Earth Abides: Vikings star Alexander Ludwig says new Stan show is ‘the hardest thing I’ve ever done’

Alexander Ludwig spent years of his life cold, covered in mud and fake blood, in full costume, swinging an axe or a sword in his role as the ferocious Bjorn Ironside on the acclaimed series Vikings.

But the discomfort he experienced there was nothing compared to what he faced on his new series, the post-acocalyptic drama Earth Abides.

But instead of being taxing on his body, his role as loner Ish in the haunting six-part series took its toll mentally and emotionally. His character spends the early part of the series totally and utterly alone.

“It was the hardest thing I had ever done,” Ludwig, who also starred in The Hunger Games, tells STM from his home in Austin, Texas.

“I knew this was going to be tough, but nothing before — and I don’t think anything I will ever do after this — comes close.

“Vikings was physically one of the hardest things I ever did — it was such an uncomfortable show — but this, on an emotional level, I knew it was going to require all of me. And the places I had to go emotionally . . . It was crazy what was demanded of me, especially in that first episode.

Earth Abides adds to a recent smorgasbord of dystopian, post-apocalypse shows. Turn on the TV and you could be forgiven for thinking it’s the end of the world: The Walking Dead, The Last Of Us, Silo, Fallout, heck, even The Handmaid’s Tale.

A pessimistic person — which, let’s face it, is a lot of us living through these uncertain times — could be excused for thinking these shows are some sort of twisted road map for our survival.

But if you think this series is just another in a long line of harrowing tales of broken worlds and broken spirits, you’d be mistaken: Ludwig wants viewers with apocalypse fatigue to know that Earth Abides hits different notes.

In this, Ludwig’s character is not fighting zombies or half-alive fungus-ridden monsters. He’s trying to survive in a world that has been all but wiped out by an unspecified pandemic.

Given what we’ve all been through these past few years, it is a terrifying proposition that hits close to home.

As the series begins, Ish has been in and out of a coma for weeks after being bitten by a venomous snake at his remote cabin in the woods. He emerges from his fever to find an empty and eerily quiet world. As he wanders through deserted towns, sighting bodies that have fallen where they stood, a realisation dawns on him — he might be the only person on Earth left alive.

“Look, I love the monster shows as much as the next guy, and I love all those post-apocalypse series — I totally get it,” Ludwig says.

“But this just isn’t that, remotely. This is actually (more about): what would actually happen if a pandemic wiped out 98 per cent of the population and you had to start again?

“What is life? What is important in life? And at a time when I feel like we are more divided than most of us would like to believe, if there’s any message that I hope gets through from the show, it’s the importance of each other, and our community.”

In the series, after being on his own for what feels like an eternity, Ish realises there is at least one other person living nearby who has also survived the mysterious plague: a woman named Emma, played by Jessica Frances Dukes. He sees smoke from a chimney at a home nearby and it’s a glimmer of hope.

In a recent interview, Ludwig admitted that after he was cast, he reached out to Hollywood actor Will Smith, who famously shot the 2007 film I Am Legend, which mines similar territory, saying he felt that he was “the only person who could possibly understand” what it was like to film that first episode over four weeks with no other co-stars.

Before Ish meets Emma, he does have one other companion: a stray dog called Lucky whom he befriends on his travels. Ludwig says it was a relief to finally have a co-star, even one that couldn’t speak back.

“I think it made it so much easier for me to convey (the loneliness that Ish is feeling), because that is what I was actually feeling at the time — and I didn’t expect that,” he explains.

“I was the only actor on that set, and it’s not like I got time to talk to the crew — we were ‘go, go, go’ — so I really did feel totally and utterly alone. When I finally got Lucky, I felt the way Ish felt — I was relieved.”

Earth Abides feels as though it has come along at precisely the right time, as the world navigates this post-COVID, politically unstable period.

For Ludwig, who is phenomenal in that eerie first episode, it felt particularly prescient, and as though his own life had come full circle.

“I’d be willing to bet that most of us have asked that question: what would I have done if COVID took out everybody?” he says.

“And that is what we are exploring in the show: this is about people. There are no zombies, no monsters, it’s all about what you do if you had to start again.”

As Ludwig explains, Ish is a solitary guy who loves being by himself — until it’s forced on him.

“The next thing he has to do is fight for the survival of himself, and humanity, and he goes in search of others,” he says.

“We explore what happens when another tribe comes in and somebody on that tribe wants to destroy everything you have built, and what happens when the animals take back the earth that belonged to them.”

Just like his character, Ludwig’s life was changed irreversibly by COVID-19.

“During the pandemic, my wife and I met, and within nine months we were married. It just kind of expedited the process for all of the life changes,” he explains. They now have two children together.

When the script for Earth Abides first crossed his desk, he was emerging from that strange and intense period of his life.

“I think there will always be some sort of trauma that everyone experienced through the pandemic, and I know the lockdown was not easy, especially in Australia,” he muses. “In Canada (where the series was filmed) it was similar.”

Ludwig explains, “I was in the middle of filming Bad Boys 4 (Ride Or Die) when I got a call from my manager saying ‘(the show’s executive producer) Michael Wright is very interested in you playing Ish’.

“He liked my work on Vikings, where I got to show this tremendous arc from the ages of early teens to forties.

“I always thought there was no way I would ever have the chance to do something like that again. Of course, fate would have it that that was exactly what I got to do again (with this show), but on a totally different level.”

Earth Abides is based on the 1949 sci-fi novel of the same name by George R. Stewart. Ludwig had not read it until he was approached about the show, but when he did, he “fell totally in love with it — it was almost biblical, and I couldn’t believe it was written in 1949”.

Ludwig felt an intense personal connection to the story, partly because his life was ticking along almost in parallel to that of his character’s.

“It really was the gift of gifts for any actor,” he says of his role. “I have been very lucky (in the parts I have played), but I don’t know, in a really crazy turn of fate, my personal life was parallel to this story.

“My wife was eight and a half months pregnant just as Emma (who strikes up a relationship with Ludwig’s character) was pregnant and about to give birth. My wife was back in Texas.

“Without giving too much away, when something very, very pivotal happened to my son in the show, my actual son was born.”

But the coincidences didn’t stop there.

“We shot this in my hometown of Vancouver, Canada, and there were scenes that were 10 minutes from my high school and where I lived with my family. It was crazy, this shoot,” he adds. “I drew from all of it, and my connection to Jessica (who plays Emma) was so strong.”

They sparked up a close friendship during filming, leaning on one another during many of their emotionally fraught scenes.

“She is phenomenal, and not just as an actor,” he says. “I said to her, ‘This is going to change your life’, because people are going to watch her and go, ‘holy s..., this woman is just a force’.

“Like Emma, my wife is a super mum, and she was doing all of this on her own while I was getting to live my dream in Vancouver. I saw so much of her in Jessica. I just felt like there were so many things that I was playing off from my real life.

“It just became a really, really introspective performance from me.”

It all added up to a once-in-a-lifetime filming experience for Ludwig. And though he went to some admittedly “tough” places for his performance, he feels fortunate to have been given the experience.

“I don’t know if it’s healthy to think about this (type of thing) all the time, and I do go there more often than I probably should,” he admits. “Like, what does it all mean?

“But that’s the beauty in this show: it might take you there for a second, but then it shows you that what it all means is that we are here to be with each other and to experience this beautiful world together.”

Earth Abides premieres Monday December 2 on Stan.