‘Vikings’: Alyssa Sutherland Makes The Case For Aslaug

“Vikings” is back for Season 2 on History and Travis Fimmel’s Ragnar Lothbrok has a lot more on his plate than just that little conflict with his brother, Rollo, and Thorbjorn Harr.

His end-of-Season-1 booty call — Princess Aslaug (played by Aussie beauty Alyssa Sutherland) — is on her way to Kattegat, heavily pregnant with his child. But don’t call Aslaug an ancient Norse homewrecker.

“Let’s break it down: a woman gets knocked up by a dude who is going on about how he has to have these sons and then he goes to back his wife in Kattegat and she’s left pregnant. What would you do?” Alyssa told AccessHollywood.com, making the case for her character’s season premiere journey.

“Wouldn’t you want to contact the guy and say, ‘Hey! We have a little situation that we have to deal with,’” she continued, with a laugh. “Back in those times, she couldn’t pick up the phone.”

Alyssa said in order to play the pretty princess, she had to withhold any modern morality-style judgments.

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“When you’re playing a character, as an actor or actress, you can’t judge them for what they do. You really have to find what is in them that you have compassion for and fall in love with that character, regardless of what they do or how they behave. You have to know why they do it and that process for me is so interesting, especially when you have a character that’s a little bit controversial to some people, you have to work a little bit harder,” Alyssa said. “And when you find that little nugget of them, it’s actually really exciting and it’s a really fun part of the work for me.”

Alyssa said she found Aslaug’s decisions inspired by the Aslaug’s lonely youth.

“To me, when it comes to Aslaug, [what’s interesting] is the fact that she was orphaned at a really young age, and that really informs the way that she behaves,” Alyssa continued. “She’s a little bit untrusting of most people around her. Her parents died when she was really young. … She talks about the fact that their fame was more important to them than she was, at least that’s how she feels. If you’d grown up thinking that, I think that’s a pretty big deal for someone.”

And, aside from the Viking male proclivity for sleeping around outside of marriage, which was something even Lagertha acknowledged in Season 1, there’s no doubt a connection between Ragnar and his other lady love.

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“When Aslaug meets Ragnar, she thinks that they’re meant to be with one another. She has this gift of being able to see other things and maybe see some things that might happen in the future. And she thinks that they’re destined to be with one another,” Alyssa said.

Love triangle trouble awaits when “Vikings” premieres Thursday at 10/9c on History.

— Jolie Lash