Hugh said: "Downton movie, we would love it to happen, where there's a will there's a way but there's no sign of it.
"It would be lovely, if we could all pull together and find ourselves in the same part of the globe at the same time then maybe."
It comes after Downton fans were sent into a tizzy last month by a cryptic Facebook post which led them to believe the film's release date could be revealed soon.
Fans have been begging to see their beloved characters on the big screen ever since the show came to an end in 2015
And their wish came true in May when The Sun confirmed that a full length feature film edition was being made.
A new post on the official Facebook page told fans to keep their eyes peeled as they wrote: "Big news is on its way! Check back soon for a special announcement."
The picture, posted on October 3, also read: "Something big is happened at Downton!"
While many others pondered if it could be an announcement about a new mini series to lead on from the film - however, there has still been no word over what it was teasing.
But while more than 19-years have passed since their much-watched show about the hapless interactions between four thirty-something friends came to an end, Caroline Quentin admits the near-two decade gap was not an issue after reuniting with Clunes on the set of medical drama Doc Martin.
The actress, 57, takes a fleeting role as Angela Sim on the Cornwall based show, which stars Clunes, 55, as the titular Dr. Martin Ellingham, a frequently irked vascular surgeon who trades London life for a remote Cornish village after developing haemophobia – a fear of blood.
‘When I work with Martin it’s like no time has passed at all,’ she explained during an appearance on Monday morning’s edition of Lorraine.
‘There's something about mucking about in an adult environment that's great, and generally annoying everyone around us.’
We're about 40 minutes apart so we see each other all the time,' she explained.
Off-screen, Caroline raises children Emily and William with second husband Sam Farmer - a former runner on BBC show Jonathan Creek, where they met - in rural Devon.
But she believes the modern world, all too often defined by rapidly evolving technology and contrasting ideologies, has increased her responsibilities as a mother.
Decider
By Meghan O'Keefe @megsokay
Oct 13, 2017 at 3:00pm
I’ve been looking forward to this Sunday for weeks because it’s the Sunday that The Durrells in Corfu Season 2 debuts on PBS. I love The Durrells in Corfu with all my heart and soul — even if my co-workers tease me that when I say its name aloud I sound like I’m gargling salt water. After I binge-watched the whole first season earlier this year, I started telling everyone I could that it’s like Masterpiece‘s version of a smart, heart-warming sitcom like Parks and Recreation.
That’s not as bold a statement as it sounds. Like Parks and Recreation, The Durrells in Corfu is about a central ensemble cast of misfitted people. In this case, though, they aren’t co-workers; They’re family. And as in Parks and Recreation, the action all takes place in a quirky town full of outrageous characters. The “town” in question is the Greek isle of Corfu. The basic gist of the show is this: Harried widow Louisa Durrell (Keeley Hawes) decides to take her four struggling children to Corfu, where the weather’s beautiful and everything is cheap.
Season One saw the family overcoming poverty, language barriers, heartache, and a slapdash appendectomy with lots of wit (and even more wild animals). The first season is just six episodes long, each under an hour in length, and you can binge it on Prime Video ahead of the season season premiere on Sunday, October 15th. But if you don’t have time to catch up, here’s your quick guide to the Durrells themselves.
***WARNING: Spoilers for Season One of The Durrells in Corfu Ahead***
‘Poldark’ season 3 lead actors Aidan Turner and Eleanor Tomlinson were recently spotted filming in Somerset county in England. The two looked blissful and in-love as on-screen married couple Ross and Demelza Poldak. The photographs suggested that Ross and Demelza’s marriage may stay intact despite Elizabeth’s shocking pregnancy.
According to Express.com, Turner’s Ross Poldark and Tomlinson’s Demelza Poldark looked the part of a blissful wedded couple while the lead actors were spotted filming the third season of BBC’s British-American drama television series in Somerset county in South West England.
Turner and Tomlinson were dressed head-to-toe in full 18th century garb in Wells, Somerset. They were spotted looking at each other lovingly while locking arms despite the fallout of their marriage in the previous season. Demelza caught Ross cheating on her with Elizabeth in season 2. She also came close to betraying Ross with Captain McNeil (Henry Garett) during a party.
