The last working day of 2011, and where better to spend it than in a muddy field near Oxted? It’s 8am, bloody freezing, and a cast headed by Tom Hiddleston are recreating the Battle of Agincourt for a new adaptation of Henry V, the last of the Shakespeare history plays adapted for television as part of the BBC’s contribution to the Cultural Olympiad.
Under the watchful eye of director Thea Sharrock, the rival English and French troops are briefed ahead of the biggest action scene of the film.
After a quick turn around the field, Hiddleston attempts to guide his steed into the heart of the battlefield. But horses are, apparently, not stupid. This one refuses the first three times the actor tries to ride into the mayhem. After a half-speed trial run, it’s showtime. Hiddleston and horse charge through the marauding armies, the actor roaring every few strides, striking down attackers on either side, eyes ablaze. The noise, the energy, the fog as human and horse breath engulfs the warriors, and the sense of danger as Hiddleston and horse head straight for us at high speed.
After a morning spent slaying French troops, falling from horses, and sword-fighting, Hiddleston would have every right to a restful lunch hour. Instead, as 100 or more battle weary troops trudge back past the encampment where some are camping - so committed are they to battle re-enactment - to the unit base, Hiddleston agrees to march across the soggy field to where the last remaining shard of sunlight is casting a beautiful light, so that photographer Charlie Gray can get his shot.
Then, instead of returning to his trailer, he joins the Quietus by the battlefield, in full armour, and spends most of an hour talking 19 to the dozen as his lunch gets cold.
"Fantastic, absolutely bloody fantastic," is his assessment of his morning’s work. "There is something about the adrenaline of shooting a battle where everyone’s blood is pumping. In a way there is no acting required. They have been calling me 'crazy eyes', but the intensity needs to be there.
"There were thousands of French troops with fresh legs, a decent breakfast and a decent night’s sleep behind them and meagre hundreds of English fighters who had been marching for three weeks and were dying of dysentery and starvation. Now, I had dysentery once, I got it in India. Firstly the bacteria empty your digestive tracts, then they dissolve it. You have to imagine the English army at this point have maybe a day and a half left in them before they start dying - so the stakes in this battle are so high. Every single soldier had prepared themselves for death, and Henry asked them to - it is in the play.
READ MORE:
http://thequietus.com/articles/09418-henry-v-bbc2-tom-hiddleston
