Gallery Link:
- Public Appearances > Public Appearances in 2018 > Jul 20: San Diego Comic Con 2018 – “Vikings” Panel
TV INSIDER – The wait is nearly over for fans of History’s hit Vikings.
Announced during the Comic-Con 2018 panel moderated by TV Guide Magazine’s Kate Hahn, this series from Tudors writer Michael Hirst, will make its midseason 5 premiere later this year on Wednesday, November 28.
Starring Alexander Ludwig, Gustaf Skarsgård, Katheryn Winnick, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, among others, the historical saga last saw the Lothbrok family’s divide deepen. And the midseason premiere will pick up with the arrival of Viking legend Dike Rollo (Clive Standen), who stirs up more trouble in Kattegat, which is still reeling from Ivar the Boneless’s (Alex Høgh Andersen) new role as King.
While Bjorn (Alexander Ludwig) and Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) escape Ivan’s forces with Bishop Heahmund (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), dark times are still ahead in this new Scandinavia.
Floki (Gustaf Skarsgård), in the meantime, will battle the elements of Iceland as well as his “settlers’ desire for revenge,” in order to survive the harsh landscape.
Check out the full trailer below and make sure to stay tuned for more midseason premiere details as they arise.
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD – If Katheryn Winnick ever wondered how deeply her Vikings character, Queen Lagertha, has resonated with audiences around the world, a fan recently provided physical proof. “He rolled up his sleeve and pointed to [a tattoo of] my face. I was shocked!” the 40-year-old Canadian actor says, laughing. “It’s the highest form of flattery to the show, but it was surreal to see my face on his arm. I mean – it’s there for life!”
He isn’t the only enthusiast to ink her face on their skin. Katheryn has taken to chronicling this lasting symbol of devotion to the TV series (now in its fifth season, and airing in over 140 countries) on her Instagram account. She posts snaps of multiple Lagertha tattoos, and asked her 2.1 million followers earlier this month: “This week’s Viking Ink Wars … who killed it?”
The role of Lagertha, a fearless fighter, seems tailor-made for Katheryn. She has a third-degree black belt in tae kwon do, a second-degree black belt in karate and is a licensed bodyguard. With that physicality and warrior mentality, who else would be better placed to rule the Vikings‘ base of Kattegat?
Katheryn inherited her love of martial arts from her Ukrainian father, Roman. One of four children, she was born and raised in Toronto and learnt to speak Ukrainian before English. A self-described tomboy, Katheryn took martial arts very seriously and was spending up to four hours a day training by the time she reached her teens. She opened her first martial arts club at 16, and by 21 was running three of them. She also studied kinesiology.
“My parents always taught me that hard work pays off,” reflects Katheryn, whose tough voice masks a gentle side. “I think that mentality put me in good stead.”
She parlayed her black-belt skills into teaching martial arts stunts, which gave her a taste for Hollywood. “By the time I was teaching other actors how to do stunts, I realised I wanted to be the actress,” she says.
“I got a hint of the incredible life these actors lead – being able to come to work every day and do something new. Sure, it looked challenging and scary, but that’s what motivated me and I knew I had to go for it.”
It is likely that the Season 5 return date will also be announced during the ‘Vikings’ panel at SDCC 2018
INQUISITR – Fans of History Channel’s Vikings have been anxiously awaiting news on the return date for Season 5 of the hit historical drama series. Now, with San Diego Comic-Con scheduled for this weekend, it seems likely a premiere date will be announced then.
According to the San Diego Comic-Con blog, the Vikings panel will be held in Ballroom 20 on Friday, July 20, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
The Vikings guests will include Katheryn Winnick (Lagertha), Clive Standen (Rollo), Alexander Ludwig (Bjorn Ironside), Alex Hogh Andersen (Ivar the Boneless), Georgia Hirst (Torvi), and Vikings creator and writer, Michael Hirst.
Normally in the Vikings panel, details emerge of what fans can expect moving forward in the upcoming season as well as being presented with a trailer filled with new footage. History Channel’s press release has already confirmed that a new trailer will air during the Vikings panel at San Diego Comic-Con, so fans will be able to see new footage of the Season 5 return. It is likely this trailer will also reveal the premiere date, although this hasn’t been officially confirmed yet.
In addition to the Vikings panel, every year at San Diego Comic-Con, History Channel put on some pretty amazing events. For example, last year’s San Diego Comic-Con Vikings event saw a replica of a Viking funeral procession. This year, fans of the show can get their future told by the Seer in a special Vikings booth. According to the press release from History Channel, the details are below.
Gallery Link:
- Public Appearances > Public Appearances in 2018 > May 10: Global Gift Initiative at 71st Cannes Film Festival
- Public Appearances > Public Appearances in 2018 > Mar 6: “The World Of Vikings: History on Film” Event in Toronto, Canada
- Films > Polar > Filming in Toronto Canada – March 20, 2018
- Magazine Scans > 2017 Scans > 2017 Cinemania – December
DEADLINE – High School Musical alum Vanessa Hudgens, Katheryn Winnick of the History Channel series Vikings, and Matt Lucas (Alice In Wonderland) have signed up to co-star in Polar, an action-thriller directed by Swedish filmmaker Jonas Åkerlund and starring Mads Mikkelsen. The pic, based on the Dark Horse action noir graphic novel Polar: Came From the Cold by Victor Santos, hails from Constantin Film and Netflix, which will distribute it sometime next year.
