Rose Leslie has revealed a tip she picked up while working on Game of Thrones that helped her keep warm while filming in freezing conditions. The actress, 39, is famed for playing Ygritte in the hit HBO fantasy series, but more recently has become known to viewers for her role as DI Kirsten Longacre in BBC's Vigil.
Fans were recently reunited with Kirsten and her wife, DCI Amy Silva (played by Suranne Jones) after a three-year wait for another series. The third instalment follows Kirsten and Amy as they are sent to a remote Arctic research station following the murder of a member of a covert British special forces mission. With international tensions running high, the pair must identify the killer while navigating a volatile geopolitical standoff.
Filming in the Arctic
Filming for Vigil season three primarily took place in Svalbard, a remote archipelago located between Norway and the North Pole, and within the Arctic Circle. With an Arctic climate, Svalbard's average winter temperatures drop to around -12 degrees to -16 degrees.
While temperatures did not drop as low as they did when Rose filmed Game of Thrones in Iceland, where the cast endured conditions as cold as -30 degrees, the actress was able to use a trick she learned on the show to keep warm while filming Vigil.
The heat pack hack
Speaking at a Q&A in London ahead of the third series airing, Rose said: "I remember filming Game of Thrones in Iceland. During filming back then, I was given a brilliant hack which I also used in Svalbard. Anybody who would hear me on those days, I was telling anyone who would listen.
"If you get a heat pack and you place them on both your kidneys, you are then heating up your blood because your blood going through your kidneys is then whizzing everywhere else in your system.
"So if you heat up the blood that is going through your kidneys, you are actually going to warm yourself up. It works! That really helped me on every single day when we were filming outside on the mountain tops."
An otherworldly experience
Suranne, 48, described filming in Svalbard like being "on top of the world", while Rose agreed that it felt "otherworldly". "I've never been to a place where I felt so isolated. I thought it was magical," she said.
However, the star admitted that while the cast may look warm on screen, the puffer jackets and costumes weren't actually as insulated as they appeared. Rose said: "For the screens they look warm, the puffer jackets are not as insulated as you wish them to be. And you have the crew with their bobble hats and gloves and they're USB socks that warm up.
"There were days when we were cold but it was a magic bonding experience that we all got to be on top of this mountain, north of the world and do something we enjoyed."
