Alexander Skarsgård got one bloody thing from the 'The Northman' set

"Nicole Kidman got a sword, Willem Dafoe got a longship. Björk got three Icelandic horses."
By Shannon Connellan  on 
Alexander Skarsgård being interviewed by Stephen Colbert, looking at an image on a piece of cardboard.
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Actors take all kinds of things from set — and when you're shooting a bloody Viking epic about the Nordic legend of Amleth, like Robert Eggers' The Northman, there'll be plenty of historically authentic props to choose from.

From a set that star Alexander Skarsgård described to The Late Show host Stephen Colbert as smelling like "death and faeces," he got something a little different.

"Nicole Kidman got a sword, Willem Dafoe got a longship — the whole ship," he said. "Björk got three Icelandic horses."

And what did Skarsgård get? A bloody thong.

"It wasn't a choice, It was a gift. That's how much they valued my performance, my contribution to this movie," he said. "It's the g-string that I wore. The end fight takes place on an erupting volcano and we're naked. I mean, where else would it be set? So, that's what I wore for a week, and my character's quite wounded so he's bleeding a lot profusely."

It's somewhat more dramatic than what Tom Hiddleston got from the Loki set, at least.

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A black and white image of a person with a long braid and thick framed glasses.
Shannon Connellan

Shannon Connellan is Mashable's UK Editor based in London, formerly Mashable's Australia Editor, but emotionally, she lives in the Creel House. A Tomatometer-approved critic, Shannon writes about everything (but not anything) across entertainment, tech, social good, science, and culture.


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