Tomlinson admitted during a previous interview that Ross and Demelza will continue to face marital challenges in the upcoming season. Perhaps Elizabeth’s (Heida Reed) pregnancy and the real identity of the father of her child will take its toll on one of television’s most beloved couples.
Ever since they were revealed to the world as quaint country-women, the Brontë sisters have fascinated legions of devoted readers. MASTERPIECE brings these remarkable literary geniuses to life with a beautifully filmed and acted two-hour drama, To Walk Invisible The Brontë Sisters.
Written and directed by Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax), To Walk Invisible depicts the evolution of secluded, dutiful clergyman’s daughters into authors of the most controversial fiction of the 1840s. The drama stars Finn Atkins (Eden Lake) as Charlotte, who shocked society with her edgy epic, Jane Eyre; Chloe Pirrie (War and Peace) as Emily, author of the darkly gothic and disturbing Wuthering Heights; and Charlie Murphy (Happy Valley) as Anne, whose penned the true-to-life love story The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Also starring are Jonathan Pryce (Wolf Hall) as their distracted father, Reverend Patrick Brontë; and Adam Nagaitis as the sisters’ only brother, Branwell, whose wild and dissipated life contributed to vivid characters in each of their novels.
Poldark" star Aidan Turner's character is expected to appear as reckless as he was in the previous two seasons. Meanwhile, the addition of some new characters in the cast is expected to make things more interesting in season 3.
Debbie Horsfield, the show's writer has teased that a richer plot with more drama, passion, feud, and conflict awaits viewers when the show returns for season 3. Though Turner's Ross is older now, Horsfield hinted that he is yet to be wiser.
The character is often at his reckless best, which creates trouble for him, as well as for those who are close to him. Horsfield also claimed that fans can expect to enjoy another rollercoaster ride but the stakes could be higher this time.
"Poldark" Season 3 Has New Actors In Cast
Digital Spy reported that Josh Whitehouse will be one of the new key characters to join in the upcoming season. Actor Hugh Armitage will be portraying the role in the new episodes. Josh is tipped to be an aristocrat and Ross will have consequences to face upon his arrival.
Some other new actors are Drake (Harry Richardson), Demelza's) Eleanor Tomlinson) brother and Sam (Tom York), who is a highly religious character. Another new character will be Emma Tregirls (Ciara Charteris), who is Sam's love interest in "Poldark" Season 3.
NPR
January 28, 20178:11 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Saturda
Brooding? Just a bit. Rufus Sewell stars as American Nazi leader John Smith in The Man in the High Castle.
Liane Hentscher
People are seeing a lot of Rufus Sewell these days.
He's starring in the play Art at the Old Vic theater in London. On PBS, he's playing Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister — and perhaps prime minister indeed, if you catch my drift.
And he's also receiving raves for his role as John Smith, the Nazi leader of America, in the alternate universe of Amazon's The Man in the High Castle, which has been renewed for a third season.
The series is increasingly loosely based on Phillip K. Dick's 1962 novel in which the Nazis win World War II, America is occupied, and many Americans seem happy with that. Sewell tells NPR's Scott Simon that recently, a fan of the show tried to give him a Nazi salute through a coffee-shop window. "And he was not, you know, the usual suspect, kind of alt-right looking fellow. He was a kind of beardy Hollywood hipster," Sewell says, "and it didn't occur to him that I might be a slightly inappropriate thing to do ... people do it to me sometimes, but luckily they don't appear to be believers."
Interview Highlights
On bringing life to John Smith
The Nazi ideology is loathsome, but people essentially are not ... Admittedly in Season 1 he seemed like a relatively one-dimensional character, and I wasn't interested until I saw episode 2, which was already written, where it became a bit more confusing — you saw him with his family — and I would describe him as a person with an alternate history inside him, you know, a person who has turned out one way, who had history gone a different way would seemingly be a different person entirely.
The way you do it, or the way I've tried to do it, is try to get as familiar as I can with what happens to people, and how they create a narrative for themselves in which they're the good guys ... and I think that's what Philip K. Dick was writing about — he was writing about what people do in order to get on.
