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Sunday March 1, 2009

Right royal drama


The Tudors offers a bold and fascinating view of a young King Henry VIII.

KING Henry VIII is England’s most infamous royal; the super-sized king who consumed food and wives as voraciously as he belched out those who crossed him, and a monstrous ego who eradicated any traditions that impeded his ambitions. The view of a smart and sexy young king has been overlooked – until The Tudors came along.

In the TV series loosely based on the monarch – who reigned from 1509 to 1547 until his death at age 55 – young Henry is portrayed as attractive, intriguing, romantic and infinitely more complex. The first season comprising 10 episodes will premiere in Malaysia on HBO (Astro Channel 411) tomorrow. (The series first aired in the United States in 2007; the second season followed last year. Season three is set to hit the US screen in April this year.)

Impetuous, ruthless and gorgeous, that’s the young Henry VIII portrayed by Jonathan Rhys Meyers in The Tudors. – Photos courtesy of HBO

The title refers to the Tudor dynasty that began with Henry VII in 1485 and ended with the death of Elizabeth I in 1603.

Filmed on location in Ireland, The Tudors stars Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII, who succeeds the throne at the age of 19, without having much interest for affairs of the state while he indulges in his carnal desires.

Creator/writer Michael Hirst, who previously reconceived English history in a new and exciting way with his script for the hit feature film Elizabeth (1998) starring Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes. For The Tudors, he turns his talents for delving beneath period costume to that dynamic Queen’s father, Henry.

For Hirst, “... a young king, surrounded by young people, who can do what he wants. What would it be like if you were 25 years old and had complete power: how would you exercise it? I imagined someone who would recognise no barriers, never recognise a limit ... to his power, to his intellect, to his appetites, to his physical abilities.”

Ask Rhys Meyers what attracted him to The Tudors and he replies without hesitation. “The writing. Michael (Hirst) has written 10 hours of drama but it’s sharp – not a slow 10 hours of period puke. Nobody wants a history lesson. He understands how these people felt, how they thought, their sexuality, their repression, their superstitions.”

The Tudors deals primarily with two, interlinked, triangular relationships, both of which involve Henry.

The first concerns his private life; the marriage to his dead brother’s wife, Katherine of Aragon (played by Maria Doyle Kennedy), and his growing obsession with the young Anne Boleyn (Natalie Dormer).

There’s something about Anne Boleyn (Natalie Dormer) that captivates Henry.

The second features Henry’s role as king and his relations with the pious and moral Sir Thomas More (Jeremy Northam), and his politically cunning and imperious chancellor Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (Sam Neill).

Over the course of season one, Henry will test the boundaries of these relationships, pushing his authority to the limits. As a royal, he appreciates the importance of tradition. As a restless young man with absolute power, he will not bow to authority.

As Rhys Meyers puts it: “Henry knows that you can’t go with anyone’s ideas but your own. And he understands and is one of the first people to fully explore the idea that rules are created by men, and therefore, can be broken.”

In the following press release from HBO, the 31-year-old shares his thoughts on the history, the production and the cast of The Tudors.

On Anne Boleyn: You have to be young to fall in love the way he (Henry) does with Anne Boleyn. You have to be kind of inexperienced or uncontrolled in that area in your life. There’s just something about Anne Boleyn that captures his spirit, his loins. He sees a healthy girl – “she’ll give me a son” – which is a great advantage. And she’s intelligent, she can carry a conversation. At the end of the day, especially if you are a king and most of your marriages are arranged, you want to know that they don’t look like horse meat and they can carry a conversation, because you’re going to be with them for a while, or they are going to be around.

On Katherine of Aragon: He was married to Katherine of Aragon for a very, very long time. His relationship with Katherine was wonderful. You know, he loved her deeply and they had a deep respect. But she got old, and she didn’t give him a son. Things had to change and he was a young man. And so it kind of played out its natural course. It would have been even more extraordinary if Henry had remained faithful to Katherine.

