{"id":14546,"date":"2017-11-28T20:32:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T20:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsslash.com\/n\/11044-vikings-interview-mit-autor-michael-hirst\/"},"modified":"2017-11-28T20:32:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-28T20:32:00","slug":"11044-vikings-interview-mit-autor-michael-hirst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsslash.com\/n\/11044-vikings-interview-mit-autor-michael-hirst\/","title":{"rendered":"Vikings: Interview mit Autor Michael Hirst"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neue Schlachten um Macht und Ehre stehen bevor: Der erste Teil der f\u00c3\u00bcnften Staffel des Amazon Prime Exclusives Vikings feiert am 30. November mit einer Doppelfolge Premiere bei Amazon Prime Video. Danach startet jede Woche eine weitere Episode. Amazon ver\u00c3\u00b6ffentlicht nun ein Interview mit Michael Hirst, Autor und Produzent von Vikings, \u00c3\u00bcber die Hintergr\u00c3\u00bcnde und Details zur neuen Staffel. Hier findet ihr das komplette Interview: Q. WHAT IS THE COMMON THEME IN SEASON 5 OF VIKINGS?<\/b> A. Looking at Season 5 of Vikings, there is a common theme – how political allegiances are constantly shifting, treaties and allegiances are being made and broken, and everyone is following their own agendas. In terms of storyline, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot of story. A lot of stuff happens in this season, which is pretty accurate in terms of how Viking society actually operated. Initially, there were no separate countries. There was no Norway, Sweden, it was all just small independent kingdoms, constantly fighting. Q. HOW MUCH OF WHAT YOU WRITE IS ORGANIC AND HOW MUCH IS DRY FACT? YOU HAVE SAGAS\/HISTORICAL FACT TO BASE IT ON BUT OBVIOUSLY GAPS TO FILL. DO YOU FIND THAT PART DIFFICULT OR ENJOYABLE?<\/b> A. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the enjoyable part for me. When writing The Tudors I realised that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I really enjoyed, interweaving different storylines and developing the characters and storyline as opposed to just revealing them. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the fun part for me. Inexhaustible fun. Q. HOW DID YOU BRIDGE SEASON 4 AND 5?<\/b> A. Up to end of 4th season, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been locked into world of Ragnar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s family so there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been limited storylines, one or two basic storylines that people get into. In terms of big adventures, until now, we have only been to France, but with Season 5 we start expanding our worlds. Season 5 starts with the beginning of the disintegration of Ragnar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s family and the great army. The characters become much more ambitious and venture out to the Mediterranean and Iceland. Brothers split up and form different allegiances and begin absorbing more of world around them. In Season 5, the series continues to expand and build, showcasing more of the sons. I always said from beginning that show was not just about Ragnar, but about Ragnar and his sons. In fact, in many ways his sons became more famous than Ragnar. Bjorn did actually go to Mediterranean and Tunisia and Ivar the Boneless was a very famous Viking. I seem to have waited a lifetime to get Ivar the Boneless into the script \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who knew the most NB Viking leader was a cripple considering what the assumptions are about Vikings. Ivar was one of the cruelest and most successful Vikings and we are very lucky to have Alex Hogh Andersen playing Ivar, he is a brilliant actor. Q. HOW LONG TO DO YOU THINK THE SHOW COULD GO ON?<\/b> A. I just finished writing the first half of Season 6, so that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 80 episodes so far. I have another 10 to do, at least. The issue of how long the show could go on is still an open book. The fact is that we will be airing episodes far as 2019 with what we have now. Who knows really, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a gift that keeps on giving. Q. BISHOP HEAHMUND \u00e2\u20ac\u201c HOW MUCH RESEARCH DID YOU PUT INTO HIM AND DID YOU HAVE JONATHON RHYS MEYERS IN MIND TO PLAY HIM?<\/b> A. It started out, like most things in screenwriting and life; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about problem solving. Writing is about that \u00e2\u20ac\u201c how do we manage that or resolve issues between brothers. The issue was how do I find a Saxon warrior who is equivalent to Vikings in terms of charisma and reputation. At beginning of S5, the king is in waiting, Aethelwulf in exile, Alfred is ill and possibly dying. The wheels are coming off the Saxon empire in Wessex, so I spoke to my historical advisor and said we need to find someone who can represent the Saxons and he suggested a warrior bishop. These were men who were the precursors to the Knights Templar, genuinely religious men who often were bishops, but also fighters. When we found Bishop Heahmund, a historical figure who was a warrior bishop, I had found a Saxon warrior that could theoretically stand up to Ivar and Bjorn and other Vikings. Someone suggested Johnathan Rhys Meyers, which was brilliant because, like Bishop Heahmund, he is passionate and intense and I someone in this role that had that intensity. I wanted to show pagan fundamentalism \u00e2\u20ac\u201c for audience to understand that paganism was a real religion and that people believed it very deeply. It meant a lot and explained the world to the Vikings. I think I was getting that message across. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen levels of belief \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Floki is a complete fundamentalist and I wanted to show same for Christianity, that it was driven by people like Bishop Heahmund \u00e2\u20ac\u201c young religion sweeping across globe and one of reasons was intensity of belief and Heahmund was going to represent that for me \u00e2\u20ac\u201c passionate Christians coming up against equally passionate pagans. That was story behind that. Once you have characters and the story you want to tell it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fun putting them together, and to figure out what circumstances they are going to need. We put the pagans and the Christians together early in the season in York and those are incredible scenes. We do battles very well, better than other shows but the way Ivar and Heahmund fight and exist is incredible. Q. WHAT ATTRACTED YOU MOST TO THE IDEA OF EXPANDING THE SHOW INTO OTHER PLACES LIKE ICELAND?<\/b> A. I always knew I would take the series to different worlds. I always know I would take the show to France, for instance, because of the famous battle where the Vikings attacked Paris. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re working on something set in Dark Ages, inevitably means not as much material about that for that era than say the Tudors. But if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anything real then I want to use it. I want to keep pushing boundaries of story and Viking experience into the world as they did. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why the show is so meaningful to people around the world because Viking influence reached so many places. Considering how small these countries are, the impact on world is staggering. Q. WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE OF YOUR JOB?<\/b> A. The biggest challenge is to take what I know historically and get our production to reflect it on the screen. They need to show size because we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to do that with visual effects, everything starts with real things. Our actors fight, row, ride horses and we add visual effects, but how do we show that the Vikings reach is now extensive? You have to go to different places, like Iceland and persuade audience that the places are real. Q. DID YOU FIND ANY SCENE PARTICULARLY DIFFICULT TO WRITE?<\/b> A. Quite a few of the episodes have been difficult to write. Vikings is about life and death and all the area in between, so we have had a lot of significant deaths and extraordinarily emotional moments. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m the only writer on the show and I live with these characters for years and get very attached to them. If and when I have to kill off, it is a huge moment for me. For instance, Travis [Fimmel] and I spent a long time together talking through the death of Ragnar Lothbrok. We talked about what he would say and how that would happen. We talked and fought about it – it was a passionate engagement. The most emotional moment for me however was in Season 1 when Ragnar is on a beach lamenting the death of his daughter Gyda. I have daughters and I imagined giving that speech myself. Travis has no children but nevertheless was wonderful, lyrical and full of feeling and emotion when delivering that speech. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m emotionally engaged with the characters I write. Q. WHAT WAS IT LIKE FILMING LAST SCENE WITH TRAVIS?<\/b> A. My memory is of Travis [Fimmel] suspended in a cage in the mountains in Ireland, in pouring rain, howling wind, in winter, with everyone freezing cold and Travis hitting the sides of cage shouting \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I HATE MICHAEL HIRST!!!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It was an emotional moment. Q. CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THE CLASH OF CULTURES AND CIVILIZATIONS?<\/b> A: Personally, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what drives me and interests me, which is why I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never tired of writing this series. I have Icelandic novelist and historian who help me with sagas, but I like delving into books and reading. History and English are the only two subjects I was really good at in school, so I cleverly combined them. I like reading footnotes to books; I find those interesting bits of information, the personality and details about people. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m always looking for things that contradict assumptions and prejudices. The whole idea we had about Vikings was a cliche\u00cc\u0081. We didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know much about them because the attitude towards them was established by and large by their enemies in the Western world. To make matters worse, the Vikings didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t write anything down themselves, so we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have personal accounts of their culture. We just think of them as grubby dirty hippies only interested in pillage. In making Vikings, I wanted to show, through Ragnar, that the Vikings were driven by curiosity and they had the necessary technology with boats and sunstone to facilitate that curiosity, to go places. And it goes beyond adventure and curiosity, their attitude toward women was much more enlightened than societies around them \u00e2\u20ac\u201c England, France, Spain \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they were more democratic than most other societies. Without being educational, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to teach people, but can put out there, in drama, the things that challenge our assumptions and prejudices. The challenge is to make these people interesting and complex, which was part of the brief I gave myself. The other part of the brief I gave myself was to try to not explain, but to dramatize and show what paganism was and the clash between paganism and Christianity and how real that was. The Francs and Saxons were very aware that there were ongoing battles between different religious ideas and ideologies \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Vikings were the last pagans. Christianity was a much more intellectual idea \u00e2\u20ac\u201c monastic and I just wanted people to understand that it was a huge part of the reality. The Christians borrowed so much from pagans; most of our ceremonies are based on pagan ceremonies. Summer and winter solstice is pagan. That was another thing, I loved researching. Q. THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE SERIES IS INTERESTING, AS YOU NEVER FEEL AS A VIEWER THAT IT IS TOO FANTASTICAL. WAS IT HARD TO STRIKE THAT BALANCE?<\/b> A: Yes, because I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like fantasy, but I did want to show that Vikings believed that gods were among them and they were living presences. When we show Odin on the battlefield in the first episode, we show him because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what Vikings believed, that Odin was on the battlefield with them. But I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to do that too much because it had to be real. I did have advantage that gods were shape shifting, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fine line. In Season 5, when Floki goes to Iceland and sees gods, you see it because that is what he believed, he believed that he found a world where the gods lived. If you see a crow or a raven, maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a god. My sense is that Vikings see landscapes as living things more so than we do, they see more signs than we do. But when Floki goes to Iceland, it is perfectly possible Floki is mad because everyone he has loved has died. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an amazing scene when he says goodbye to Ragnar and Helga \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in his head.<\/p>