THE BULLETIN
By Luaine Lee / Tribune News Service
Published May 4, 2016 at 12:02AM
TV SPOTLIGHT “WALLANDER” 9 P.M. SUNDAYS, PBS
PASADENA, Calif. — Though Kenneth Branagh is perched at the top of his game — both in directing and acting — 10 years ago he had serious doubts.
The star of such films as “My Week with Marilyn” and “Hamlet,” and the director of movies like “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” “Cinderella” and “Thor,” Branagh could paper his house with accolades, throw in a knighthood, a theater company and a panoply of memorable performances.
But he says, “I found in my 40s a time when I found acting extremely difficult and very pressurized. And I didn’t want to quit, but I had to get over the hump of it. It began when I was playing in ‘Conspiracy’ for HBO.”
“Conspiracy” was about the meeting of Nazi officials held to determine the “final solution for the Jewish question.” Branagh played SS Gen. Reinhard Heydrich, the leader of the conference.
“It lasted for quite a few years where it was much harder to lose yourself in a character,” he says. “It started there because I didn’t want to be part of that man’s psyche, and it felt like one became rather self-conscious about what one was doing. And really, where I rediscovered joy with acting was when ‘Wallander’ began.”
“Wallander” is the PBS series on “Masterpiece Mystery!” about a melancholic Swedish detective, filled with quiet desperation as he observes the worst among us. The final three episodes begin airing Sunday.
“In a way it was because you stripped artifice away, and you became very comfortable with being uncomfortable,” he says. “You realized that to play something like this it just wouldn’t or couldn’t be easy. Just trying to present the truth under the unflinching gaze of the film camera, you had no choice but to commit. And somehow it put me out of the other side of a period where I’d been just not enjoying it for a long time, still committed to it, but finding it very, very difficult.”
He says he began to ponder the meaning of his work. “Sometimes you have to shake yourself down to understand how a piece of entertainment can be quite meaningful to people, or at the very least, enjoyable and diverting. And this is not a bad thing to be able to do. I think during that time, I lost a little that sense of purpose, in a way that sounds like it’s ego-led about legacy, but it’s more about finding a purpose.”
Branagh was born in Belfast. His mother worked in a tobacco factory, his dad was a plumber and carpenter. “It was a working class district of Belfast,” he says. “We lived in a very small house. We were working class rather than poor. We always had clothes and food. There were tangible moments in my childhood when I knew there wasn’t — that they were having a tough time.”
From left: Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark and Heida Reed as Elizabeth in “Poldark” (C) Robert Viglasky/Mammoth Screen for MASTERPIECE
Thank you, PBS and “Masterpiece.”
One week after Jon Snow suffered multiple stabbings at the hands of his fellow Night’s Watchmen, we have been able to put aside our mourning for the “Game of Thrones” character and his ambiguous future. Because arriving on the TV landscape tonight is another handsome, brooding hero blessed with luscious long locks to keep us company on these lonely summer Sunday evenings.
After a successful run in the U.K. earlier this year, the BBC drama “Poldark,” based on the series of novels by Winston Graham, has premiered on PBS’s “Masterpiece.” And its timing could not be more impeccable: With sweeping epics like “Game of Thrones,” “Outlander” and “Downton Abbey” all currently on hiatus, “Poldark” nicely fills the prestige-television void, especially given the promise of lots of shirtless scenes featuring star Aidan Turner.
Irish actor Turner, known primarily for his role as Kili in “The Hobbit” films, is protagonist Ross Poldark, an 18th-century Redcoat soldier newly returned to his home in southwestern England after fighting on the losing side of the Revolutionary War. For those already familiar with the “Poldark” books and the 1970s TV series of the same name that aired on the original “Masterpiece Theatre,” tonight’s premiere episode may have been a bit of a drag as it focused on setting the scene and introducing us to the main characters. As a result, “Part 1″ was heavy on the exposition and light on the plot development, but for those of us who have not read the novels or seen the Seventies “Poldark” (like this recapper), the episode got us fully prepped for what’s ahead over the next six episodes.
