Trivia / The Last Kingdom

• California Doubling: Although the series is set in England, most of the scenes were filmed in Hungary.
• Dawson Casting:
  • A justified case with sixty-one year old Simon Kunz as Odda the Elder. Odda is forty when Uhtred first meets him, but he is Younger Than They Look, due to his hair being completely grey, thus an older actor would make a sufficient amount of sense.
  • A similar case with the thirty-three year old David Dawson playing Alfred, who is twenty-two at the start of the series. The novels explicitly state that Alfred looks about ten years older than his actual age.
  • A less-justified (but not completely unjustified) case with the actresses who play Aelswith and Æthelflæd. Throughout the series, Aelswith is played by Eliza Butterworth, while Æthelflæd as an adult is played by Millie Brady (i.e. from Series 2 onward). One problem: Eliza Butterworth is less than 6 months older than Millie Brady. (This is largely resolved with makeup.)
  • Alexander Dreymon portrays a 20-something Uhtred quite convincingly for a man in his 30s.
• Duelling Shows:
  • In a generic "medieval TV" way to Game of Thrones and another new show The Bastard Executioner. Since The Last Kingdom got a second season and The Bastard Executioner didn't, Kingdom can safely be said to have won on that score. Meanwhile, the fact that Thrones creator George R. R. Martin claimed that he lacked the time to watch the later seasons of his own books' adaptation but evidently found time to enjoy and recommend Last Kingdom was also seen as somewhat of a win for Last Kingdom.
  • More importantly, with Vikings - which overlaps with The Last Kingdom in portraying earlier Viking attacks on England, making it a prequel of sorts until later seasons of Vikings overlap directly. Ragnar Lothbrok, the semi-historical initial protagonist of Vikings, is even the putative father of Ubba, the initial villain of The Last Kingdom, though the show (unlike the books) downplays this.
• Fake Brit:
  • Uhtred is played by Alexander Dreymon, who was born in Germany and grew up in the United States, France, and Switzerland.
  • King Æthelred is played by Scottish actor Alec Newman.
  • Odda the Younger is played by Scottish actor Brian Vernel.
  • Iseult is played by Irish actress Charlie Murphy
  • Father Selbix is played by Irish actor Lorcan Cranitch.
  • Hild is played by Irish actress Eva Birthistle.
  • Brother Trew is played by Irish actor Peter McDonald.
  • Cenric is played by Hungarian actor Máté Haumann.
• Fake Irish: Finan is played by Scottish actor Mark Rowley.
• Fake Nationality: The Anglo-Saxons used the word "Dane" to refer to any Scandinavian Viking raider, so the numerous Swedish and Norwegian actors playing "Danes" are not necessarily this. However, some non-Scandinavian actors have also played Danes:
  • Brida is a Saxon by birth and a Dane by upbringing, but Emily Cox is Austrian.
  • Ravn is played by Dutch actor Rutger Hauer.
  • Sihtric is played by Lithuanian actor Arnas Fedaravičius.
  • Gisela is played by German actress Peri Baumeister.
  • Tekil is played by German actor Marc Rissmann.
  • Jackdaw is played by Dutch actor Tygo Gernandt.
  • Many Danish Bit Characters and extras are played by Hungarians.
• Fake Scot: King Constantine is played in English actor Rod Hallett.
• Follow the Leader:
  • The show was almost certainly greenlit due to the success of Vikings and Game of Thrones even though Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels proved very successful on television back in the 1990s, his Saxon Stories predate Vikings by about a decade, and he and Thrones creator George R. R. Martin are mutual fans.
  • Thrones of Britannia: A Total War Saga was created to capitalize on the success of the series right down to the setting and playable factions.
  • Assassin's Creed: Valhalla was very much inspired by The Last Kingdom right down to having the same setting, the presence of King Alfred the Great, a similar cast of characters and even sharing at least two actors from the show (Magnus Bruun and Jeppe Beck Laursen).
• Irony as She Is Cast: Bernard Cornwell originally wrote his most famous character Richard Sharpe as a lean, dark-haired Londoner only to fall in love with Sean Bean's big, blond Oop North portrayal of the character. When it came to writing The Last Kingdom, Cornwell wrote Uhtred as a big, blond Northumbrian only for the TV series to cast lean, dark-haired Alexander Dreymon in the role.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: The actress who plays Stiorra in seasons 4-5 looks remarkably similar to the actress who played her mother, Gisela.