– Masterpiece Studio –
WARNING: This episode contains spoilers for Episode Four of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.
Actor Damian Lewis is well-known to Masterpiece viewers for his iconic roles in The Forsyte Saga and Wolf Hall. He joins the podcast to discuss the sequel, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, and reflects on playing one of the most notorious kings in English history. In Episode 4, King Henry VIII’s health is deteriorating, and there’s threat of invasion from France and Spain, but Henry also gets what he has wanted most of all, a male heir.
TRANSCRIPT
Jace Lacob: I’m Jace Lacob and you’re listening to Masterpiece Studio.
We now arrive at Episode Four of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. For King Henry VIII, to say life has been stressful as of late would be an understatement. He has yet to secure a male heir to the throne, his physical health is questionable, and England is under threat as France and Spain have formed an alliance. Henry, and the rest of the kingdom, live in constant fear of a potential invasion. But by the start of Episode Four, we find the vain king in rather good spirits as he admires his newly finished portrait, which exudes strength and bounty.
CLIP
Henry: I wish that France could see this! Or the emperor! And the King of Scots!
Hans Holbein: There can be copies, majesty.
More good news comes to the kingdom as Henry’s wife, Queen Jane, gives birth to a healthy heir.
CLIP
Henry: My lords, a son!
(cheering)
But the celebrations are brief. Just as Henry gains a son, he loses his wife. Jane’s death leaves the king deeply bereft.
CLIP
Cromwell: The Duke of Norfolk wants an audience. He threatens to talk to you like a father.
Henry: Does he? I shall try to be a credit to him.
Cromwell: He says it is your duty to marry again.
Henry: I could well be content to live chaste my remaining days.
Today, we talk with actor Damian Lewis about how he approached playing one of the most notorious kings in English history.
Jace Lacob: And this week we are joined by Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light star, Damian Lewis. Welcome.
Damian Lewis: Hi. Hello.
Jace Lacob: Hello. You are reprising your role as King Henry VIII a decade after Wolf Hall. And this production reunites you with Mark Rylance as Cromwell to your Henry. Was it easy to slip back into Henry’s dynamic with Cromwell after all this time, and what was it like having Mark as your onscreen partner again?
Damian Lewis: We were all kind of astounded that it was already nine years that had passed before we started filming again. And the peculiarity was that even though we had left it for nine years and we’re all nine years older as actors, the action of The Mirror and Light starts the same day as we leave the action in the first series with the execution of Anne Boleyn. And everybody is different. The suspension of disbelief for the audience is essentially, yes, it’s the same day, but the audience themselves will have a sort of sense of distance from that first series. And we were able to reset really. So Henry is already a much different person from the first series, as is Cromwell.
And we find Henry anyway, at the beginning of this series, much more embattled in his nature, much more quickly irascible, irritable, much more already increasingly paranoid, already suffering more from his physical disabilities, from the pain of his gout, of his syphilis, of the ulcerated sores that he has on his leg from his jousting accident. And in Cromwell, we see really very quickly in the first episode, that this is a man who already seems to have lost his Midas touch. He seems more careless somehow, less guarded, is more open and freer with what he says in public, even if it’s just to his confidants and his son, and to Rafe, his adopted son.
So the whole feel, the whole tenor of this new series, The Mirror and the Light is, there’s an unnerving, unsettled sense of things going wrong, almost right from the beginning. So if the first series was about Cromwell’s rise and his elevation in Henry’s eyes, there’s a sense that this second series is going to see Cromwell’s descent.
Jace Lacob: There’s an inversion almost as though it is mirrored in some way.
Damian Lewis: Yes, exactly.
Jace Lacob: We know that Henry had six wives, but Jane Seymour was said to be his favorite.
CLIP
Henry: Such freshness. Such delicacy. Such maidenly pudeur.
Cromwell: I am happy for you, majesty.
Henry: I have come out of hell into heaven, and all in one night.
