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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. He has been depicted throughout history as a rotund man of ruthless appetites; a monstrous ego who eradicated any traditions that got in the way of his ambitions. But the King in the pictures is only half the story; the roly-poly royal eclipses the view of a smart and sexy young man who has been overlooked—until now... on "The Tudors." "The Tudors" writer Michael Hirst previously reconceived English history in a new and exciting way with his script for the hit feature film "Elizabeth" (1998), played by Cate Blanchett. Now he turns his talents for delving beneath period costume to that dynamic Queen's father, Henry. Hirst explains the origins of the project: "After Elizabeth, someone asked me if I thought it might be interesting in turning 'The Tudors' into a TV project. And I really didn't think I was, at first. But then I was commissioned to write a pilot by a U.S. network and the commissioning editors loved it, but the network I originally pitched didn't. So we took it to Showtime and they immediately liked it and suggested that I take it away and push it out a bit - make it sexier or whatever I wanted to do and come back. So I re-wrote it the way I wanted and Bob Greenblatt - Showtime's President of Entertainment - called and said, 'Michael, we really only have one question for you. Is any of this true?' And I said, 'Oh, only about 85% . . . do you have any comments?' And he said, 'well, there's a spelling mistake on page 15.' What a fantastic reaction! So, I started to writing the series right away." Hirst continues: "The main brief was to make it history with a contemporary resonance, so it doesn't feel like history. But the thing which makes the story appealing for audiences is that central situation is not locked in history per se - here's a guy who wants to divorce his wife for a younger woman; he's running a big company and there are two other companies he has to compete with. His emotions and the emotions of everyone else are first and foremost human and universal. " "In my research I was always looking for historical scenes which would seem quite contemporary even though people were in costume. For instance, one of the scenes I discovered was when they celebrated the birth of Henry's bastard son. All the aristocrats turned up and everybody was eating and getting drunk and the locals all turned up, pressing their noses to the windows trying to see who was there. Henry said, 'let them in' and they started to take mementos of their visit - food at first and then it got wilder as they began to take the clothes off the guests. It was like the Beatles or something. It has for me a contemporary quality, and that's exactly what I was after. We didn't want another Royal Shakespeare Company or Masterpiece Theatre kind of thing - all these English actors in period costumes with elaborate and totally contrived mannerisms. We wanted them to be and sound real and think real." But simply being contemporary in tone does not a great story make. "The Tudors" is first and foremost about an exciting and overlooked historical figure. For Hirst, "the other key element of the series, alongside the reality, was 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 recognize no barriers, never recognize a limit . . . to his power, to his intellect, to his appetites, to his physical abilities." Jonathan Rhys Meyers underlines that contention: "The portrait of Henry here is different from the big fat red-haired guy type of image, but it's very accurate to the historical record. It's a more attractive and physical Henry that I'm playing, but it's true." "The Tudors" Executive Producer Morgan O'Sullivan recalls, "The casting of Rhys Meyers as Henry might surprise some people, but that's only because they don't know Henry as a young man. He was a terrific sportsman, he was in tune to technology, sciences, military developments; he spoke several languages fluently . . . he was very innovative and forward-looking." Hirst adds, "Bad Fat Henry has been done again and again and again. It doesn't matter how good the actor is, that is the image he's always forced to follow. It's fantastic to break that apart and one of the reasons to break it apart is to say 'Henry is not an image; he's a human being.' And that was the primary appeal for me." Rhys Meyers explains that there is a great deal more to Henry than the pleasure-seeking young buck he presents to others: "Henry spent many years, when he was young, sleeping in his father's [King Henry VII] bed and his father would tell him everything about life in court -- who was scheming, how to behave, what to do and not do -- so he was very well schooled. He was also very well read - although he didn't have to read himself, others would read it out loud to him. So he was very familiar with cutting-edge thinking and writing of the time." For Rhys Meyers, the compelling thing about his character on "The Tudors" is how far ahead of his time he was and the complexity of his legacy. "He was a modernist in many senses, even more so than he realized. He founded the Church of England which the Queen of England still heads today. He introduced divorce into the equation of marriage. And in his effort to have a son, he gave us Elizabeth I, a kind of founding feminist and one of the most amazing Queens the world has ever known." "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 (Maria Doyle Kennedy), and his growing obsession with the young Anne Boleyn (Natalie Dormer). The second is concerned with 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 Wolsey (Sam Neill). Over the course of ten episodes of "The Tudors," we see Henry 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." The chief rule that Henry is remembered breaking is the previously indestructible bond of marriage. 'Till death do us part' would never be quite as innocently romantic a phrase again. Doyle Kennedy, who portrays Katherine of Aragon, explains the background of Henry's first marriage: "Henry had known Katherine for a long time; he'd grown up around her and liked her a lot. When his father died, he didn't have to marry her anymore, but he chose to and they were married for 23 years - which was longer than all the other wives put together." The actress admits that Katherine is "...a wonderful character to play. She is really strong, has an enormous depth of character, massively intelligent and she has a deep love for her husband." Yes, but won't she always be remembered by history as simply 'wife #1?' Doyle Kennedy feels there is more to Katherine than that. "She's a very modern woman in one sense. She is no victim. She really believes that it was her destiny to be Queen of England, that it is God's wish. So she has an enormous faith and commitment to her divinely appointed role." The modern element of the story interests her, too: "Being usurped by a younger woman is very interesting dramatically. So much of her story, for all its historical detail, has timeless qualities." Is there a great deal of acrimony between her and Henry at the end? Isn't she just standing in the way of Henry's desire for a younger woman? Doyle Kennedy has given the nature of the break-up a good deal of thought. "I was talking to Jonathan about this and we both feel that they were very fond of each other. She was very educated and she was Henry's confidant and they spoke a lot about politics, matters of state and the people. She was raised to be a compassionate Queen and Henry liked that about her. I think the real crux of their problem was that they didn't succeed in having a male heir together. If they had, perhaps history might have been a lot different." "The Tudors" Director Stephen Shill says, 'Maria Doyle Kennedy really breathes life into Katherine; making her incredibly confident in her sense of self as a Queen. Anne is more of a minx - pretty and sexy - and the contrast between the two women is very striking. So you can see why Henry is attracted to both of these women. Although the principal motivation for wanting to marry Anne is to have a son, his motives are never made entirely clear because they are often complex and contradictory." Rhys Meyers puts it more bluntly: "The relationship with Katherine is very simple really. He married her because he had to get the kingdom. But after 12 years, she's older, and he's bored. He wants a son and she's too old to give him one. I think that Anne Boleyn would only have ever been a mistress if he had a son - he'd never had married her. Because of course he can bed whomever he wants to bed. A boy is what he needs -- and a legitimate one, because he already has a bastard son, Henry Fitzroy." For Natalie Dormer, who plays 'the other woman' - sexy, young temptress Anne Boleyn, the key to her role on "The Tudors" is a clear-eyed appreciation of what life was like for young women like the Boleyn sisters at that time. "I think women must have had a very pragmatic attitude back then. Obviously, you knew what was coming and you just had to make the best of it." "She's her father's daughter in many ways," Dormer continues - she has a business mind. "She has an astute political mind. She gets forced into a situation thanks to her father and she has to think on her feet and learn very quickly how to survive and make that situation work for her. If she screws up, it could end very badly -- not just for her but for all her family." But Dormer feels that it is wrong to simply write off Anne as some kind of femme fatale: "What I'm trying to find is her humanity. She's not Lady Macbeth and she's not some kind of angel, she's just a young woman who the King falls for." Nick Dunning plays Thomas Boleyn, Anne's father. He sees his character as essentially opportunistic. "He knows the King's appetites; he knows he loves women. So he offers him his daughters; that's what they're for - for getting on. It's easy for us to judge him harshly today but I think that he sees his action as advancing the family. He's trying to do what he thinks is best for the family but he's utterly, utterly selfish. It's a warped view of the world." Just as he's drawn to opposing female forces in his private life, Henry VIII finds himself between male advisors in his court. Sir Thomas More -- mostly famous for writing Utopia, an imagined perfect society - refuses to be drawn into the down-and-dirty business of everyday politics, while the Lord Chancellor Cardinal Wolsey is the epitome of shrewd maneuvering. As the series progresses, both find themselves dragged along by the tide of events, unable to manage their increasingly impatient King. Jeremy Northam explains, "Henry was never expected to be King; he inherited the throne and his wife at a very young age. Wolsey and More were around for a lot longer than Henry was, so in some ways, as the story begins, they were above and beyond him." That changes, of course, as Henry grows in confidence on "The Tudors." Northam is interested in the hidden folds of More's character. "The danger is that he can be seen as too good to be true, but he is fully aware of the maneuvering that goes on around him. He chooses not to be part of it and that is why, ironically, Henry compels him to be by making him Chancellor at the end." "The Tudors" Writer Hirst says he was determined not to make any of his characters one-dimensional. "I hope all the characters are complex . . . I think they are. More is not all good - I have him say, 'I am not a saint' - that's meant as a joke since he is made a saint after he dies. More does eventually begin to burn people, and he's fairly contemptuous of humanity at times, so although he thinks himself above politics, he is shown to be very much belonging to it." Similarly, he adds, "...the view of Wolsey has always been venal, grasping, power hungry. And although he's all those things, I wanted to also show him as a decent man doing a difficult job. He did run the country with great skill and acumen. When Henry got rid of him initially, he discovered that his councillor had none of Wolsey's abilities. Wolsey worked day and night for him. It finally sucks the life out of him. And when he dies, I wanted the audience to feel sad." Sam Neill explains the role of his character on "The Tudors" in practical terms. "Henry needed good advisors. He wanted both sides of the story and he needed someone with a conscience and someone who didn't. Wolsey didn't and More did. In the end, these were the reasons why they both died. More died eventually - though not as part of our story - because he has integrity, and Wolsey died because he has none." Ask Rhys Meyers what attracted him to "The Tudors" and he replies without hesitation. "The writing. Michael has written 10 hours of drama but it's sharp -- not a slow ten hours of period puke. Nobody wants a history lesson. It's boring. He has this period down. He understands how these people felt, how they thought, their sexuality, their repression, their superstitions." O'Sullivan contends, "The Tudors is 'event television.' We've been adventurous in terms of the writing, the casting, and the costumes . . . to produce prime-time TV which looks like a $150 million feature film. In an age of 100-plus TV channels, it's hard to stand out from the crowd and this certainly does."
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