The series opens with a prologue in 1781 Virginia, where landed gentry member Ross Poldark and his Redcoat army are ambushed by a battalion of colonial patriots. Two years later, Ross comes home to Cornwall, a deep scar now marking the side of his face and giving the camera a very good reason to fulfill a close-up-on-Aidan Turner quota for every episode. To his dismay, Ross learns that he’s been presumed dead since the Virginia attack, so his welcome-home party consists of: 1. The news that his father has died, and, to quote “Titanic” gold digger Ruth Dewitt Bukater, “left behind nothing but a legacy of bad debts hidden by a good name” (although in Ross’s case, the debts aren’t so hidden). And, 2. His beloved not-quite-fiancée Elizabeth (Heida Reed), believing Ross was dead, has moved on and is about to marry his milquetoast cousin, Francis (Kyle Soller).
What’s an impoverished gentleman to do? Despite everyone pleading with him to get lost – especially his Uncle Charles (Warren Clarke), who really doesn’t want Ross messing up his son Francis’s marriage to Elizabeth – Ross is determined to rebuild his father’s dilapidated estate and reopen his family’s copper mine. Is it because he wants to win back Elizabeth (who marries Francis in the premiere episode more out of a sense of duty than love)? Possibly. There’s a lot of “will they or won’t they” in “Part 1,” with a frustrated Ross ultimately spurning the newlywed Elizabeth, telling her “We can never be friends!” But once Turner’s co-star Eleanor Tomlinson appears on the scene midway through the episode, the much more important “Poldark” love triangle is set.
Tomlinson portrays Demelza Carne, a local girl whose miner father’s favorite pastime is beating on his only daughter. To get away from her brutish dad, Demelza enjoys dressing in her brother’s tattered shirt and breeches and running off to town with her best pal, her dog, Garrick. A meet cute between Ross and Demelza occurs during the town’s Market Day when he rescues Garrick – and the girl – from a cruel dogfight, and soon enough, Ross is offering Demelza a position in his house as a kitchen maid. Given the fact that Tomlinson’s name immediately follows Turner in the credits, it is not a spoiler to say that Demelza’s drudge status doesn’t last long.
****
At this early stage of the series, I’m not sure I’m sold yet on the story lines, but as I said earlier, the plot needed to give way to exposition for the premiere episode. What I am loving so far is the sheer abundance of eye candy that “Poldark” provides – and I’m not just talking about Aidan Turner and the seemingly endless shots of his gorgeously glowering visage (he also cuts a fine figure in 18th-century fashions, including those three-cornered hats): The series serves as a free travelogue for the breathtaking Cornwall coastline – this writer is severely berating herself for only going so far as Devon on a trip to southwestern England many years ago – which is just as important a character to the narrative as Ross, Demelza and Elizabeth. If you’re still debating checking out “Poldark,” there’s no shame in coming for the scenery (whether it’s Cornwall or Turner), because chances are you will stay for the story.
“Poldark” airs Sunday nights on “Masterpiece” on PBS at 9 p.m. Follow our recaps all season long here. Follow Sarene Leeds on Twitter.
Martin Clunes is back in Cornwall filming the seventh series of his hit ITV comedy drama Doc Martin.
The actor from Dorset took a break from filming to speak exclusively to ITV West Country about his love of the county.
It feels like a second holiday in a way, even though it's hard work. It's a five month slog of very long hours but it's such a nice place to be. There's a lot of hanging around in our game but look where we get to hang around. The amount of hours I've spent gazing out to sea here.
– MARTIN CLUNES, "DOC MARTIN"
Port Isaac has become Port Wenn for the popular series Credit: ITV News
The entire cast and crew stays in the Cornish village of Port Isaac for five months during the busy filming schedule.
The new series, which airs in the autumn, will feature four local babies who have been picked from 150 hopefuls to share the role of the doctor's son.
Around 800 local people also auditioned to be extras.
While we were on set we bumped into a pair of "Clunatics" as Martin Clunes' fans are known as. These two women have travelled all the way from the States to see behind the scenes.
MOVIE PILOT
by Peter Flynn ⋅ Posted on May 6th, 2015 at 6:46am
Matthew Goode is now in Downton Abbey! I can't stress enough what great casting that is! Of all the choices of well-mannered slightly adorable classy men, he fits the show perfectly. Tom Hiddlesdon? Too widely loved. Ben Wishaw? Too tasteful (dude was Paddington, y'know!) But Matthew Goode? He's the perfect culmination of tacky class. He's like a well-refined savant Ken Doll, and I would love him to return for Downton Abbey Season 6.
