'The Northman' director Robert Eggers reveals how he got Björk back into acting and convinced Ethan Hawke to bark like a dog for the Viking epic

• Robert Eggers gave Insider behind-the-scenes stories on the making of "The Northman."
• He said it was easy to get Ethan Hawke to bark like a dog with Willem Dafoe on his side.

Director Robert Eggers is trapped in the past.

This is evident in his filmography, which — though only including three feature films — has wowed audiences with its textured and highly researched examination of times long ago.

His feature debut, "The Witch" in 2015, took us back to the 1600s when witchcraft was feared. Not only did it bring acclaim to Eggers, but it also instantly turned its lead, then-unknown Anya Taylor-Joy, into a young Hollywood starlet.

Eggers followed that with 2019's "The Lighthouse," starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as lighthouse keepers in the 1890s who slowly lose their sanity while stuck on a remote island. Its lush black-and-white look led the movie's cinematographer, Jarin Blaschke, to score an Oscar nomination.

Now, Eggers goes even farther back in time — 900 AD, to be exact — to give us one of the most epic (and violent) Viking movies you'll maybe ever see.

"The Northman," which hits theaters on Friday, follows Alexander Skarsgård as a Viking prince who has dedicated his life to killing his uncle after witnessing him murder his father (Ethan Hawke) as a teenager.

The movie also stars Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, and Björk, who makes her first movie appearance in 17 years.

Like Eggers' previous films, the attention to detail and authenticity in "The Northman" is unmatched. Its visuals make it feel like you are watching a giant tapestry come to life.

Insider chatted with Eggers about making his most audacious project to date, the challenges of working during a pandemic, and Hawke's willingness to bark like a dog.

Even for you, the standards that you set for yourself, are you shocked by what you were able to pull off with this movie?

I mean, I recognize it was a behemoth and I certainly felt the pressure and the difficulty of that.

But on top of this being the biggest movie you have ever taken on, you had to deal with shooting during COVID.

Yeah, that was hard. I will say there were only two creative compromises that came from COVID.

One, we didn't get to shoot in Iceland as much as I wanted.

And two, and it's just a tiny thing, but in the scene where we first meet Anya Taylor-Joy's character, she's comforting someone who is in shock from the village raid. She gives the person some herbs and says a spell.

Originally she was supposed to chew those herbs up in her own mouth and then take them out of her mouth and put it in the person's mouth. That was how the folk magic was to work. But we weren't allowed to do that due to the pandemic.

Was there a shot in this movie where you didn't care what the notes were, it was always going to stay in the movie come hell or high water?

Yes. It's a nothing shot but it's where Alex's character is playing the foreman at the farm and he's telling the enslaved people to go back to work.

There's this shot where the camera pans and there are two really huge pigs backlit by the sun. I just couldn't let those pigs be cut from the movie.

That shot originally was incredibly long. It was a huge tracking shot through the farm and it was focused on the women's work. But when we kept cutting it shorter and shorter and shorter, the result was Alex, but also the pigs.

Now, some of the long takes that did stay in the movie were of battles. You have never really ever done action sequences before, and when you do it they are "oners," continuous shots. Why did you do it in that style?

It just seemed to make sense with the work Jarin Blaschke and I have been developing over the years. It felt like the logical next step.

It's just too bad that the next step was on such a larger film because it just makes things more complicated for us. But we wanted you in there in the action. Every beat of the fight.

Björk came up with the idea of having her eyes covered playing the seeress in the movie

Björk stars in the movie as a seeress, someone who predicts future events. How did she get involved? It's been 17 years since she's starred in a movie.

Basically, Sjón, my cowriter, has known Bjork since they were teenagers. And over the years my wife and I have built a relationship with Björk due to Robin Carolan, one of the composers of the movie, who is friends with Björk, and also one of our best friends.

It was a cameo. One day of shooting. And playing a seeress, that's not a stretch for her. [Laughs.]

Did she have any notes on how she wanted her costume to look?

The costume was something that I had in my head. But the main contribution that she brought was she wanted her eyes to be covered. So those shells, which traditionally would be around the forehead, we moved over her eyes.

Does anything in the modern-day interest you as a storyteller.

No.

Nothing?

Nothing. And honesty, I don't know why.

Nicolas Cage has said that he wants to work with you. Have you ever taken a meeting with him?

The Nicolas Cage call has not ever happened. But he has so much modernity about him that it would be an interesting challenge to see what period I could find my way into making Nicolas Cage be utterly believable in.

Do you think of actors when you write?

I do. Sometimes to my detriment. Willem's role was written for him. So was Anya's. And that was cool because I have worked with them before and I thought they would probably say yes.

Nicole's role, after a while of writing it, started being her. That's scary because, if she had said no to the role, it would have been disappointing.

Eggers says getting Ethan Hawke to bark like a dog was easy, thanks to Willem Dafoe

In one scene in the movie Willem Dafoe and Ethan Hawke's characters do a Viking ritual and Hawke's character acts like a dog. Are you still shocked you got Hawke to get on all fours and bark like a dog?

He was easy to work with. Also, if you see Willem Dafoe strip down and barking like a dog you're going to do it too. That's a given.

I remember Alex and I were at the premiere in Rome, and Ethan came up to us and was like "Guys, guys, you got to stop bitching about how hard this movie was to shoot. You're not fucking coal miners!" [Laughs.]

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.