Jace Lacob: What does your Henry see in Jane beside for her beauty? Why is he so drawn to her out of all of his wives?
Damian Lewis: Well, I think Henry loved Katherine of Aragon, I will say. You know, it’s unclear as to what really the motivating factors were for him wanting to marry Anne Boleyn. I think it was a mixture of political machinations, a growing sense that he wanted separation from Rome, didn’t want to be sort of under their thumb. And also drawn, captivated by this minxy, intelligent, cultured woman, Anne Boleyn, who had spent her childhood, a lot of it in France. And then, we know what happens to Anne Boleyn.
I think Jane after Anne represents something simpler, something sweet, something much more straightforward. A young woman in which Henry is able to project all his ideas of courtly love onto, able to woo with poetry, with song, which was very important to Henry. There was a combination of him wanting to woo in the courtly style based on the Burgundian courts, the French courts of the mid 15th century, this idea that a young man would be skilled in verse, in horse riding, in the arts, in literature, and in sport, and that he would use all those things to woo a young maiden.
But I think also this need in Henry to be a normal person, just to be able to be a normal guy that sends a love letter to his girl and wants his girl to fall in love with him beyond him just being the king. And I think he really falls for Jane and her simplicity and her sweet nature. And then of course, she gives him a son. The dreadful irony for Jane is that the one woman who does give him a son, she then dies from complications of childbirth. She’s not put to death. She’s not divorced by Henry. She dies of natural causes, which is the great tragedy. And then of course, the son also dies whilst he’s still a youngster.
After the complications of Katherine, separating from Rome, setting up a new religion, the Church of England, declaring himself the Supreme Head of the Church, the complications of Anne Boleyn, the accusations that she’s been sleeping with his courtiers. People have definitely got into Henry’s ear, by the way, there’s nothing to justify all those claims. But he’s sort of at the head of a runaway train, which I think is what Henry feels like for most of his life. He’s the train driver, but he’s not really in control of this train. There are so many political machinations, so many people manipulating and conniving who have his ear. And Henry just doesn’t really know who to believe at any one moment, and is inclined, I think, to his detriment to believe often the last person that, you know, that has his ear.
And that coupled with this increasing dread that he’ll never father a son, that maybe he lacks something in the bedroom department, that knowing really deep down that England is a poor country cousin compared to the might of France, Charles the Holy Roman Emperor who is Spanish. The fact that those two can make alliances and allegiances at any given moment and do constantly and threaten England.
And he’s a plate spinner. He’s an illusionist. He’s having to create this idea that England is this great majestic kingdom. And, I think what Jane, to go back to your original question is just, ah, she’s wonderful. And some people say a bit plain, but he thought pretty and simple and he can just enjoy her love and her adoration. And then of course she dies.
Jace Lacob: And then she dies. I love what you said about Henry. I feel like he is this sort of master of branding. We see that so much in that Holbein portrait that he poses for, which is what we typically envision when we think of Henry. Cromwell himself is haunted by Anne’s death and his role in it, but he still defers completely to Henry as the king’s most faithful servant. After Henry weds Jane Seymour, how does the king view Cromwell, whom he makes a Lord, and Lord privy seal to boot? Is he indebted to Cromwell in as much as a king could be to a servant, even to a fixer?
Damian Lewis: I mean, the relationships between Henry and the two most powerful men in the land successively were Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. And again, this speaks to, I think Henry’s need for some sort of connection to the common man. And he elevates Wolsey, who is the son of a butcher, and then he elevates Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith and who is known as the “butcher’s dog” because of his service first to Wolsey, then also to Henry.
And say what you like about Henry, and there’s a lot to say about Henry, don’t get me wrong, but this sort of social mobility is a plus in his plus column, which is, you know, maybe shorter than the minus column. But in the plus column, this want to elevate these guys, and no snobbery about that whatsoever, which of course incurs the anger of everybody around him. Who are these upstarts?