Written by Jayson Rothwell, the story centers on the world’s top assassin, Duncan Vizla (Mikkelsen), aka The Black Kaiser, who is settling into retirement when his former employer marks him as a liability to the firm. Against his will, he finds himself back in the game going head to head with an army of younger, faster, ruthless killers who will stop at nothing to have him silenced.
Constantin’s Robert Kulzer, Jeremy Bolt, and Hartley Gorenstein are producing, while Mikkelsen, Constantin’s Martin Moszkowicz, and Dark Horse Entertainment’s Keith Goldberg and Mike Richardson serve as exec producers on the film, which is currently in production in Toronto.
Hudgens is repped by CAA and Untitled, Winnick by CAA and Alchemy Entertainment, and Lucas by Troika and WME.
EW – Warning: This article contains spoilers for Wednesday’s episode of Vikings, “Moments of Vision.”
Vikings has always been a violent show, and past seasons of History’s epic have featured massive battle scenes full of character fatalities. But Wednesday’s midseason finale, “Moments of Vision,” takes an unexpected approach to the climactic showdown between the forces of Ivar (Alex Hogh) and Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick). The episode tracks multiple characters in a nonlinear fashion, cutting from the fighting to preparations for the battle. There are flashbacks, and sequences that could either be spiritual visions or dying hallucinations. “I was quite determined that we would just do a unique thing,” says Vikings creator Michael Hirst, who wrote this episode (and all the others.) “A battle scene told from different points of view, including points of view of people who died.”
EW talked to Hirst about the bloody, poignant episode, and what it means for the show going forward.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: “Moments of Vision” saw a lot of long-running characters die, including Jasper Pääkkönen’s Halfdan and Josefin Asplund’s Astrid. How much did you plan out these character exits before working on the episode? In the writing process, did you save some characters, or write deaths you weren’t expecting?
MICHAEL HIRST: At one stage, I was sure that a son of Ragnar would kill another son of Ragnar. So that would probably be between Hvitserk and Ubbe. And I went into that final scene thinking that that was gonna happen. And then it didn’t happen, which was mildly surprising to me. A mirror image of that was Harald and Halfdan, and I wasn’t sure what was gonna happen, but then [Harald] killed him. I knew that Astrid was going to die, even though I didn’t want her to die! I loved her.
What I want to show, as well as cool action, is psychological damage. A bigv thing is to try to humanize the Vikings, try to show they were just like you and me. They’re fighting battles every other year, or whatever it is. And it’s gonna wear them down. With Lagertha, I wanted to start showing the psychological impact of continuously being between life and death.
There were interesting moments near the end of Ragnar’s time on the show, when he would have visions of his past life or younger days on the farm. It felt like a lot of characters had moments like that in this episode.
I had a lot of friends who were gay who died in the early AIDS epidemic of the ’80s and ’90s. They died in their 30s, essentially. That is the typical lifespan of a Viking. They didn’t live for very long. So Halfdan’s death, and the death of Torvi’s first son in the battle, and Astrid’s very young. Young people dying is a very powerful part of that episode.
CARTERMATT – As we start to look ahead towards Vikings season 5 episode 11, it seems as though it’s going to be an interesting, emotional time for Katheryn Winnick’s character of Lagertha. She just lost one of the people she cared about the most in Astrid, and to go along with that she has to face the other side of a battle that she thought at one point would kill her. She’s a survivor, but is there a sense of survivor’s guilt that goes along with that? There could be different, interesting dimensions coming for this character in the season half of season 5 and CarterMatt is very interested in diving into some of that.
So how will Lagertha recover — or will she ever recover? This is something that show boss Michael Hirst details to TV Guide in the aftermath of the big midseason finale:
“I think it’s hard and in the long term, she suffers for what happened in that battle. Without giving anything away, it’s not as though she just takes it in her stride and it’s another battle. It’s been a life change, basically. [She killed] someone she loves and it won’t be long before you see how deeply and how profoundly that’s affected her.”
What is so important about this story is the concept of breaking down the walls and understanding a little bit more of what lies underneath. We know Lagertha to be a powerful, imposing figure; yet, she feels jsut like anyone else. One of the interesting elements to her story moving forward now is seeing if there are ways that she can be vulnerable. Part of her challenge with this, in turn, could be finding a way to channel this vulnerability. When you are someone in her position, how do you channel this? How can you illuminate this struggle? Is there a way in which to make that happen? This is a challenging story that is coming up for Lagertha but, for Winnick, we imagine that it has to be appreciated. It’s a chance to play another different dimension of an extraordinary character.
Of course, in the midst of her grief more problems will come Lagertha’s way. This is Vikings, and this is not the sort of world where characters often have a moment to breathe – especially with Ivar’s army pushing forward towards Kattegat.
TV GUIDE – Since Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) and Ragnar (Travis Fimmel) split, the Queen of Kattegatt has had her share of romantic troubles. There was her abusive second husband Sigvard (Morten Sasse Suurballe), whom she was forced to kill; her manipulative fiancé Kalf (Ben Robson), whom she was forced to kill on her wedding day, and then Astrid (Josefin Asplund), her trusted advisor who married one of her greatest enemies and whom she may just be forced to kill if they come face-to-face in Wednesday’s season finale.
So overall, not a great track record for Lagertha over the years, but that doesn’t mean she should stop searching for love, by any means. However, it does mean that we’re fairly skeptical her latest relationship — an unexpected and impulsive coupling with the Christian warrior bishop Heahmund (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) that began in this week’s episode — is going to end with a happily ever after, something Vikings creator Michael Hirst all but confirmed to us.
