“Even with the character like Brida, for instance, this season, she’s just done a complete 180 on everybody and has become a villain in her own right. Perhaps they’re going through grief…And all of a sudden you go, ‘okay I can sort of see where you’re coming from with this’.īutterworth used another character as an example to illustrate her point. I think that’s just a testament to the phenomenal writers of the show, that they can create these three dimensional characters that, you know, although their intentions might not always be good, you still, as the audience see through that veil of darkness and can see that actually there’s somebody to empathize with. Butterworth navigated these changes with ease, and credits The Last Kingdom’s writers with making it easy: In seasons 1-3, Aelswith acts as the supremely confident and utterly implacable wife to King Alfred, but in this most recent season, now that Alfred is dead, she got to show a more vulnerable side. I think for the audience it’s quite a shocking thing to see because we don’t see that side to her very regularly. It’s really interesting when then you see these more sensitive and vulnerable sides coming out. And I definitely prefer people that are maybe more, I don’t know, it’s a little bit more interesting for me as an actor just to play somebody who’s got so many different facets. So I think that’s what’s really complex about playing somebody like Aelswith.

So although, you know, from the audience’s perspective, she’s extremely villainous and callous, she and herself just believe that she’s doing the right thing. But in her eyes, that was a very, very pure action to take.” But through that, she was actually committing some quite terrible things, or at least wishing ill on others. So with Aelswith, it was that she was being devout to her God and her husband and her kingdom. “There’s always some complex and ulterior motives to their actions. “I’ve always really liked playing the more villainous sides, because I I just find it more interesting and I don’t think everyone’s a villain just for the sake of being malicious and evil,” Butterworth said. We’re back with more on this fascinating character, and the equally compelling actor who plays her.Īelswith is a complicated figure, with some fans considering her a villain for how often she stands in the way of our lead character Uhtred. In the first part of our interview with The Last Kingdom star Eliza Butterworth, we took a deep dive into her character: the delightfully infuriating Lady Aelswith.

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