Vikings, which is going into its fourth season on February 18th, will feature Vancouver’s Dianne Doan, an actress who loved working on the successful series (but not getting super dirty for the scenes). Find out more about Season 4, where Doan loves to hang out when she’s back home, and how her self-proclaimed OCD hand-washing made dirty Vikings’ scenes all the more challenging.
CraveOnline: Tell us about Season 4 of Vikings.
Dianne Doan: Season 4 takes right off where we left off – we touch off with the rivalry with Rollo and Ragnar and the French side and Rolo’s time in Paris. And a few new characters are coming in this season, including myself. My character comes on pretty early on in the season and you meet me coming off the boats in Paris. The mystery comes in because I am from every aspect different from a Viking, so there’s a bit of mystery in terms of where I come from, and what my religion and my world views are. And with Ragnar, our relationship stems from a place where I stand up for myself, so even though I’m a slave I feel like I have the right to talk to a king. There’s a sense of power between me and him.
Any other projects in the pipeline?
Vikings has kept me extremely busy. I finished an independent comedy Last Night in Suburbia, which I know is in post production, and I did a comedy before Christmas.
Vikings is filmed in Ireland, so how long were you there shooting?
I was over there for six months and it was unbelievable. As a whole, Ireland is so beautiful and production has taken advantage of the landscape. For me it was really cool to see how the sets were created around these beautiful landscapes.
Where do you currently live?
My home base has always been Vancouver. I’m a Canadian girl at heart. You miss home when you’re not there, so definitely when I was in Ireland I missed Canada.
Where’s your favourite place to hang out when you’re home in Vancouver?
There’s so much good food, so there’s a couple of spots that I go to. I love sushi in general. And the restaurant Minami’s is really tasty.
What’s one thing that people would be surprised to know about you?
I’m literally blind as a bat- I think I’m legally blind. I am also a little bit OCD about washing my hands, so being on Vikings I had to get over that phobia real quick. They would spray dirt on your hands so I always ran to the bathroom to wash them, and then my makeup artist would have to hunt me down to spray me again. There are big greasy boats and everything is so dirty that I just had to get used to it.