But he loved Cromwell, and I think to start with, loves that Cromwell is there to do his bidding. As you say, he is his fixer. He’s the consigliere, he will get stuff done. And even in this sympathetic, Hilary Mantel’s much more sympathetic, rounded portrayal of Cromwell, which is asking us to understand Cromwell in a very different way, there was of course, a brutish, thuggish side to Cromwell, the man who will get done whatever the king needs him to do, the dissolution of the monasteries, the pillaging of the countryside, of the great institutions. And no hesitation in taking some of these great houses and monasteries for himself and redistributing them to his friends.
And so, Cromwell, the great fix of the great politician in Mark’s beautiful performance, you see endlessly, this hyper-alertness, this hyper-awareness. What mood will the king be in? What decision will the king make next? And how can I be one step ahead? It is, in the end, a show about one man trying not to lose his head, you know? And he does a pretty good job of that for a long time. But, as Cardinal Wolsey constantly reminds Cromwell as he comes to him in a dreamlike capacity, essentially he says, don’t get too close to the sun, okay? You’re Icarus. Don’t fly too close to the sun. Because even though everybody wants to bathe in the light of the sun, which of course is Henry, if you get too powerful, if you become too much of a “person”, Henry will grow suspicious of you, and in the same way he disposed of Wolsey, he disposed of Cromwell.
So yes, Cromwell is very much in favor around the time of Seymour, but Anne Boleyn is complicated. He delivers Anne Boleyn and he delivers a new religion to Henry, but it’s complicated. Complicated not least because the beautiful thing about Hilary’s books is that Cromwell is a sort of odd, sort of unlikely ladies man. They all respond to him. They all seem to recognize in Cromwell, a sensitivity to female desires, I guess. And there’s this sense that he and Jane have a real connection, maybe more than that. There’s a sense that he and Anne Boleyn had a connection. He and the Princess Mary seem to have a real connection. Ladies really respond to him, whilst, of course, they’re just fearful of the king.
MIDROLL
Jace Lacob: You mentioned the light. In Hilary Mantel’s novel, Cromwell says he would not scurry to court favor with the Holy Roman emperor because Henry is, “… the only prince, the mirror and the light of other kings.” Does that reflect his own worldview, that he is somehow the gravitational center of this universe, God’s chosen on earth?
Damian Lewis: Yes, he believes that for sure, and rearranges his government and his Parliament in order to be able to push through legislation in a way that means that, superficially, at least, it seems as though things are being passed through Parliament in a democratic way, but actually it’s just Henry pushing through the legislation that he wants. So there’s that. Yes, he’s a Supreme ruler. Yes, he has named himself as the Supreme Head of the Church. Yes, they believed in the divine right of kings, that they were God’s emissaries on Earth.
But, Henry is a narcissist. He is insecure about his place in the world. He is uncertain of his place in the hierarchy of great contemporary rulers. And he likes to be flattered, but it’s got to be done cleverly. It’s got to be done opaquely. As soon as he feels that you are just pandering to him, as soon as he senses that, he’ll lose respect for you immediately and then he’ll just use you as his puppet.
So, Cromwell knows how to talk to the king and is brilliant, quite brilliant giving the king what he wants whilst at the same time daring to appear the king’s equal, at least in conversation and in the advice that he gives, which is what the king relishes until, of course, he feels that Cromwell oversteps the mark. Cromwell’s downfall is also mostly brought about by the Howards and Gardiner conspiring against him, and the king just becomes paranoid and listens to the wrong people effectively in the end.
Jace Lacob: Henry is laid up with his leg ulcers and later collapses at dinner.
CLIP
Rafe: Still alive. He rose from the table after dining and then fell under it. When we pulled him out, he was black in the face. He coughed up blood, and I think that’s what saved him, for then he drew breath again.