On King Henry VIII, the character he plays: He did some great things but he did them subconsciously and unbeknownst to himself, and they wouldn’t appear as great as they were until later on in history. But you know, he became the spiritual leader for his country, and so he took his kingdom away from Rome, which probably was no harm at that time. Rome was not a very loving, giving religious spiritual place to do business, even spiritual business. It was very, very corrupt, and he did it, of course, for essentially selfish reasons, carnal reasons – that he really wanted Anne Boleyn, and he wanted a son.

But there was another thing he did that was very important. England was always at war and you have the Saxons and the Normans, and you had kings dying and kings living and crusades and in all that sort of social-political-military unrest, it hadn’t really gained an aesthetic. And Henry gave it an aesthetic. He gave England an identification that it had been lacking up until then.

On Henry’s obsession with getting an heir: Henry desperately wanted to continue his line. He felt that a daughter would not be able to hold it. They tried to take it away from Elizabeth so many times. But in having Elizabeth, he had the greatest son a man would want – it was just a woman. So his wish was granted ... to Anne Boleyn’s child, not Katherine of Aragon’s.

On becoming Henry VIII: When I first got asked to do Henry, of course you’d immediately say: “Well, I don’t look like Henry VIII. Is that a problem, first of all?” Because you got to think about not only bringing the piece to life, but in a way that audiences will embrace. Not only audiences, but also critics – which is the biggest problem because they’re just going to say: “First of all, he doesn’t look anything like Henry.” People saw him as this big, robust giant, “hahaha” leg-of-lamb-eating, beer-drinking guy. But Henry VIII was a fine-looking man when he was young. He did not look like me, even then. He was a bigger guy, he had long blond hair, you know, he cut quite a figure for that time.

On being cast as Henry: Michael Hirst (who wrote the piece) and Charles McDougall (who directed the first two episodes) saw something in me that they liked for their Henry. They wanted the fresh, youthful impetuousness to this Henry that makes him do the things that he does, that could create something that was quite different to anything that had been seen before, barring the physical. My Henry is not Keith Michell’s or Richard Burton’s or Ray Winstone’s. It’s mine.

On playing Henry VIII: It’s difficult playing Henry, I won’t say that it isn’t. It’s tiring sometimes, you know what I mean, and it’s the same with every job that you do – any moment could end up on screen. And you always have to approach it like it’s the first scene you’ve ever done, so it’s recreating that freshness, even when everyone is there at eight in the evening and it’s kind of like, “I just want a sandwich and go home.” But you’re on camera, it’s different. All your flaws can be seen. That’s where the fight really comes in – to make it seem fresh, even at five to eight in the evening. But the crew was fantastic.

On working with Natalie Dormer: She is such a technician, as an actress. She trains; and she’s very naturally gifted and she knows the techniques to be able to use those gifts – which not many actresses do. I mean, I wouldn’t be what Natalie does because I’ve never trained. And it’s that fantastic mixture that just really worked in her. Her Anne Boleyn is extraordinary, more serious and sensitive than Genevieve Bujold’s, which was very playful, and then very harsh. But Natalie has all of these things in her as well.

On the wrath of King Henry VIII: Henry realises that even if he really loves somebody, including his sister, and they try to hurt you, you have to cut their heads off. They have to be gone; they have to be banished, even if it breaks your heart to do it.

Imagine growing up ... I suppose there’re some that do, like Prince William or Prince Harry, you know what I mean, it’s like, I always read stories about (Prince) Harry in the newspapers and he’s getting drunk, he’s kissing girls, he’s falling out of nightclubs at five in the morning, well, so? He’s doing the same thing that every 22- or 23-year-old kid out there is doing. Unfortunately though, he can’t, because he’s not a normal human being. He’s a demi-god because he’s a royal. But that’s in this day.

You can imagine what it’s like 500 years ago. You are a god. If you told peasants in the field that you walked on water, they’d believe you. So that’s a lot of power to have, but it does restrict you. It’s like putting all this energy into a little ball. And sometimes that ball is going to bounce very hard against something, and it does. It bounces hard against Anne Boleyn.

> ‘The Tudors’ premieres in Malaysia on HBO (Astro Channel 411) at 11pm tomorrow. New episodes are on every Monday at 11pm.

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