Making the new Netflix movie Against the Ice was not a posh, fancy experience, says star, producer, and co-writer Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
In fact, Coster-Waldau tells ABC Audio they shot most of the early 1900s explorer film in Iceland and Greenland, in temperatures of -22 below Fahrenheit, with raging storms that put lives in danger.
"We were in a storm on a glacier in Iceland, where suddenly, they were like, we got to go...the video assist guy was sitting in a van, and suddenly literally rocks were flying through the windows."
He adds, "The van got smashed up, and that's when they said, 'OK, time to get out.'"
Coster-Waldau reveals that he also ended up with a concussion while trying to work out a scene where his character gets into a fight with a polar bear.
"The director...kept asking if it wasn't possible to do it with a real trained polar bear. And I was like, are you f****** crazy?" he recalls. "So instead, we've got this Olympian, this judo heavyweight champion of Iceland, to stand in for the bear. And he was a strong lad. So he was throwing me around and after six, seven takes I had a concussion. I had to leave for the day."
All the craziness aside, Coster-Waldau says making Against the Ice "was so much fun."
"It was everything I hoped for. It was as tough as I thought it was going to be and more," he shares. "From the beginning we were very clear, we wanted to shoot it in the Arctic, we wanted to be on location, we wanted everything to be in camera and we got to do that."