If his other main project, The Good Wife permits, we may well see more of Matthew Goode in Season 6. What might Downton Abbey gain from this precious porcelain man returning to our screens?
He Has Chemistry With Lady Mary!
Lady Mary's exploits, and the men those exploits rope in are where the sexy elements of Downton Abbey emerge (as sexy as you can expect Downton to be). Matthew Goode's Henry Talbot made his first appearance in the 2014 christmas special. While I'd misunderstood a joke sketch and was thoroughly fed up with the lack of George Clooney on my screen, Matthew Goode suddenly pops up and starts shooting grouse, and I'm in a stupor of wonderment for the rest of the episode.
I can speak for the fans when I say that everyone wanted Henry and Mary's snappy back and forth to be taken further. Their wry chemistry was palpable, and can be taken places, which the show seems to know! Why else would they explicitly address Henry Talbot's perchance for racing cars? It's kinda weird that Mary is totally into this, since it was a car crash that literally killed her ex-husband, Dan Stevens! I'm just not sure why she would be getting all hot and bothered for fast, dangerous machines.
He Can be Sinister
Matthew Goode is a funny actor. Just put him in stuff, and I will laugh at it, like a gnome being photographed going round the world. That said, he has more depth than just being a funny action-figure man, and has shades of lurid ominousness that make him a joy to watch. He could certainly adapt to some of the dark DARK places Downton Abbey is willing to go. Goode's range could tonally do some interesting things to Season 6.
If you want proof of Goode's ability to play the unsettling villain, look no further than Park Chan-Wook's masterful Stoker. His performance as Uncle Charlie is a truly terrifying delight, and if Henry Talbot were to descend into some sort of villainous figure in Season 6, Goode could manage it spectacularly.
Poldark fans will be gasping for different reasons in the series finale this Sunday – when Ross cheats on Demelza by stealing a kiss with his first love Elizabeth.
The moment comes when Ross, played by Aidan Turner, meets up with his former sweetheart after falling out with her husband, his treacherous cousin Francis.
The kiss will devastate many fans who have grown to love Demelza, whose journey in the BBC1 drama has taken her from kitchen maid to lady of the house.
A devoted wife, and mother to Poldark’s daughter, she would be heart-broken to learn that he is still in love with Elizabeth.
But the cracks in their marriage were beginning to show in the last episode after Ross learned that she had helped his cousin Verity to elope with Captain Andrew Blamey.
Her well-meant actions led to Francis wrongly blaming Ross and exacting his revenge by betraying him in spectacular fashion.
The next season of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey will be its last, its makers have announced.
"Inevitably there comes a time when all shows should end and Downton is no exception," said the programme's executive producer Gareth Neame.
Created by Julian Fellowes, the show follows an aristocratic family's fortunes from 1912 to the mid-1920s.
Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern have played the Earl and Countess of Grantham since the show began in 2010.
The drama has won a string of awards since its inception, including two Baftas, three Golden Globes and 11 Primetime Emmys.
Its success both at home and abroad was recently demonstrated when the Duchess of Cambridge went to see it being filmed at Ealing Studios in west London
"The Downton journey has been amazing for everyone aboard," said Lord Fellowes, whose next project will be The Gilded Age, a period drama set in New York.
"People ask if we knew what was going to happen when we started to make the first series and the answer is that, of course we had no idea.
"Exactly why the series had such an impact and reached so many people around the world, all nationalities, all ages, all types, I cannot begin to explain."
"But I do know how grateful we are to have been allowed this unique experience."
LEICESTER MERCURY
By PA_Warzynski | Posted: March 24, 2015
Actor and proven descendant of Richard III Benedict Cumberbatch will read a poem at the king's reinterment on Thursday.
Cumberbatch, who will be playing Richard III in the BBC series The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses, will read a work penned by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
The actor was recently identified as a third cousin, 16 times removed of King Richard lll.
Duffy was commissioned late last year by Leicester Cathedral, as plans for the services for the week were being discussed and drawn up.
