflix

But that’s enough about horses. Who’s the best sword-fighter on set? “I have a background in stunts, and had a teaching degree in stage fighting,” Beck Laursen told us. “It’s old now, I haven’t kept up with the certificates, but I was certified teacher in stage fighting. I’ve been around swords and stage fighting a lot, so that was sort of my forte coming into the show. There are so many other amazing fighters, I couldn’t pin point the worst fighter if I wanted to. I could but I won’t [laughs]. Alex (Dreymon) is a superb swordsman, as are Arnas [Fedaravicius (Sihtric)] and Mark. Ewan [Mitchell (Osferth)] is a good swordsman, even if you don’t see him fight much. Emily (Cox) is great.”

Remind me to never pick a fight with anyone from The Last Kingdom.

"I do everything, I do all my fights. There’s only been one occasion where my stunt man went in, but that was only because I slipped on some snow and had to take a break. For the most part though, we all do our own stuff, because we want to do that. For me, I want people when they see Haestan fighting to know that’s me fighting. It’s hard for two people to have the same body language. So my double, who is excellent, and has been fighting for years, but we don’t share the same sort of physical expression within in a fight. We get to do our own stuff, except for riding fast on horses. I try to do all of my stunts if insurance allows it, because I love it, I worked with it for many years. But then again, I’m starting to get a little older, my head is 24, but my body is a little older."

I can sympathize with that all too much.

“The stunt team is just so great,” Beck Laursen continued. “Levente Lezsák, who is the stunt coordinator, wants us to do everything, if insurance and the physical ability of the actor will allow it. Levente told me when we were doing season 4, that back during season 2, when I walked on set to do that stair fight, Levente thought, ‘Is this what I’m going to work with?’ I didn’t look like I could throw a ball into a net, but I stepped in there and he was really appreciative. Sometimes I get to choreograph my own fights. But, there are a lot of good swordsmen and women on that show, both on and off camera.”

According to Beck Laursen, when the cast aren’t hacking at one another with swords on set, they’re duking it out in the Octagon. “There are a lot of UFC fans in the cast, Arnas Fedaravicius, Ewan Mitchell, and Mark. We usually play UFC on Xbox or Playstation, and Ewan and Mark have made our characters into fighters, with our traits and looks. So Haestan is a big burly guy that can take a beating, but his chin is not that good. And he has a bucket tattooed to his leg, which is Ewan’s sort of tribute to the piss bucket scene [mentioned above]. It’s great fun, we have little tournaments, play our own characters and beat each other up in the Octagon.”

Leaving The Last Kingdom behind for a moment, Beck Laursen talked about his time on the utterly absurd, utterly entertaining, Norwegian zombie film Deadsnow, which revolves around a group of hikers attacked in the Norwegian countryside by Nazi zombies.

"I remember my casting process was meeting up with the director, Tommy Wirkola, eating pizza and talking about playing FIFA on Playstation and I had the job. Obviously they knew from my other work, but that was an amazing experience. That was the first true zombie film to come out of Norway. So it was kind of a pioneer project, but other films like Cold Prey had opened the door for us internationally. It’s a silly movie, but we take it seriously. We take our tribute, the zombie lore seriously. But it was so cold. If you remember the scene where Lasse Valdal (Vegard) finds the cave and fights the zombie, when you see him sewing himself up, and it looks like an adrenaline shake, his legs are trembling, but really it was so cold he couldn’t stop trembling. Or when someone  gets a bucket of blood thrown at him in 15 below, it was hard sometimes, but it was so much fun. It’s easy when it’s fun."

Between Cold Prey and Deadsnow, it sounds like Norwegian zombies specialize in frigid environments. And that meant they had to be a special type of zombie: “Of course we had to go for running zombies, because if not, in snow that just wouldn’t work, and there’s added danger if the zombies move fast,” Beck Laursen said. “We didn’t go for the traditional spreading of disease thing, we went for more of a curse, which was pretty cool. It was a first for all of us, and it has taken everybody so far. If it wasn’t for Deadsnow, I don’t think that I would be in The Last Kingdom today. We got to travel, go to Park City, Utah for Sundance and we had a couple screenings there.”

And how did those screening go? “The first screening was a midnight screening, so we watched the film, did a Q&A and came out, and it looked like there had been a riot outside. We found people had been trying to get in because they hadn’t sold enough tickets, so police had to be called and all that. So it’s been a wonderful, really good ride for all of us.”

Other screenings were just as traumatic, especially for Beck Laursen’s mother, “I hadn’t told my mom about it, and she went to the premiere. She knew about zombie films and what it was about, but she never expected to see her first born’s face ripped in half. At that point she was sitting 10 rows behind me, and I just stood up and yelled, ‘Sorry Mom!’ The audience loved it.”

Stay tuned for the second part of our interview, where Beck Laursen takes a deep dive into Haestan while teasing season 4 of The Last Kingdom. Destiny is all!

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