Jace Lacob: It seems like Henry keeps skirting by death again and again. How perilous a position is Henry in when we fade to black at the end of Episode Four?
Damian Lewis: Well, we just think about the timeline. So, Anne of Cleves is just arriving in Episode Four. That’s all being set up, isn’t it, I think. So this is an alliance that he’s trying to make with the German princes because of his fear that Francis and Charles will form an alliance and crush England, which they would do easily, swat England aside easily. So this is a political marriage. Also, he actually has his son at this point, but because of the expectancy of short lifespans and the possibility of early death, he wants more sons. So he goes to Anne of Cleves. This is arranged by Cromwell.
This is 1539 and he is dead in ‘47. So in eight years time he’s dead. And Henry was always a hypochondriac, always paranoid about catching the sweats or the plague. And he was always taking his court, moving it certainly in the summer months, always moving, every couple of weeks would take them to a new castle, go up north, go east, go west, keep moving all the way through the kingdom. So he was always concerned about his health.
The gout, this fall, which we see in the first series, actually. He actually blacks out and history relates that it seemed as though he had stopped breathing and Cromwell brings him back to life. So, his health is always precarious and now he can no longer hunt. He can no longer joust because of the pain to his legs, the rubbing against the horse’s flanks is too much for him. So he’s ballooning, you know, just eating pies, not getting any exercise and absolutely just expanding daily into this enormous, bloated, gout ridden figure.
Jace Lacob: Damian Lewis, thank you so very much.
Damian Lewis: Alright, pleasure. Take care.
Jace Lacob: You too. Cheers.
And now we’re back with Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light production researcher Kirsten Claiden-Yardley to discuss fact and fiction in Episode Four.
Jace Lacob: So in Episode Four, Cromwell bonds with Jenneke, of whom he had no previous knowledge and whom he gets to know during her visit to Britain. Jenneke brings with her news of Tyndale’s burning and tries to convince Cromwell to return with her to Antwerp. Did Jenneke actually exist?
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: Jenneke did not exist. She is one of only a couple of wholly fictional characters in Hilary Mantel’s novels. Cromwell did have an illegitimate daughter. She was called Jane. We don’t know exactly when she was born. She’s not born out of an affair in Antwerp. She ends up married to someone in Cheshire, and it’s slightly curious that actually she and her husband are fairly well known for their Catholic and recusant beliefs.
So, she’s about as far different from Jenneke as it’s possible to get. So I don’t think you can say that she’s a model that’s been expanded on for Jenneke in the way that Dorothea Wolsey is taking someone who we knew was a nun at Shaftesbury Avenue, and just expanding her role a bit. Jennika, the girl from Antwerp, is an invention.
Jace Lacob: Jane Seymour gives birth to a prince, which is all that Henry has ever wanted, a male heir. But Jane dies from complications from the pregnancy shortly afterwards. What do we know about Henry’s reaction to these intertwined events, Jane’s death and Edward’s birth?
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: It’s a very tricky run of events because Edward is born, and this great cause for celebration, obviously, euphoria, really. Finally he has an heir, he no longer is going to feel that God is angry at him. All these ideas with Katherine of Aragon, that he’s being punished because he’d married his brother’s wife. He has God’s grace and God’s favor. He has a son. The baptism takes place at Hampton Court, and then, five days later, Jane is receiving the last rites, four days after that, she dies.
And we don’t have much in Henry’s own words at that time, but obviously it’s a shock. Any hope that he has found a wife who is capable of giving him a son and might be able to give him a second son, that’s gone now. The funeral procession takes place in November, so we’ve kind of got this period where you’ve got a funeral, there’s going to be a lot of everyone dressing in black for mourning.