The poem is entitled 'Richard' and it is described as "a meditation on the impact of his finding and on the legacy of his story".
The poet said: "It is a privilege to be involved, in a small way, in this unique event and to have seen the style and grace with which the City of Leicester has made history alive."
As his tomb will soon be revealed, the 14 line poem includes the phrase 'grant me the carving of my name', which is what has at last been achieved in the creation of the tomb in Leicester Cathedral.
THE TELEGRAPH
By Hannah Furness, Arts Correspondent11:16AM GMT 23 Mar 2015
He has caused something of a stir among the women of Britain for his rugged role in Poldark.
But hopeful fans of Aidan Turner could be left somewhat disappointed, after it emerged he has become secretly engaged to his long-term girlfriend.
Turner, 31, has reportedly proposed to actress Sarah Greene after three happy years together.
The Sunday Express claims rumours in the couple's home town of Dublin suggest they agreed to wed after spening Christmas with Turner's parents.
A source quoted by the newspaper said: "They are a really close and happy couple, and marriage is the logical next step for them.
"Sarah is perfect for him, she's very protective. Both of them don't really go for the glitzy side of showbusiness; they're happier spending quiet evenings playing Scrabble."
Turner is currently appearing in BBC period drama Poldark as the gallant Ross, who returned from war to find his true love engaged to another man.
Over the first three episodes, he has gained legions of female fans for scenes which see him galloping across Cornwall on horseback and working topless in the field.
Heartthrob Aidan Turner’s long-term girlfriend has issued a firm “hands off – he’s mine” warning to his legion of new fans.
The Irish star of BBC costume drama Poldark has set millions of hearts fluttering with his smouldering lead performance as Ross – a man torn between two women.
But in real life he is very much in love with his girlfriend of three years, Irish actress Sarah Greene.
And protective Sarah has sent a clear message to anyone with designs on her man – steer clear because he’s off the market.
A friend said: “Sarah will stand no nonsense from any woman who tries to get too close to Aidan. She will let them know very directly ‘hands off – he’s mine’.”
Sarah, 29, who divides her time between Dublin, London and New York, also fiercely guards her privacy and private life.
And she isn’t afraid of confronting anyone who is “rude enough” to invade their personal space.
She said: “My boyfriend was on the Tube and people started taking pictures of him asleep. It’s like, ‘Ask for a photo if you want a photo.’
"Everyone is paparazzi these days. I have a private life and I want that to be private. The odd time in New York you find people taking pictures of you, it’s really rude.”
Friends of the Cork star said: “Sarah is an interesting mix of small town Irish charm and fierce ambition.
"She has the drive to reach the very top, but she doesn’t like all the nonsense that goes with it.
“She has been dating Aidan for over three years and they are very close.
Downton Abbey at Cogges Manor Farm, including Hugh Bonneville as Lord Grantham
STARS from the hit television period drama Downton Abbey were spotted filming at Cogges Manor Farm, near Witney, on Monday.
Hugh Bonneville, who plays Lord Grantham, and Laura Carmichael, who plays lady Edith Crawley, were seen on set. It is understood they were filming episodes in the hit show’s sixth series set to air later this year on ITV.
Cogges has often been used for scenes at the fictional Yew Tree Farm, home to the Drewe family, who bring up Lady Edith’s child. It is one of a series of locations used across West Oxfordshire. Others include Bampton, which doubles as the fictional Downton village.
Filming has become known as ‘the Downton factor’, providing a valuable boost to the district’s tourist industry.
In November last year West Oxfordshire Council, in partnership with Visit Britain, met about 90 Chinese tour operators and media representatives in Guangzhou and Hong Kong.
