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00:09The Tower of London's Chapel of St. Peter at Venicula, final resting place of Thomas Cromwell, Anne Boleyn and Thomas
00:17Moore.
00:18Where better to discuss the BBC drama series Wolfe Hall with its director Peter Kosminski and star Mark Rylance.
00:25The series has been such a massive success and has sold all over the world. To what do you attribute
00:32its appeal?
00:33You know, it's taken us all by surprise. We knew we were working, you know, wonderful actors, fantastic script, extraordinary
00:42source material, Hilary Mantel's novels.
00:45But in the end, it's a costume drama about the Tudors and that's been done before.
00:51I don't know why it has gripped the nation the way it appears to have done. It's been, for us,
00:57a big surprise.
00:59But I mean, that's a kind of winner for you, Mark, because you notoriously shied away from television and film.
01:04And, you know, what was it about this that was different? What drew you to this?
01:09I'd read the script before the book, actually, to be honest. My wife had read the book and had loved
01:14it. But I'd been so busy, I hadn't been able to do that. And so I really took the project
01:19on the script, which was a phenomenally good script.
01:22But to be able to bring a large two books down in the way he did to these essential scenes,
01:30I think it's extraordinary work.
01:33And then the next big question for me was who was to direct it. And once Peter, you know, adjusted
01:39his plans, then I was on board.
01:41So I wasn't on board until Peter was on board. So was this a kind of act of persuasion?
01:46Ah, we had a coffee together. Yeah, no, no, I definitely, I definitely, there were, there were things I might
01:52have asked another director that I didn't ask Peter.
01:55And a lot to learn because you're not a man for, as it were, costume drama, period drama. You're absolutely
02:01not that kind of director.
02:03Well, I had a bad formative experience, Kirsty. I did an adaptation of Wuthering Heights and it was, it was
02:09terrible. It wasn't good. And it sort of scarred me.
02:13Didn't do bad for Ralph Hines. No, Ralph Hines did okay. But I thought, well, I can't do that. That's
02:18not me.
02:18And when Mark and I had worked together before, it had been on a contemporary piece about the death of
02:23Dr. David Kelly, which Mark played so beautifully.
02:27And, but when he asked me, you know, I'd been wanting to work with him again. It had been 10
02:34years.
02:35You don't want to work with saving his presence with Mark Rylance on something that isn't right.
02:39You know, you want to work on something that, that has enough of a range and depth and intensity that
02:45allows him to do what he does so brilliantly.
02:48And, you know, I, this was such an opportunity, so it was hard to refuse.
02:53When, um, you came to inhabit Cromwell, um, what, what, what, what were your first thoughts?
02:59I mean, such a complex character, but also I was thinking that he, you are quite a private person.
03:05And I think Cromwell perforce had to be like that too, didn't he?
03:09What comes to my mind is, is, um, I was very struck by him being a, a runaway at age
03:1514 and, and, um, someone who learned to, to survive on the street in Europe at that time.
03:22Got involved in armies and, uh, then provisioning armies and then, then the rag trade.
03:29And it's, it was a rough way of speaking what he did, but, and then banking.
03:33And, but I, I've known a few, I know a wonderful poet down in Brixton actually, who came down from
03:39the, from the north.
03:40Arrived at King's Cross, you know, and lived, lived rough for a year or two in Soho with a gang
03:45of kids.
03:46Just fed themselves, you know, uh, by finding out where the hotels dumped their extra food and stuff like that.
03:52And so I thought of people like that, they keep the cards they have to play close to their chest.
03:57And, and I think that always struck me that Cromwell, that served Cromwell very well as he moved into even
04:04more dangerous, powerful places.
04:07I think one of the questions that we asked ourselves was, it's easy to talk about, you know, a man
04:13who comes from nothing to great power.
04:15But then stop and think about that for a moment and think about the times.
04:20This is like the first person who ever did this.
04:23And you think, what was it that Cromwell had to allow him to so capture the attention of the king,
04:30to so mesmerize society that for those few short years he was essentially the ruler of the land?
