![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/dnm.nflximg.net/api/v6/BvVbc2Wxr2w6QuoANoSpJKEIWjQ/AAAAQa374OiMY_Vx_NVa_ceTgS8Waq8GdHmTF9WUsn4UEWTRRsRclC7_hWKYewsqus_bP8xIw2JVw3PtXIUR7jvgKEOB0eCkpOc1a4bEEfrbVLrMmUBTvI0Y0tJPQ5Y0H5vWsRlq5_l2lBIOO8tSF8ih.jpg?r=7e5)
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/dnm.nflximg.net/api/v6/BvVbc2Wxr2w6QuoANoSpJKEIWjQ/AAAAQRGZCqfNKT7iex7QfOiCGlMW79m-A3RtNLFh5VRxbZejASZY9rkbekn-0LZxv5jonWxIcj1Wsqgo-6P_A8l-BHmrQcr7-Y3Nid0TMa8bTkJrTz644ON7pRlgiz-Z1bqh6ccQn_jL9tkpy2msq3Eh.jpg?r=7e5)
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/dnm.nflximg.net/api/v6/BvVbc2Wxr2w6QuoANoSpJKEIWjQ/AAAAQUIV8f0Zt3527q03xHmhx5FjKGBoOSpA2tGnwKyAhRH6YZcXXy4AmUxYy91EaImoBh1-dj2XxWM_A--41VTQOqlcCFleXUJo430PMcs-8Mda-z1tlSbIbly6XVqLzcTMwH-86I6afDdFD5LaErNH.jpg?r=7e5)
Before Harald Sigurdsson became king of Norway, he was a military commander who fought ruthless battles and traveled far from Scandinavia. In Vikings: Valhalla, the legendary warrior comes to life 100 years after the original Vikings series took place. Now in its final season, this last chapter captures the end of the Viking Age as they fight for survival, seek revenge on the English royals, and clash over their conflicting Christianity and pagan beliefs. Season 3 takes Harald to Constantinople, where he becomes a military leader and guard for the Byzantine emperor, and a rival to general George Maniakes (played by real heavyweight fighter Florian Munteanu).
For English actor Leo Suter, taking on the merciless — and bloody — role wasn’t a simple feat.
Suter is no stranger to the historical fiction genre. From Beecham House to Sanditon, he’s built a repertoire of immersing viewers in elaborate worlds of the past. However, fans might not recognize Suter at first glance. With long, curly locks tied in a bun and a thick beard, Suter fully embodies the look of a Viking. Sigurdsson has been described as being larger and stronger than other men, which required months of workouts and combat training for Suter. By Season 3, Sigurdsson has become battle-weary, wise, and rich enough to take the Norwegian throne. But he’s also become callous. He’s now referred to as Harald Hardrada, which roughly translates to “hard ruler” as he’s known in the real Viking sagas.
The Vikings: Valhalla star spoke to Tudum about how he prepared to look the part, mastering how to fight like a Viking, the lessons to be learned from this tumultuous time period — and why Harald Hardrada wouldn’t be caught dead in jelly shoes.
Your character, Harald Sigurdsson, is a big, strong, fearless leader, and you look the part. What was your fitness training like?
You’re right that Harald is a beast on the battlefield, and that’s even mentioned in the historical record. His physicality and size were actually going to be a key part of his character for me to portray faithfully. I knew that training was going to be important, and we were very lucky to have a trainer called Pat Henry to help us through that first four months of pandemic when we were all in lockdown and weren't able to film. We did Zoom sessions three times a week with the weights that I had lying around in my garage that had gathered a lot of dust.
I’d got in really good shape for Season 2. And then Season 3 was like: “No, we want to go superhero mode for this season.” We filmed [Season 3] two years ago, [and now] I don’t recognize the person who was in that routine of waking up at four in the morning and still putting in a workout. But I think when you have a driving force, like you’ve got to be Harald Hardrada and you’ve got to kill Maniakes, who’s a beast –– that propels you forward. I knew that Hardrada had to be born, so we really went all out for it.
How much time did it take for you to get into shape before production?
It took four months to get to where I was [for the first season], but I came at it from a place of always being quite athletic, and fitness is an important part of my life. I find it meditative and calming to go to the gym, so I wasn’t starting from a base of zero.
[For the third season,] I’d say I was going to the gym probably five or six times a week in the heat of it straight after work. And this was nice. This was the first season where gyms were open. Previously, there were no gyms, because [of the pandemic].
Did you have to eat like a Viking?
[Vikings] probably ate a lot of meat and seafood. Pat would just say, “Eat more eggs for breakfast.” Actually, all through my life, I’ve always wanted to go to the gym to an extent that allows me to eat what I want and to drink what I want. In terms of nutrition, I just cooked my own meals from [the supermarket] Tesco. It was chicken and sweet potatoes and broccoli.
How long did the process take to grow your beard and hair out?
Well, that’s one of the other funny things. You can build muscle, and if you work hard and go to the gym more often, you’ll get bigger. You have some control over it. Hair, on the other hand, you have to sit, wait, hope, and eat your crusts. In many respects, growing the hair and the beard was much harder than growing the body.
What was it like to spar with a real fighter like Florian Munteanu?
In Season 3, we got “Big Nasty,” a former heavyweight boxer, 6-foot-4, full of muscle. He put his arm, his enormous trunk of an arm, on my shoulder and said to me, “Any fight scenes you’ve done before this, we are raising the bar.” So I was slightly intimidated.
He rugby-tackled me and hit me into the ground, and I remember saying to him on the day of filming: “Just go for it, man. Just punch me properly.” And he hit me in the ribs and it fucking hurt. And there was another time where his fist grazed my beard on an uppercut and then they called cut and he was chuckling. He was like, “Bro, if I had connected …” His words were: “You would’ve been changed forever.” I would’ve lost all my teeth.