Council tourism services manager Hayley Beer said she expected two more international tour operators to sign contracts with the council, to add to its deal with International Friends, which began conducting Downton tours to the Cotswolds in April 2014.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By ANDREW GOLDMAN
March 5, 2015 3:36 p.m. ET
HAS THERE EVER LIVED a lustier, more murderous cast of characters than the Tudors? The infamy of the English dynasty owes largely to the treacherous 38-year reign of Henry VIII, but an even more compelling character may be his enabler and brain for hire, Thomas Cromwell, the commoner who rose in his court to become a kind of Henry whisperer, an advisor renowned for his ability to read the king’s mind like a book. For 500 years, Cromwell was viewed as a great heavy in the Tudor drama, a character whose lure became irresistible to the British novelist Hilary Mantel. “When I was researching, I started off with a fairly conventional viewpoint: that Cromwell’s a villain but an interesting villain,” Mantel says. “Then I began to discover other things and modified my view very fast.” Cromwell was the consummate fixer—in Mantel’s words, “the man to cut through some legal entanglement that’s ensnared you for three generations, or talk your sniffling little daughter into the marriage she swears she will never make.” Mantel also found him unusually sympathetic: After the deaths of his wife and daughters, he went on to support his large extended family. She devoted eight years and a thousand pages to novelizing the first 51 years of Cromwell’s life with Wolf Hall, released in 2009, and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, published three years later.
The books made Mantel a literary star—the first British author to win the Man Booker Prize twice. Naturally, film producers came calling. “There were many suitors, yes,” she says. But her books are serious works of historical fiction. The Tudors—notably in the Showtime series of the same name and the filmed adaptation of The Other Boleyn Girl—had been transformed in the popular imagination as characters scheming and copulating through airbrushed Hollywood bodice rippers (“bonkbusters,” as the genre is known in England). Mantel feared what would become of her Cromwell in the wrong hands, how tempting it might be to drown him in an orgiastic, Game of Thrones–style bloodbath.
One suitor stood out from the rest: Colin Callender, the British-born producer who’d just left HBO after 21 years to start his own production company. As the president of HBO films, Callender had overseen the production of John Adams, a miniseries based on David McCullough’s biography. Mantel loved the seriousness of the project—the fact that it starred Paul Giamatti, not Tom Cruise—and that it made colonial life look as cold and austere as history tells us it was. Callender, she trusted, wouldn’t make the Tudors, in her word, too “cute.”
While devouring Wolf Hall, Callender recognized something novel, but also enticingly familiar, about Cromwell. As he’d seen firsthand at HBO, The Sopranos had irrevocably darkened the public’s taste and tolerance of its television protagonists, opening the doors for the likes of House of Cards’ Frank Underwood, Ray Donovan and, Callender imagined, the centuries-despised Thomas Cromwell. “Audiences are increasingly interested in characters who live on both sides of the moral equation,” Callender says. “I thought, here was the way to reinvigorate the television historical drama for the post–Sopranos, Breaking Bad world.” The rights to Mantel’s book became the first acquisition at Callender’s Playground Entertainment. Now he just needed actors with the gifts to sell Mantel’s portrayal of the insatiable Henry and his deft consigliere, Cromwell.
THERE ARE MANY who swear that Mark Rylance, the man Callender tapped to play Cromwell, is the greatest actor alive, that seeing him embody the small-time drug dealer Johnny “Rooster” Byron in Jerusalem is as close to a religious experience as the theater can offer. At lunch on a Pasadena, California, hotel patio, Rylance blushes, looking at his feet while Damian Lewis, who plays Wolf Hall’s Henry VIII, testifies to his brilliance. “I don’t know who the greatest actor is—it’s kind of a ridiculous notion—but if you haven’t seen Mark onstage, I’m here to tell you he’s extraordinary,” Lewis says. “He’s kind of cornered the market in redefining characters that we think we know.”
As they are both actors who spent their early professional years performing the Bard at the Royal Shakespeare Company, it might be tempting for American audiences to toss Rylance and Lewis into the same classically trained British actor bin. But just eyeballing them sitting next to each other suggests that their social circles rarely intersect. Rylance, who arrived wearing his trademark fedora, comes across as a theater bohemian, with silver Navajo bracelets on each wrist (he’s actively involved in Survival International, a group committed to protecting tribal people around the world) and a short-sleeved patterned bowling shirt; Lewis, the Eton-educated, St. John’s Wood–reared son of London privilege, is chic in a tailored dark blue shirt, designer jeans and a Rolex, and carries himself with a natural masculine confidence. Given that Rylance has spent his life projecting his voice onstage—he’s won three Tonys and two Oliviers—it’s surprising that he speaks so softly one has to lean in to hear him, even sitting a few feet away. (As a child, Rylance suffered from an intense shyness that kept him from speaking a word until he was 6.)
Through Wolf Hall, Rylance has taken on the job that Mantel began—redefining Cromwell, saving him even, almost 500 years after he was beheaded on trumped-up charges of treason. Rylance, best described as sprightly, might not be the first actor who comes to mind to play Cromwell; in Wolf Hall he’s a physically imposing brute who had likely killed a man or two in close combat during his mysterious younger days and was depicted in the enduring Hans Holbein likeness as a bruiser, fleshy and austere under his black bonnet. “I’m aware I’m not so big as Cromwell is physically, but I can take on psychological weight,” Rylance says. Playing bigger isn’t a problem for an actor of Rylance’s gifts; in fact, just the day before, he’d been sitting with Steven Spielberg, discussing how he will play the titular big friendly giant in The BFG, the director’s upcoming adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book. He’s thought deeply about the mechanics of the Cromwell-Henry relationship and came upon an unexpected insight when he encountered a man who keeps grizzly bears in Montana. “He said to me, the thing with bears is they are incredibly emotional, they’re made of emotions,” Rylance says. “You have to be very clear and very loving towards this bear, which is emotionally like a 15- or 16-year-old autistic child. I compare Damian’s Henry to that.”
DAILY MAIL
By JOANNA CRAWLEY FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 12:03 EST, 4 March 2015 | UPDATED: 16:03 EST, 4 March 2015
He's the creator of the show, so if anyone knows when Downton Abbey will end it's Julian Fellowes.
But the 65-year-old screenwriter has insisted that how and when the period drama will finish isn't ultimately down to him.
Explaining that he doesn't 'own' Downton, Julian has told The New York Times that any decisions regarding the finale of the hit series will be made by the show's owners, NBC Universal.
Amid mounting rumours that the ITV production will end after the sixth series, which will air in the UK later this year, Julian told the newspaper: 'It's not really my decision. I don't own Downton Abbey now.
'NBC Universal [which owns Carnival Films] owns Downton Abbey. So I could walk away. But I wouldn't walk away. It's too much my baby.'
The writer added that he 'can't immediately' say exactly when the show will end, but went on to admit that he wouldn't want to continue the storylines of the Crawley family past World War Two.
'Maybe people would say, "Oh my God, that's baby George, grown up!" But I don't think it would be continuous, with Michelle Dockery with her hair covered with talcum powder.'
Rumours that Downton will come to an end this year first started circulating In January, but ITV were quick to shoot down the reports as 'speculative'.
Julian though is moving to New York to work on a new period drama, meaning the rumours of his British-set period drama's imminent end are looking more and more likely.
The show's star Dame Maggie Smith, who plays Violet Crawley, also appeared to signal the end was nigh as she said she was ready to leave the show last week.
The 80-year-old has since clarified her remarks with a representative telling The Wrap: 'Maggie has always been on the record as saying she'll be with the show for as long as the show runs.'
This comes after Smith, said that she she can't see how programme can continue after the upcoming sixth season.
'They say this is the last one, and I can't see how it could go on,' the legendary actress told the Sunday Times.
Continuing she quipped: 'I mean, I certainly can't keep going. To my knowledge, I must be 110 by now. We're into the late 1920s.'
THE MIRROR
11:45, 5 March 2015 By Rebecca Pocklington
Actor Aidan Turner caused quite a reaction as he appeared on This Morning today - and that was just from host Amanda Holden .
The presenter had to fan herself as she welcomed the actor on to the show , and Twitter fans were just as excited to see the heartthrob, as he discussed his upcoming role in the re-make of Poldark.
Asked what his family thought to his new role, Aidan revealed: "My mum said something like 'don't screw it up'."
As Amanda giggled along with the rest of us, to pretty much everything the actor said, they showed spoilers from the upcoming hit.
The actor will be reunited with former Being Human co-star Russell Tovey later in the show, and he couldn't resist dropping his friend in it.
When asked about any secrets between them, Aidan admitted Russell was great at karaoke - and his speciality was Fast Car.
Could we be treated to a rendition? Or even better, a duet?
BBC1’s new £12million version of Poldark airs this Sunday night.