04:35He has to have been an incredibly powerful, charismatic, you know, and that's, I think, is Mark's triumph.
04:42That he, with doing very little, he creates this sense of fascination.
04:48That you're wondering what he's thinking, what's he going to say.
04:51You know, you convey that so brilliantly with a look on obviously many occasions.
04:55But when he's looking at Jane Seymour, what I love is the audience has to do the work too.
05:01Because I think, what is he thinking? Is he thinking that she is the next wife?
05:05I mean, you get a sense always that he's living by his wits.
05:10Yeah. I watched a lot of films before we began to film.
05:14I wanted to really try and see what the great film actors were doing.
05:18And I was particularly impressed by Brad Pitt in a film called The Assassination of Jesse James,
05:24where he does very, very little.
05:26And I just found myself completely pulled into it.
05:30And I've always admired Robert Mitchum.
05:33And so I really wanted to dare to just think.
05:39And Peter was very encouraging.
05:41Sometimes I would, often when you're acting, you think things you didn't prepare to think.
05:45They just come, they come flitting across your mind as I look at Claire Foy or look at what Damon's
05:52doing.
05:54And sometimes it would be so fast, the thought.
05:56But he would come up to me after a take and said,
05:58Oh, I thought you were thinking that, weren't you?
06:00And I couldn't believe that he had seen that thought.
06:05He's a very good observer of what actors are doing.
06:09In fact, he has the...
06:11No, other directors don't do this.
06:13He has someone else say, action.
06:15Because by that moment, he's already buried himself in the viewer and trying to connect with us.
06:22I like that idea that you're the director as observer.
06:24That, in a sense, your work is sort of done to a certain extent.
06:28And you're observing.
06:29Well, my work is done, really.
06:30My work is done on the script and in casting the actors.
06:34And if you're quite inexperienced, and I certainly was guilty of this,
06:38you sort of think, well, I'd better say something, because otherwise I'm not really being the director.
06:42But if you've got nothing to contribute, it's best to stay silent.
06:46One of the most important kind of electric relationships in the series is between Thomas Moore,
06:53who's over there in the tower, and Thomas Cromwell.
06:57Tell me how you two talked about that relationship.
07:00I think we all have a part of us that's idealistic.
07:05Our parents or ourselves or the things we admire raise ideals of how our life should be.
07:12And we all have a part that's pragmatic.
07:15And so it was easy to feel I was talking to my pragmatic, my idealistic side.
07:23And, you know, the drama expressed a drama that goes on in each of us.
07:29I think whatever level of society you live in, you've got that.
07:35These two acted out at a very, very high, dangerous level of society.
07:40I think that's why this story comes around so often as such a popular myth,
07:46because it's something that happens in many, many people's lives.
07:51If only one of them could have got to Henry and Anne with the benefit of what we know now,
07:59then I have to tell them, look, you have given birth to the greatest,
08:02one of the greatest sovereigns this country will ever have.
08:06And because of this mindset at the time that only a man can be a great king,
08:12you're going to destroy your marriage and this woman's going to die.
08:16And it's all ridiculous.
08:18If you could change your mindset and accept that a woman might be a great sovereign,
08:24you should be the happiest parents in the world right now.
08:27From the Catholic point of view, Moore is arguing,
08:31you mustn't go against, you know, if you've had a child.
08:34He's arguing for Mary, of course.
08:36Then you should accept that that is God's plan, even if it seems a difficult thing.
08:40And from Cromwell's point of view, he would have gone in there and encouraged,
08:45from a pragmatic point of view, you have a child.
08:47Why caused all this problem trying to have another one?
08:50What is so great about the script and the way that it's realised is that you don't,
08:57you're not in, you're not looking at it as history, you're in it.
09:01Well, she writes that, that's one of the joys of reading the book.
09:04And I would recommend, if you like, if you haven't read the book and liked the show,
09:08then read the book, because there's so much more in it that's wonderful.
09:11But she, after a while, it takes a little while, you have to get into it,
09:15but then you suddenly have a feeling, oh, I'm in the room with them.
