Toronto Blue Jays Josh Donaldson will get to live out his dream of becoming an honorary Viking warrior on History’s Vikings airing on Jan. 18.
ET Canada caught up with the third baseman to find out what it was like to be cast in one of his favourite shows.
“It was awesome,” Donaldson says. “I had a great time there, the actors and the actresses were very welcoming to me and kind of helped me out.” Adding, “I guess they were excited for me to be out there and I was excited to be there as well.”
We have a feeling that might be due to the healthy number of Canadians in the cast, who were excited to meet one of the men responsible for bringing the Blue Jays back to the spotlight.
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In terms of getting Viking-ready, Donaldson had some help from the dialect coaches for his lines in next week’s episode, and the MVP tells us it was all about playing the part.
“They had a couple of people on set that were, I guess acting coaches,” he says, admitting “he’s not familiar with” the terminology. Adding, “honestly I tried to be myself as much as possible in the role, minus I was talking a bit differently.”
And being known for rocking the Viking look helped him channel his inner warrior.
“That definitely was pretty cool,” Donaldson says of the physical transformation. “Just to see it kind of all put together, it was neat and I enjoyed the experience and everyone was pretty awesome at making me feel a part of the show by doing that.”
There was one part of his visit to the set that was a little disappointing.
RELATED: A sneak peek at Ragnar’s fate
The show is well known for keeping secrets (like killing off its king mid season) but we had to try to get Donaldson to spill the beans as to whether he would be trading his bat for a sword on the battlefield.
“I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about that,” he teases. “I’m not in any battle scenes, but you know maybe in the future, maybe it might happen.”
Listen to the full interview below.