The Australian actor Travis Fimmel, formerly known as Ragnar Lothbrok, eighth-century Viking slaughterer-hero, on the History Channel series Vikings, can, as of this month, be found navigating the virgin planet Kepler-22B, on HBO Max. In the new Ridley Scott-produced series, Raised by Wolves, Fimmel plays Marcus, a burly, bearded guy with a mullet, a knightly white surcoat, and a dark past, living among androids and animosity. Despite this, he retains a mellow vibe; so does Fimmel. On a recent Saturday, he was relaxing at his cattle ranch, north of Los Angeles. He wore a plaid shirt and a baseball cap; his beard was shaggy. Ive been busy doing a lot of fencingi.e., putting up fenceswhile Ive got this time off because of Covid, and planting a lot of trees, he said. Fruitless mulberry, because theyre great shade trees. Peppercorn, because theyre so drought-tolerant. Eucalyptus, because Im trying to make everything as Australian as I can. He hasnt minded the time off. Id much rather be doing this sort of stuff than putting on makeup and playing make-believe, he said.

Fimmel, forty-one, grew up in southeastern Australia, on his familys farm. We had dairy cattle, beef, and crops, he said. Hed planned to farm always, but then there was a year in my life, when I was eighteen, where I was, like, I dont want to be on the farm. (Ragnar Lothbrok had a similar impulse.) He ventured to London and L.A., bartending (Working in bars, living above barsit was kind of the funnest time); modelling Calvin Klein underwear, on a traffic-stopping billboard in London (His presence was jaw-dropping, Klein has said); and acting. I had no ambition to do it, Fimmel said. I still dont. Performing live makes him uncomfortable. I cannot audition to save my life, he said. I hate it. I could never be in a play, onstage. Id break down and cry.

Onscreen, he makes do. Hes played Tarzan, in the series Tarzan; Sir Anduin Lothar, knight champion of Azeroth, in the video-game-inspired Warcraft; and Ragnar, who is both assertive and sensitivehis best friend is a monk he captured. Fimmels performance in Vikings caught the eye of Daniel Day-Lewis, whose wife, the director Rebecca Miller, cast Fimmel in her 2015 film, Maggies Plan. In it, he plays an earnest Brooklyn pickle-maker in a knit hat, opposite Greta Gerwig and Ethan Hawke. He brings to all his roles a startling lack of neurosis. On Raised by Wolves, the aesthetic is a little Blade Runner, a little Westworld, a little White House Christmas decorations, and people act accordinglybut, whenever Fimmel appears, the series enters a realm of recognizable human behavior, even amid dialogue like The necromancer took him.

Its the same as any sort of period, Fimmel said, of life in the year 2159 on Kepler-22B. Its just all about relationships. People trying to get loved or find their place in the world. In Marcuss first scene, he defuses tension between his clan, the Mithraic, who have come to the new planet after killing Earths atheists, and Mother, an atheist android, whose human children came to the planet as embryos. Wait. Please. Apologies, Marcus begins, warmly. Hes picked up a stalk. I see that you have been farming. A lot. Soon, hes at her table, slurping soup. Later, among solemn Mithraic children in a spaceship, he initiates a galumphing round of duck-duck-goose.

On his ranch, Fimmel said, Ive got a few longhorn cattle, horses, chickens, an Englishman whos staying herehes up there, walking around. He waved. Ive got a couple of emus, just because theyre Australian. Theyre not the sharpest bird in the aviary. But theyre always intrigued by whatevers going on. Theyre quirky, and they can run like thirty-five miles an hour. He headed toward a fence; two emus stood atop a hill. Come on, hey! he yelled, whistling. The emus snapped to attention and raced over, bobbing at speed. They cocked their fuzzy heads at him, then ate from his hand. Look at their feettheyre like dinosaurs, he said. Two brown horses approached, and he fed them, too.

Fimmel rides horses onscreen and off. In Vikings, Ragnar executed a daring escape on a white one; while shooting Warcraft, Fimmel was thrown from a spooked horse; he also has up-in-the-air plans to play Wyatt Earp and to star in a spaghetti Western. Beyond that, professionally, Im meant to go back to do a second season of, um, spaceships, he said. Meanwhile: the ranch. I wanted to get kangaroos, he said. Theyre illegal to keep as pets in California, but about this, too, he is serene. If someone were to let one free around me, Id rescue it, he said.

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Home on the Ranch with Travis Fimmel - The New Yorker