What happened with your final fight with Maniakes?
By this time in the filming of the three seasons, I don’t want to blow my own trumpet too much, but I got quite adept at fight choreography. I began to have a few opinions –– the stunt team would say many opinions — on certain moves. And in Season 2, in the bullpen fight, I had seen a Muay Thai move where this guy climbed on top of the guy and kneed him in the chin and karate-chopped him in the head. And I said, “Oh, could we do this in the bullpen fight?” And the stunt team said, “No, that’s Muay Thai.” But I showed it to Jeb [Stuart, the creator] and then Jeb was like, “Yeah, we’ll get that into Season 3.” So I get to jump up on Maniakes, knee him in the face. That all came from a Muay Thai TikTok.
Did you ever get injured while filming a fight scene?
I had to do [the Maniakes scene] in bare feet because I was a prisoner, I didn’t have any clothes. And in rehearsals for it, I ripped off the whole skin on the ball of my foot, but I couldn’t walk properly on it for the days leading up to the fight. The costume department went down to the beach shop, got me transparent jelly shoes, and were like, “Don’t worry, you can wear these in your big fight.” I put them on, I looked like an utter idiot. And I said, “Listen guys, I’m Harald Hardrada, I’m about to kill Maniakes. I’m not wearing jelly shoes.” And so I fucked it up. Pain is temporary, film is forever.
You’re shirtless very often. How did they make your tattoos and scars?
[Head of makeup] Tom McInerney. Legend. What a superstar. The main thing in a fight is that my tattoos start falling off and disintegrating. The tattoos are interesting, because they’re 3D printed, and then they’re stuck on, and then Tom basically puts a film of plastic through aerosols all over my arms to keep the tattoos safe. That means that I can’t sweat through my arms, which means I sweat on my face. So then he has to put a film on my face so I can’t sweat from my face because that looks weird. So when I’m in a costume, I’m sweating profusely from everywhere that isn’t my face and my arms. The scars that are on my body, they’re made out of silicone. And the more you sweat, the more the silicone begins to fall off. So the most disgusting thing is sweaty silicone beginning to disintegrate, and Tom has to squelch it into a ball and put it in a bag and say, “Do you know what? Fuck it. They won’t notice that.”
How long do these battle scenes take to film?
Well, if you’re going to be thorough about it, you’d say these scenes take several months to film. It’ll come through in a script that there’s a fight, then it goes to the stunt department. On their own, they’ll come up with choreography that they think works. That choreography then gets checked to see if it matches the character. Lastly, the actors are brought in to be taught the steps. The preparation is by far the thing that takes the most time.
One of the fun things in these battle scenes is when they haven’t called “Cut” and you’ve got to keep going. That’s when you’re improvising, and that’s when looking in someone’s eyes is so important because you’re both like, “We’re doing this. We’re doing this.” And then you just come up with other choreography.
I’m sure you still have all that adrenaline built up to keep you going.
That’s the other thing. When you rehearse in the stunt shed, it’s a very calm and sanitized environment. Everything is at what we call half speed or maybe three-quarter speed. When you get on set and you’re in the armor and there’s the sounds of war around you and your adrenaline is pulsing, things get faster quickly. A big thing that I had to work on was to slow down.
Harald is ruthless and he’s killed so many people. I wanted him to almost be a blur, but one of the challenges with that is, you’ve got to film it and mark each moment. Finding a happy balance between whirlwind and those moments of the kill — and registering that before he moves on to his next opponent — that was always the fine line to tread.
Can you describe your accent and your process of nailing it down?
We have a great dialect coach called Paul, and he helped us work with it. He gave us Icelandic resources, which were what we were going to base the accent around. One of the interesting things about Harald that you get from the sagas and from our story is that he spent time growing up in England. He’s quite cosmopolitan. I wasn’t too concerned if his accent sounded slightly different to people who had spent all their time in Scandinavia because there’s a globalness to Harald, or a Europeanness, that was an interesting thing to play. Frida [Gustavsson] was also a great source because she’s Swedish and has a Scandinavian accent.
The characters are based on real people, but the show is historical fiction. How do you as an actor balance the historical parts and the creative liberty to make the story your own?
I like reading books and was lucky that there are books out there about Harald and this period in time. You learn that this period of history was tumultuous, and that the power struggles between kings were bloody and ruthless. That was all interesting academic work. But you’re right; you have to put that to one side once you go to the scripts, because the scripts do so much of the work for you.
The other thing I’d say is this is like an origin story. We know Harald for things that happened later in his life. He was a Varangian Guard; he was king of Norway; he invaded England. In Vikings: Valhalla, we find him early on and we throw him into a world where he’s friends with Leif Eriksson and falls for Freydís Eríksdótter. This didn’t happen in the sagas, but there’s a poetic license and a historical authenticity that make the role quite fun to play.
You’ve done a lot of period pieces, like Beecham House and Sanditon. What draws you to the genre, and why do you think you get cast in these roles?
It’s a fun thing as an actor to get to do some homework and to buff up on some history that you wouldn’t otherwise know about. Why it keeps attracting me, I’m not sure. What I would say is that there’s a larger point of why we, as an audience, are so interested in historical dramas. I think that boils down to fascination with what history can tell us about today. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. There are lessons to be learned, and to take Vikings: Valhalla as an example, there’s political factionalism between Christians and pagans. There’s animosity on each side and a lack of understanding or an unwillingness to seek middle ground. That’s as true today as it was then. The politics of this Viking world are messy, dirty, bloody, and backstabbing.
All those period dramas that you mentioned — I’m good at Regency ballroom dancing, but I���ve never had to swing an axe or cut with a sword. This is technically still a period drama, but it’s also a very different show from those I’ve done before.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.