'The Borgias' David Oakes interview: 'Playing a hedonist is fantastic'
© Showtime
To mark the show's UK premiere, Digital Spy caught up with David Oakes, who plays Rodrigo's arrogant young son, Juan. In our chat below, David tells all about his "lecherous" role and reveals how close he came to taking up a new career as a stuntman! Warning: there a few (historical) spoilers contained within!
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How much did you know about the Borgias before this show?
"Not a massive amount, it must be said. I knew a lot more about the Renaissance than anything else. The Borgias was a family name that had popped up in [my] reading before, and I knew of Lucretia Borgia, although we call her 'Lucrezia' - the Spanish pronunciation. But I didn't know much. It was that whole kind of relish in the fact that this was a period of time like the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution. The Renaissance was a point where humanity, technology, art and warcraft all came together in this mishmash. And through all of this, there is the possibility for individuals or even families to become massively famous, massively wealthy and massively powerful.
In this period, you've got the Medicis, but you've also got the Borgias, and that was the extent of my knowledge. To then research what [the Borgias] did with those possibilities was amazing. To be the problem child of that family, at that time, and to have the ability to get whatever I want, and do whatever I want whenever I want to do it, but without an understanding of the repercussions, to be a complete hedonist, was fantastic."
"Yeah, definitely. Alongside that though… I mean, yes he's lecherous and debaucherous, and he pours wine over prostitutes dressed as nuns, and he beats up his father and sleeps with his brother's wife, and various other things like that! But underlying that, there's a key concern of [his] paternity, and through that, and through the way in which he lets down his family over the course of the season, there's a complete degradation of character. It's to such a point that by the end of the series, he's alienated almost the entire family and the entirety of Rome. I know that I've got a hell of a lot of exciting stuff to do [in season two] and I get my payback! I can't wait!"
What's your take on the rivalry between Juan and his brother Cesare (Francois Arnaud)?
"I think what's kind of fun is that from Cesare's perspective, I'm the younger brother, I'm a bit rubbish, I'm an upstart, and he begrudges the fact that I'm the favorite. So that's kind of as far as he goes, and obviously I get worse and that p*sses him off. From my point of view, what I think is brilliant is that at the beginning of the series I don't realize what's going on and just love being the favorite, and I love the fact that I can wind [Cesare] up like nothing else. So it starts off like that - quite jovial, quite fun, quite charming, quite light and frothy. But through the nature of the positions that the family find themselves in, I become a figurehead for the country and suddenly it's not just family rivalry, it's a war. I let down the nation, and I start to envy the fact that my brother may have been able to do it better. I start to hate the fact that I'm the underling, and I hate the fact that my family starts to loathe me. That hate starts to boil, and it gets great!"
"Very, in one way or another. When I was at youth theatre, we adapted his film The Company of Wolves into a stage play, which we did outside in an amphitheatre in Epping Forest. We didn't charge entry so it was alright that we didn't ask him for the rights! So I sort of grew up watching his films, and am amazed by him, quite frankly. Yes, we're working with him at the moment on this show, and he's writing and directing it, which is great. But the most exciting thing is that this is his pet project that he's had in his head for 20 years. So you've had this 15 years' worth of creativity held up inside him. Two years ago, when Showtime said, 'Here's the money', he just vomited The Borgias into our heads!"
Were you required to do much training for Juan's battle scenes?
"Funnily enough, it was the same horse team that was on [Starz mini-series] Pillars of the Earth and the same stunt team too. It was just like rejoining my family. Off the back of Pillars, the stunt co-ordinator Gabor offered me work as a stuntman, because they need people who can horse ride and fight on horseback. I was well up for doing more. There's a limited amount in The Borgias but, yeah, I love it. I could do a lot more."
"It's nice to know you're in a winner! It's really nice to know that. First of all, it had the highest ratings [Showtime] ever had for seven years, then they picked it up [for season two]. I think the best thing about that was knowing that everything I've done for the character was all about creating this fully-rounded, real life, and all I'd done was this first third of his life. Once I knew it was going again, I was delighted that I was going to be able to finish this character. I'm not going to say whether that's this season or the season after, but we will see his arc, which is great."
As you've hinted, the real Juan Borgias was murdered in his early 20s. Do you know at what point that will happen on the show?
"We can't change history, so he will be dying at some point. It depends on what else we need to do. Historically, there's lots of stuff we need to do - he needs to get married to the Princess of Spain, and there's a lot more real things he needs to do. And we don't actually know who killed him historically - there are a lot of rumors about various different people. So what Neil will go for will be quite interesting! I have my suspicions, but it could be anyone. By the end of this first season, he's p*ssed off pretty much everyone!"
Finally, why should people tune into The Borgias?
"It's beautifully shot, it looks stunning, the dialogue is clever, politicised, pertinent and bleak. Yeah, it's amazing."
The Borgias begins on Saturday, August 13 at 9pm on Sky Atlantic.
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