But, Henry does get over it relatively quickly. There is this tendency to think of Jane as his true love, they’re buried together. He stops wearing black for mourning on the 2nd of February, which is just under three months after she’s buried. So, not a huge amount of time. And he’s already starting to look for a new wife by the March of 1538. So, we’re not talking a really long mourning period. I mean, from a dynastic point of view, a sole son is not very secure. Infant mortality rates are high. He’s going to know that there’s a chance that Edward will die young. There’s a reason that the kings tend to like to have more than one heir, or, more than one son. So you have another heir if your eldest child dies.
Jace Lacob: The heir and the spare.
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: Indeed.
Jace Lacob: So, among Henry’s potential brides, we have the Duchess of Milan, we have Mary de Guise, Madame de Longueville, and Anne of Cleves. And Cromwell pushes for Henry to receive a portrait of Anne, talking up her beauty versus that of the Duchess of Milan’s. Did Henry really decide his next bride based off of a portrait he received? Does he just swipe right on Anne of Cleves?
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: So it is correct that they sent Hans Holbein to paint portraits of people that he could marry. How much it’s purely down to him swiping right, however, is an interesting question. So, Christina of Denmark, who is the Duchess of Milan, she’s not particularly keen on marrying Henry, to be honest. So she has her portrait painted, but she has reservations. Mary de Guise ends up marrying the Scottish king, James V. They have other portraits painted as well. They also get portraits of Louise de Guise and Anne of Lorraine.
But, there’s a lot going on. Henry is juggling lots of different things, so they have this time where they have an imperial ambassador in England to discuss a marriage with the Duchess of Milan, but at the same time they have ambassadors from the German Schmalkaldic League, the Protestant German League. They’re trying to keep these two delegations apart from each other. And then at one point, they want to marry Mary to Don Luís of Portugal. And so these are all up in the air. And then everyone that is sort of an option for Henry, they’ve got other options too. Like Mary of Guise having an option of a Scottish marriage. So, I don’t think it’s quite as simple as saying that it’s down to Henry’s choice which of them he marries in the end.
Jace Lacob: So, Stephen Gardiner heavily implies that Cromwell financed the murder of Cardinal Bainbridge in Rome in 1514 on behalf of Wolsey. Was there any real connection between Cromwell and Wolsey and Bainbridge’s death? Or is this just speculation and rumor that Gardiner is using against Cromwell?
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: This is the big argument that they have over dinner at Cranmer’s house where Gardiner is needling away at Cromwell over this. And we know about that meal because it appears in John Foxe’s publication that he does on, it’s the Martyrs, I can’t remember the full title. But this doesn’t get mentioned in this account of the meal. And there is a murder that happens in 1514. Christopher Bainbridge is Archbishop of York. He’s an English Cardinal and he’s based in Rome at the time. And it said that he was murdered by a servant.
It’s a little bit vague. So, the servant was tortured and confessed that he was ordered to poison Bainbridge by the Bishop of Worcester, who was the English ambassador to Rome at the time. The Bishop of Worcester claims diplomatic immunity and is pardoned. While this all goes on, Cromwell is in Rome in 1514, and he even stayed at what’s called the English Hospice, which Bainbridge, the murder victim, oversaw the running of.
But there is no connection there. There’s nothing to pin him down for being involved in murdering him. It’s before he has a connection to Wolsey. The Bishop of Worcester, who is accused of involvement, later does promote Wolsey, and sort of promotes his kind of ambitions to become Cardinal. He’s a supporter. But again, nobody really seems to have said at the time that Wolsey had any connection with the murderer. So it’s kind of this swirl of stuff that Hillary Mantel has used to make this scene where Gardiner sort of pulls these pieces together to try and imply that Cromwell was involved. But as Cromwell says in the show, there is nothing really to connect it.
Jace Lacob: Kirsten Claiden-Yardley, thank you so very much.
Kirsten Claiden-Yardley: You’re welcome.
Next time, the newly widowed king considers a new bride.
CLIP
Henry: Tell me about her.
Hans Holbein: She was brought up piously. I believe she speaks no language but her own.
Source: PBS Masterpiece