09:18Yeah.
09:18It feels like I'm there with them.
09:20And not knowing the next move.
09:22That's right.
09:23And I think maybe because she's made that, made it seem so unlike a historical novel,
09:29that's maybe why people assume that her research or her work is reckless or careless,
09:35but she researched for five years.
09:37And so I think the critics that you may read of, of whether this is true or not,
09:43you have to remember, she did a lot of work.
09:45She didn't just come in and do a popular version of this story.
09:49Of course, there's a lively debate going on, particularly in the Twittersphere,
09:52about our interpretation of Cromwell.
09:55And some people feel this is sort of horribly revisionist,
09:58that the man was a brute and a cheat, very much his son, his father's son.
10:04And I personally don't care two hoots, I'm moderating my language,
10:09don't care two hoots about that.
10:12You know, this is Hillary's vision and we have embraced it and enjoyed embracing it.
10:17I've had a great letter comparing me to, um, to Alec Guinness's character
10:22in The Bridge on the River Kwai, that I, I built a, in playing Cromwell,
10:27I built a very good bridge but forgot about the war.
10:29Um, and, uh, but I, you know, that, I think that's, that, that, that, um,
10:36people are very enamored of Thomas More and, and, and, um, upset to see that, uh,
10:41utopian people have a shadow.
10:43People are forgetting the book shares a wonderful Catholic man,
10:46in a very good light, Cardinal Woolsey, with all the flexibility of the Catholic.
10:52Yeah, and the love of, of food and, and of the world,
10:56rather than a, a desire to repress and move away from the world.
11:01But the portrayal of More seems to be entirely what has created this attack
11:08on Hilary Mantel for being anti-Catholic.
11:11Well, some of the attack happened before episode four, and it's been a bit more muted since then.
11:17When you get into the long and quite complex discussions,
11:22particularly the two scenes in the tower between Cromwell and More,
11:25you start to see the sophistication of the argument.
11:30I'll send my barge to roll you back to Chelsea, back to your garden, your children, back to Dame Alice,
11:36who'll be waiting to bear you up to your own bed.
11:39We see this drama through Cromwell's eyes,
11:41and we're left in absolutely no doubt that Cromwell has a huge personal respect for More,
11:46that he'll do almost anything.
11:48I mean, he gets into the moment, probably one of only two really difficult moments with the king,
11:54where he says, I'm really not sure we can do this with More.
11:56I don't doubt his loyalty to Rome, nor his hatred of your majesty's title as head of the church.
12:05However, legally, our case is slender.
12:10It won't be easy.
12:16Do I keep you for what's easy?
12:20Do you think I've promoted you for the charm of your presence?
12:27I keep you because you are a serpent.
12:32Do not be a viper in my bosom.
12:42You know my decision. Execute it.
12:46Cromwell, the ultimate pragmatist, thinks it's just, when you get down to it, it's just such a waste.
12:51Yeah.
12:52It's just a waste of a great man and a great intellect.
12:54And it's this debate between a man who is entirely focused on the next life,
13:00who thinks, if I do something like that now, I will suffer in perpetuity.
13:04And a man who is essentially worried about living this life, not so focused on the next one.
13:11And that's what makes this complex and interesting.
13:13Damien Lewis as Henry VIII gives us this person who is capricious, entirely dangerous, despotic.
13:25In a sense, he's a despot that we can all understand, because he's like any despot.
13:29I have great sympathy for Damien's Henry, and I'm just struck by the enormous pressure on him after this period
13:36of civil war.
13:37It's easy to forget that, and I was talking with Peter about it last night and saying, you know,
13:41eventually a nation like Iraq, which is in such, such violent difficulty now,
13:47eventually a ruler will come forward, like Nelson Mandela or someone who will unite that nation.
13:53And that ruler will have a child, two children, say Arthur and Henry.
13:57The pressure on those children to maintain the hard-fought stability for a nation after a long period of civil
14:04war is enormous.
14:06And that pressure, it all lands on Henry. It warps his character. It's too much pressure.
14:11I have not forgotten how I helped your master against the French.
14:16He promised me territory. Next thing I hear, he's making a treaty with Francois.
14:22The emperor treats me like an infant. First he whips me, then he pets me, then he whips me again.
14:28Well, tell him I am not an infant. And tell him to keep out of my family business.
14:33First he tells me how I should marry, then he wants to show me how to deal with my own
14:39daughter.
14:43I demand a profound and public apology.
14:46He became very like his father, very paranoid, very suspicious of anything that didn't come from himself.
14:55And a man like Cromwell, who appears to be the second most powerful person in the land,
15:00ends up realizing that it's either do what Henry says or die.
15:04And that is the dilemma that casts the shadow over the final episode, episode six,
15:09where he's forced to do something he absolutely doesn't want to do, which is destroy Anne Boleyn,
15:15a woman for whom he has the greatest respect. And it's her or him.
15:20Cromwell is watching her go to her death. And in that moment, he doesn't want her to die.
15:28No, of course not. He can see Cromwell many, many moves ahead on the chessboard.
15:33And he's trying to encourage the other player to get off the road before they get hit.
15:39When you read the book, you see that he's supporting so many members of his family.
15:44He's taking in orphans. He's giving a lot of money outside his house.
15:49We know that he gave money for the roads and his will.
15:52He's supporting a lot of other people.
15:54So he knows if he goes down, a lot of wildlife goes down as well.
15:58He wants to keep himself enabled to do good to others.
16:01And if the person won't save themselves, then, you know, they shouldn't be in the game.
16:06Peter Strawn has written it brilliantly. So you see the intercutting between Cromwell on the morning of the execution,
16:13talking to the executioner, trying to make sure that she doesn't suffer and that it's done properly.
16:19How will he do it?
16:22She kneels. There is no block.
16:30And then the event itself. He wants her to have a clean and painless death.
16:38And then he goes to Henry and Henry throws open his arms and with a great beam on his eye
16:44to welcome him.
16:47And we see Cromwell's face and we see a man caught in a trap, arguably of his own making.
16:54And I'm thinking of Faust who made a pact with the devil and then came to realize what that pact
16:58would cost him.
17:07You talk about the way that Peter works and there's a real challenge in bringing the right atmosphere.
17:14So first of all, locations. Was that actually a great challenge to get the right locations?
17:20Was it enjoyable? Tell me about some of that.
17:23Oh my God, we were going to be filming in Europe, in Bruges, I think.
17:26Yes.
17:27And Peter went and had a look and said, this doesn't look like England.
17:29And insisted that we filmed in English locations, which was just wonderful.
17:36Mark's absolutely right. And it was a joy, you know, when we were filming that very final scene between Cromwell
17:43and Henry in Penshurst Place in the gallery.
17:47We were actually in a room that Henry and Anne Boleyn had stood in.
17:51Was there a frisson for you about that?
17:53Oh yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah. There's a frisson for me here today in this chapel with them being buried
18:01here and right near where they were executed.
18:04History leaves such a resonance. And also the beauty of the gardens and the beauty of the land around.
18:09I'd forgotten how just fantastic the resource in England of these houses is.
18:14So all of that encourages you with the clothing and everything to take on a sensibility that they had.
18:20Also, much has been made of the candlelight, but I'm reminded of something that Hillary said.
18:26She said that candlelight does something amazing to your imagination.
18:30Was that what you were thinking?
18:32Well, I asked Gavin Finney, our director of photography, a fairly simple question, which is,
18:37is it possible with the technology that we have to shoot night scenes by candlelight?
18:44And he said, yes, I think it is.
18:47Do you think he's afraid of me?
18:51Why should he be?
18:53Why should he be?
18:55I don't know.
18:57First of all, I wanted day to be very bright with strong white light and night.
19:02The rooms take on a completely different character. Shadows are profound.
19:07We have one scene where Joan Cromwell's sister-in-law slowly extinguishing candles around the room until Cromwell is left
19:18lit just by one light.
19:19And a fire.
19:22Does John Williamson not do his duty by you?
19:28His duty is not my pleasure.
19:43There's a conversation I shouldn't have had.
19:47That sense of closing in on him until you're just left in a pool of light, for me, you know,
19:53well, that was an artistic choice.
19:55That wasn't, you know, it wasn't in the book or scripted particularly.
19:59And another way that you make it so much from Cromwell's perspective is by using the handheld camera.
20:06Explain how you decided the trajectory for all that.
20:09That's a heavy camera, you know. That's a 30 pound camera.
20:12Pick up a 30 pound weight in your gym.
20:14And that's what, Gavin was wearing that every day for 17 weeks.
20:20He had to train, he had to do physical training and carry on training in the morning and on the
20:25weekends to make sure his back didn't go down.
20:27It almost was as if the camera was one of the performers.
20:30You know, I don't like to hold back, hold off like that camera's doing over there.
20:36I like the camera to be with Mark.
20:39You know, one of the challenges that we faced so much of the novels is interior world of Cromwell.
20:45And we didn't want narration.
20:47So how do you convey the sense that we're with this man, that he is not just the main character,
20:53but he's our character.
20:54He's the person who's guiding us through.
20:56Taking you now to a scene where I thought that Mark was just actually about to really kill Damien Lewis
21:02rather than save Henry.
21:03Tell me about the jousting scene.
21:06We made a decision on the day, I threw it at Mark really, which normally in that situation what you
21:12would do is you'd have all the extras miming.
21:14They'd all be going.
21:15And it would be silent.
21:17And you'd then record the dialogue and the actors would have to shout as if everyone, and then at the
21:22end you'd record all the crowd making a noise.
21:24And I just didn't think that would work.
21:26This was a very frantic scene.
21:28So what we did was we decided to do it for real.
21:31We got everybody to shout and scream.
21:34And Mark and Bernard Hill, who plays Duke of Norfolk, and the other actors, and Damien, had to act with
21:41all this noise and confusion and racket.
21:44And you know, it was quite chaotic really, wasn't it?
21:47It was in a very small tent and just doing one take.
21:50And we had very, very good extras on this film.
21:53I have to say, you stood in the rain and they were marvelous.
21:56But on this day, they didn't seem to know who I was or that I was going to be, I
22:00don't think anyone had told them I was going to come through.
22:02And I really had to push and get in there.
22:06And then they were all pushing around.
22:18I think I pulled my blow as I tried to get Damien's heart going.
22:22I think you got carried away.
22:24Maybe, I don't know.
22:26When we're watching it, we're very aware of the kind of modernity of the dilemmas.
22:32Does it play to a modern political sensibility, do you think, Peter?
22:34I do.
22:36I do.
22:36And I think Mark has referred earlier to the battle between idealism and pragmatism.
22:42And I'm currently working on something about ISIS, the Islamic State, which is, I suppose, a form of idealism.
22:52Islam is about 500 years younger than Christianity.
22:57And the period we're looking at here is about 500 years ago.
23:01So we're looking at a time when Christianity was about the same age as a religion as Islam is today.
23:08And what were we doing back then?
23:10Well, we were chopping people's heads off.
23:12We were burning people alive at the stake.
23:14We were disemboweling people alive and then drawing and quartering them.
23:20And why?
23:21Why were we doing that?
23:22We were doing it primarily over quite subtle differences of interpretation of religious doctrine.
23:28Does that sound familiar?
23:31But also in the manner in which the court operates, the wheeling and dealing, you know, the backstabbing.
23:38I mean, people don't often have a very high opinion of modern day politics.
23:43There's some modern day politics in all this as well, though, isn't there?
23:46Certainly, Henry's struggle with a force outside of England, the Catholic Church.
23:52I think our modern politicians have a great struggle with the multinational forces of business.
23:59The fight for democracy.
24:00The fight even in a village to have the right to say, we don't want a Tesco's.
24:04We want to keep our high street.
24:07So the period tells us a lot about a struggle for independence.
24:11In that time, it's the independence of the monarch.
24:13At the moment, it's a struggle for the independence of a democratic elected government from outside influences.
24:20And that way, it's very parallel.
24:22In some ways, you can see Henry VIII being like, as he separates from the Catholic Church,
24:28as being in as vulnerable a position as Chavez in Venezuela,
24:33and his paranoia being similar to what appears at times to be paranoid behavior of a leader like Chavez.
24:39Do you think there's a similarity to that?
24:41Yeah, yeah.
24:41You've now created a Cromwell who is still, you know, moving, still on the up.
24:52Hillary's vision of him is not complete.
24:54So, although you know the general trajectory because you understand history,
24:57you don't really know how he's going to play it.
25:01No, I don't. No, I'm not a historian.
25:03I know that because Peter's told me that the last words he writes to Henry
25:10from a room somewhere in the vicinity here are mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy,
25:16what, four or five times in his final plea to Henry before he's beheaded.
25:21So, I know where it's heading, so to speak.
25:24Your plan is to go on and complete the journey with Cromwell.
25:27Oh, yeah, yeah, of course, if she is able to write the book.
25:31But Hillary now has three children.
25:34She has the book, which is the two books.
25:36She has the play the RSC have done, and she has our film.
25:40I think it's proven quite difficult for her to go back into that lonely single mum place
25:46of writing a book that all writers have to go to, which is really hard.
25:51And then it's impossible for her not to be affected by the manifestations
25:56that Ben Miles and I have brought to Cromwell,
25:59that Anton and John Ram have brought to Moore.
26:01All of this stuff, she's no longer just working with historical documents.
26:06She's working with the impressions we've added to it.
26:09And do you think that will be actually a joy for her,
26:12or actually very tough for her to go back?
26:17Well, it's difficult because I've spoken to Hillary about the book.
26:21You know, she's just, all she will say is it's going well,
26:23and it's not going to be a short one.
26:27I think we feel like we've done two thirds of the journey.
26:31Yeah.
26:32I have to tell you, I was terribly affected by the death of Anne Boleyn,
26:37and when we shot it, and that day itself was an extraordinary day.
26:43But it will be as nothing to the impact that it would have,
26:48I think, on all of us to shoot the execution of Cromwell.
26:51If we do this, we're going to go on a dark journey again.
26:54And do you have fears for Cromwell's end yourself as an actor?
27:01How you're going to deal with it?
27:03When I watch it, I'm already concerned for him taking advantage
27:09of Henry's cruelty to Anne to settle old scores.
27:15You know, he's already dying inside Cromwell,
27:18and he's already in the mindset of collateral,
27:21it's just collateral damage, you know,
27:23and it's a dog-eat-dog world.
27:26So he's heading towards some karma, for want of a better word.
27:35On the last week of shooting after your 17 weeks,
27:38you two, treats in for the crew.
27:41Yes, I had a different snack each afternoon, I think.
27:45Lovely Japanese food or lots of different things,
27:48but it ended with an ice cream truck,
27:50which came with a marvellous kind of,
27:53oh, it played some funny tune, I can't remember the tune.
27:56Mr. Whippy tune.
27:57Mr. Whippy tune, yeah, and we all queued up
28:00and had lovely ice cream.
28:02And we never knew what was coming each day.
28:04And so we'd troop out of whichever stately home
28:07we happened to be in at around about 4 o'clock in the afternoon
28:10to discover what Mark had arranged for us.
28:12And it really rounded the thing off beautifully.
28:15Very Cromwell-ian, wasn't it?
28:17Peter Kosminski, Mark Rylance, thank you very much indeed.
28:27Who was the real Thomas Cromwell?
28:29Find out about the man behind the myth online at BBC I Wonder.
28:35Coming up next tonight, stay with us as we head into space with Horizon
28:39to ask, are we alone in the universe?
28:42as we live in the universe?
28:43Thank God, one of the greatest memories.
28:45Thank you so much for your experience.
28:46We are blessed, all of the greatest memories.
28:46We are here to go.
28:47We are glad to see you with the one amazing story.
28:47for you, as we have the best neighbours.
28:47We know we are.
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