Beheading Anne Boleyn was kinder than burning her to death – proving that Henry VIII loved her, claims the actor playing the Tudor king in a revolutionary TV drama.
While there has been much talk over the casting of black actress Jodie Turner-Smith in the title role in Channel 5’s Anne Boleyn, her co-star Mark Stanley reckons this is the show’s real revelation.
He says: “The choice would have been to burn her or behead her, and he chose the more humane choice.
“He brought a particular executioner over from France with a certain blade as he wanted it done cleanly. I think that does show how he felt about her, as weird as that sounds.”
Mark, 33, who played Night’s Watch ranger Grenn in Game of Thrones, says the three-part drama, concluding tonight, is challenging what we know of Anne’s life by telling it more from a female perspective.
He says: “Not to berate anybody else’s work, but I’ve seen versions adhering to preconceived ideas that have been laid before us by historians.
“But I felt like the production was forward thinking.
“They’ve turned it from a Henry/Cromwell piece that we’ve seen before into focusing on what Anne was actually going through.”
Previous Henry VIIIs include Jonathan Rhys Meyers in The Tudors and Damian Lewis in Wolf Hall. But Mark from Otley, West Yorks, is “doing away” with previous portrayals so he can put his own spin on the role.
He is particularly proud that many of the cast, like him, come from working-class backgrounds.
“Twenty years ago you wouldn’t be hearing someone from Yorkshire playing Henry VIII,” he says.
“You wouldn’t get a full working-class cast, like we are, playing royalty. So even that diversity is important.”
Creating heat between Anne and Henry was central to the drama – and thankfully Mark and Jodie had an intimacy coach to guide them.
It also helped that the pair, both married, became good friends.
Mark says: “We had to develop a relationship very quickly. If you’ve got no chemistry, that’s probably going to ruin the entire show. So in that respect we were very lucky.
“It was our first time working with an intimacy coordinator and that can make it much more comfortable because it’s choreographed. We’re both in long-term relationships, so it all becomes very professional.
“You’ve sort of just got to give yourself over to it really. But with Jodie, that wasn’t a difficult task.”
Queen & Slim star Jodie, who is married to US actor Joshua Jackson, previously revealed how she was given special costumes to allow her to easily breastfeed their year-old baby Janie on set. Born in Peterborough, Cambs, but brought up in Maryland, USA, Jodie, 34, also feels empathy for Anne.
Henry was so determined to have a surviving male heir he parted with the Vatican, created the Church of England and divorced first wife Catherine of Aragon, only for Anne to have his second daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth I, before a stillborn son.
Jodie has previously said: “I’ve had experience of miscarriage before so I felt like I could really empathise.”
In recent years historians have re-examined Anne private letters and papers and it is now believed she was not the villainous seducer she is so often made out to be.
Historian and executive producer Dan Jones says: “Anne’s called ‘strong-willed’ and other terms that if you were describing a man, would change to ‘powerful’. