– Plumper and Grumpier –
by Staff | PBS Masterpiece | April 7, 2025
“Don’t get too close to the king,” cautioned The Mirror and the Light’s Damian Lewis, who returned to his role of King Henry VIII ten years after Wolf Hall’s award-winning run. In March, 2025, Lewis shared that advice with MASTERPIECE, as well as insights about the embodiment of majesty, the heft of the fat suit, and the complicated king’s transition into someone “plumper, and grumpier…and more murderous.”
Masterpiece:
Ten years have passed between your portrayals of King Henry VIII. Did the passage of time lead you to bring anything different to the character?
Damian Lewis:
Well, I’m ten years older, so it was ten years more experience, ten years more life. But, confusingly, The Mirror and the Light actually starts off the same day as we leave Wolf Hall. He has one wife executed, and he’s marrying the next one within hours. But I think we all made the decision that we needed the audience to accept that what was happening to Henry, and to Cromwell, and the Tudor monarchy, his monarchy, at the time—his rule, the wear and tear, the emotional scarring, the increasing paranoia that he displayed, his increasing irascibility, his increasing distrust of people, his pain, his weight gain, his insecurity about not being able to father a son, the gossip that actually he might be borderline impotent anyway—all that, we decided to play from day one. And so we put the weight on him immediately. We took the gap between the two series as our moment, if you like, to accelerate Henry’s demise. And then through The Mirror and the Light, he decays further, and gets slower, and just older, and plumper, and grumpier, more murderous.
Masterpiece:
About Henry’s physicality—how did you approach his transformation from the vigorous and virile athlete of Wolf Hall to middle age, and pain, and limitations?
Damian Lewis:
With a fat suit. Just a big, fleshy colored, foam costume that I put on underneath. But the important thing with Henry, always, is to get his width. I’m not naturally wide, and we used the Holbein portraits of him, always, as our go-to point. [Costume designer] Joanna Eatwell was particularly critical in creating this wide silhouette, so where needed, there were little bits of padding. I allowed the weight of the costume, which is not inconsiderable, and the foam suit that I was wearing underneath, which was helping to bulk me out, to inform the way that I moved.
And always just remembering which leg he gets the injury on from his riding injury, and also the gout and the ulcerated wounds. Some people suggested that was wearing his garter too tight, that didn’t help blood flow, at the top of his stockings. So, remembering pain. I think he was in a lot of pain a lot of the time from 1536 onwards, which is when The Mirror and the Light starts. And as a result of not being able to take exercise so much, that’s when he became Elvis.
Masterpiece:
You’ve shared your love of history. Was there anything you learned about Henry or the time period in particular that surprised you most?
Damian Lewis:
Yeah, I think it’s really important to remember a Renaissance piety that existed. The Tudors are often portrayed as wench slapping, chicken thigh eating, tossing over your shoulder, wassailing, and drinking, and banqueting. But actually, we had a brilliant day where we were taught about Tudor manners, and [learned that] they were unbelievably refined, and quite effete, and very particular, very polite. They had a very strict code of the way you behaved at the dinner table, what was good manners, what was bad manners. So it’s remembering—amongst all the blood, and murder, and efforts to bear children, and the hunting, and the jousting, and the poetry, and the music—that actually, there was something very refined about them, That was a big discovery. Also, Henry was the man that invented the term, “Your Majesty.” Before Henry, it was “your Royal Highness,” but that wasn’t grand enough for Henry, so he invented His Majesty, and that’s where that title comes from, which tells you something about the man as well.
Masterpiece:
Speaking of the majesty, there’s always this tension with him—he’s the embodiment of majesty, but he’s also someone who’s utterly human with all the cruelty and capriciousness of that. Can you speak about playing that tension in him?
Damian Lewis:
Absolutely. We have such access to our royal family now, that you see it. He’s certainly not based on anyone in our royal family now, but you see that tension of people trying to live normal lives, but they are chosen. William, is going to be King of England. That’s not nothing. And Henry was never supposed to be king. He was the second-born. Arthur, his elder brother, died, and, suddenly, he was thrust into the limelight. And I think he craved ordinary human love, and wrote letters and poetry to his wives-to-be, his future queens, like a young lover. He wanted to be taken seriously as a lover, as a poet. He wanted to woo them.
At the same time, he understood his divine right as the monarch to rule absolutely. He arranged parliament, essentially, so that any law that he passed, they would pass. And I think there was enormous pressure of being this great illusionist—he, himself, was, no question, a magnificent human. I think he was an extraordinary person to be in the presence of. His talents were many, his achievements were many, he was big and imposing. Erasmus, and other people who traveled from Europe, all reported what an extraordinary man he was. It was almost like, single-handedly, he created this image of Tudor England as being this great empire. When, actually, the reality is, Francis of France; Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor; and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman, the Turk, who we get a brief glimpse of when Henry dresses up in Turkish clothes—any one of the three of those people could have taken England, really at any point. We were by far the weakest kingdom, actually, and the poorest.
But it was Henry’s brilliant ability to cast an illusion of something magnificent, this great Tudor kingdom, really built in his own image. And I think that pressure, that endless plate spinning, that juggling that he had to do, in the end, was just too much for him. And his need for a son—what he believed was his need for a son, ironically, one of our greatest ever monarchs was a woman, and his daughter, and he shouldn’t have worried, Elizabeth I. But that was the thinking of the time, and it worried him. And at the same time, as we show in Wolf Hall, much more so than in The Mirror and the Light, he just wanted to go hunting with his pals, and to go and do falconry, play bowls and do archery, and go jousting, get into the lists and joust. And he wanted to spend time writing poetry, and composing songs, and wooing the women he loved, like an ordinary man. So that tension must exist with anyone with that sort of power, I would think.
Masterpiece:
There’s a terrific scene in Episode 2 where Henry, in a mask and a Turkish costume, performs a dance at court, and then removes his mask to make a big reveal. And it tells us so much about Henry is a way we don’t see as much in The Mirror and the Light. Can you talk about that scene?
Damian Lewis:
Oh, it was so fun. We worked with the beautiful Sian Phillips, who had done our dances in the first season as well, and she brought in some professional dancers to learn the dance. And when I was able to get away, I was slotted in to rehearsals, and was taught the dance. I loved doing it; I love Renaissance dancing, and I’ve always enjoyed doing it when I’ve had to do it in a Shakespeare play, or whatever it happens to be.
And the glorious thing about that moment is that the show is nuanced and watchful, and it’s a show about people listening and looking. Cromwell, in particular. Mark [Rylance]’s in almost every frame of the six hours. He’s in almost every frame of it. His hyper alertness, his hyper awareness, that’s what sets the whole thing on edge. But then, something simple like these gang of dancers just barreling into the ballroom, into the hall, has such energy. They have such dramatic impact.
That’s what I love about the show, small moments. Maybe it doesn’t sound very interesting to describe it, but it has a massive dramatic impact. When they do this dance in front of everybody, and everyone’s gasping, and cooing, and giggling, and then everyone knows it’s the king. That’s what’s so lovely about Hilary Mantel’s version of Henry. This man child, this boyish figure, that is always just beneath the surface, who wants to play and wants to be loved. And he reveals his face from beneath that mask with a great flourish, and everyone gasps, as if they had no idea that it was the king. Then he smiles, just so happy with himself at his great deception.
But this is why Henry loved Cardinal Wolsey, and this is why he loved Thomas Cromwell. This is why he elevated them—ordinary men, the son of a butcher and the son of a blacksmith, social mobility for Tudor times. Elevating the working man, giving him his chance, because they were plain speaking. It’s that odd connection we have in this country—there’s often thought to be a connection between the aristocracy and the working man. It’s all the middle class in the middle that don’t really get it, but there’s an odd clarity, and a way of connecting and communicating, between the aristocracy and the proper blue collar. And that’s what Henry saw in Cromwell and Wolsey. He likes that he had two men who spoke truth to him, spoke truth to power. He needed it. He was used to everyone snapping. But in the end, through his own making, they became too powerful. And then it’s in his gift to dispose of whoever he wants to dispose of, and he did. So complicated relationship to have. Don’t get too close to the king. Don’t get too close to the sun.
Masterpiece:
If you could ask Henry one question, what would it be?
Damian Lewis:
“What’s your biggest regret?” I don’t think it would be his wives. It might be losing his son. I don’t know, it might be losing Wolsey. It might, in later life, be Cromwell. If you asked him, it might be Cromwell…I don’t think it would be sacking the monasteries, and pillaging, and killing hundreds of people in order to separate from Rome and to feed the war effort. I don’t think it would be that. He might say something very Henry-like. “The fact that I couldn’t hunt again after my injury.” That’s why I think it would be a fascinating question.
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