Vikings Valhalla

[Drunk Monk]

Q for the swordfight guys: Steel or aluminum blades? Why? How close, historically, is the clothing,arms, etc?

Bamboo & rubber. Steel is rare on sets nowadays and both gentlemen had UK accents so they had a queer way of pronouncing aluminum.   

They do research their arms relatively well. I did drop a HEMA reference and that was well received. Thanks for that Maestro!

Ryan is a humble gentleman with roots in Shakespearean theater. He learned his trade from Hobbs himself. He aspired to be an actor but Hobbs saw some natural talent in him and encouraged him to his present career. We hit it off really well from the start (the SAFD shirt really broke the ice). I could see he was delighted when I knew things like who Hobbs was and about HEMA. I imagine few of his interviewers know what he’s talking about most of the time. He’s someone I could’ve chatted with for days.
 
McKenna is a machinist who started maiming prop guns and moved to swords. He’s quick to acknowledge that he’s no smith, and has a workingman’s earnestness, almost blue collar if he wasn’t a weapons nerd. He had a very practical perspective, struck me as a ‘gets the job done’ sort of guy. He said he spends his free time drawing swords based on historical pieces he’s seen in books, collections and museums. 

It struck me later that this is exactly the sort of niche piece that I am most suited to write. It’s for Den’s print mag (which they repub online too) a sponsored piece (meaning Netflix bought out a special like they did with Jupiter’s Legacy) and I get compensated at 4x my standard rate.

Season 2 is already in the can. There was mention of season 3 but the rep said I cannot write about that yet because it hasn’t been announced so it falls under my nda. 

I’ll definitely go back and watch the original series. There were some references to it that really teaser my interest.