Edge Discusses His Post Wrestling Acting Career & His Role on Vikings

Edge recently spoke with Chuck Carroll (via PWinsider.com) about his post WWE acting career, his role on Vikings, and more…

You start off as a vampire in WWE and now you’re playing a Viking. You must consider yourself a pretty versatile actor at this point, pretty well-rounded, right?: You know, once I wrapped my mind around the idea of admitting that I was now an actor, at first, when I started on Haven, I didn’t want to, in any way, take away from what actors do by saying I was an actor, because at that point, it was something that I thought would be fun, and it fell in my lap. But as it started to unfold, and I was doing more and more seasons with that show, I realized how much fun I was having. And how much I still needed a creative outlet. I needed to still tap into that creative vein that wrestling had always tapped into. So, once I really started enjoying the process of acting, I dove into it, and I’ve just had fun. It’s such a fun, creative process that you do with this massive amount of people that are all working toward this common goal. It’s really gratifying, and it’s fun to take on challenging roles, and this one has been, because it’s a period piece and drama, and there’s accents. They were all new challenges for me, so it’s been a really fun experience.

Talk to me about tackling that accent. Did you work with a voice coach or someone like that?: No. Initially, I took a quick little online Skype session with this woman up in Toronto before I auditioned. Just so I had a little bit of a grasp, hopefully, for it before I auditioned. And then once I got the part, we have a coach who sits down with us initially, kind of brings us up to speed, and gives us some hard and fast rules on things that if you stick to it will help everything out. Eventually it just becomes second nature.

What was it about the Kjetill Flatnose character that drew you to the role?: I’ve always been a fan of the show. Just thought it was like cinematic quality it just looked huge. It was on my radar, and I told my team we gotta keep an eye out for this show to see if there’s anything coming up. It just so happens that we were pregnant with our second daughter at the time. Once we had Ruby, about six weeks after she was born my wife [Beth Phoenix] she said if you want to start reading for stuff, fine, and the first thing I read for was Vikings. Didn’t really know much about the character initially outside of that he was a warrior, but you know, on some level all Vikings were. Once I started getting scripts and seeing what this guy was all about it was a nice surprise, actually. I realize with my prior background that fight scenes and action scenes, I’m probably going to get some of those at some point in any role that I take, but this was much more character based than I thought it would be, and that was really nice. It was again another challenge to be able to go outside of expectations of what maybe a WWE fan would expect. And maybe they were disappointed initially when they don’t see me in a fight scene right in the first episode. But I think we’ll eventually get to a point where they will appreciate that too.

And you’re comfortable physically doing the fight scenes? I know you had to hang up your wrestling boots a little bit earlier than you would have liked because of an in-ring injury. Yeah, the good thing about acting is you don’t actually have to fall. (laughs) That was the only thing that I couldn’t do in wresting anymore was take falls. So you know I can still throw a mean punch, and you know head butts and do fight sequences, the good thing is that I don’t have to land anymore, so I can still throw people into things, I just probably can’t be thrown into the things.

And the show is filmed on location, isn’t it? Yeah, we shoot in Ireland, and it’s a lot of traveling back and forth to make sure I get home to the girls, and any positive time that I can I just hop on the first flight and make sure I get back so that I’m still dad too … and what’s great about the size of this show with the amount of characters and storylines, it really does give me opportunities to get home and still be dad, which is priority number one.