– It’s a Bit Like Going Home –
by Mark Peikert | Gold Derby | April 29, 2025
A full decade ago, before Damian Lewis starred on Billions and Mark Rylance won an Oscar for Bridge of Spies, the two starred in a sumptuous adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. The books and subsequent limited series explored the complex relationship between King Henry VIII and his advisor, the low-born Thomas Cromwell. Critics and audiences were ecstatic, and the series (written by Peter Straughan and directed by Peter Kosminksy) scored eight Emmy Award nominations and three Golden Globe noms, winning Best Miniseries or TV Film.
Everyone was on board for the final installment in Mantel’s trilogy — it just took playing what producer Colin Callender calls “four-dimensional chess” to find a production schedule that worked for everyone to finally bring Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light to life. (Well, everyone that is except for Tom Holland, whose career has gone “stratospheric,” says Callender.) Picking up where the first series ended, with Anne Boleyn’s execution, the show moves swiftly through the unraveling of both Cromwell’s coveted position in court and Henry’s physical decline, as well as the increasingly tense relationship between the two.
Though casual history buffs might know the general outline of who dies and how, the show’s great strength is in embedding us so deeply in its world that we’re caught up in its immediacy and hoping for a new outcome. We spoke to Callender about the decade between installments, creating an opulent world with a handheld camera, and Lewis’ nuanced, unforgettable performance as Henry VIII.
Gold Derby: It’s so rare that a cast reunites after this much time has passed. What was it like getting to see Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis step back into these roles?
Colin Callender: It was a bit like going home, and we all felt as though we were returning to a place we loved. Interestingly, they slipped into the roles very quickly. It was as though there hadn’t been 10 years at all. And it’s a tribute to their brilliance as actors that they were able to rediscover those characters and bring them to life again, in a way that was a continuation of what they’d done before. I say that you can always tell a brilliant actor if they can express two competing emotions on their face at any time. In both cases of Mark and Damian, they can portray a whole raft of competing emotions at the same time. But the other thing is, Damian’s performance as Henry VIII. … I think there’s more texture in that performance and that portrayal of Henry than we’ve ever seen. Lots of people have played Henry VIII over the years, but Damian’s performance really, I think, captures the sophistication, the weaknesses, the arrogance of the character, the hubris, all of those conflicting qualities.
Season 2 opens on Anne Boleyn’s execution, which is a point of no return for the characters in many ways. That decade adds an extra dimension.
That’s right. And the interesting thing is that, if the king of England can execute his wife, the queen, then nobody is safe. So the jeopardy, from the moment we start the show, is really there. That underpins the whole story. And of course, we know where it’s going to end. … It really is a story of loyalty and betrayal with these two larger-than-life characters at the center, it just happens to have been set 500 years ago.
I understand that the budget was fairly tight, but it looks impeccable. How did you manage to pull that off?
We shot 85 days entirely on location in Tudor houses that were 500 years old. And so the magnificence of those locations is all on the screen, and it does look beautiful. The costumes, the set design, the production design, the lighting, the cinematography, the hair and makeup, all that was really magnificent and a very important part of the overall feel of the show. You really do get transported to another world.
Hats off to you, because I would be terrified to troop into a 500-year-old Tudor home with camera equipment.
It was not without its challenges. But the other thing that we had to do is, because many of them were open to the public, we had to shoot the series in the late winter or early spring to avoid the tourists. And the buildings were freezing. There is no central heating in those old Tudor brick and stone castles. There’s no heat, which is why of course, everyone’s wearing very heavy costumes, big fur coats, and everything.
I was going to say, the period costumes really worked out for the cast for once!
In fact, the only people that were warm on the shoot were the cast!
Once filming was done and you recovered from 85 days on location, what was the editing process like?
I think one of the distinguishing characteristics of the show is its pace. There are moments in conversations between the characters where there are pregnant pauses that are really quite tense. And that was part of the editing. It didn’t shy away from those pauses, didn’t try and change the pace of the show. It embraced that more measured pace.
Certainly the editing is measured, but the camera work brings an immediacy to it. It’s such a subtle choice to show just the slight jitteriness of a handheld.
You’re absolutely right. The whole show is shot handheld. Every shot, every sequence, is handheld. [Cinematograher] Gavin Finney, god bless him, he had to go to physiotherapy on a regular basis because he was carrying around that camera for 85 days on location. Peter Kosminsky, the director, comes from a documentary background. So that idea of a handheld camera entering into a world and we, the audience, through the camera joining that world, that was a signature quality of the way the show was shot.
What was your reaction when you saw the finished product?
You know that there is a scene in one of the latter episodes where Thomas Cromwell is offered a moment to change his life, to move away, to do something else. I found that moment profoundly moving. Because I suspect it’s true that most of us, at some point in our lives, had to make a choice about what direction we’re gonna take. And some of us will think we made the right decision. Others will think we made the wrong decision. But we know that we’ve experienced that moment. In Cromwell’s case, he decides to stay where he is in the knowledge of what his fate will be. And it’s a profoundly moving moment. And that sense of a man coming to reckon with his own life, the decisions he’s made, the decisions he didn’t make, the knowledge of where his life may lead, I think that’s something that we can all relate to in some way or another.
Read the rest of the original article at Gold Derby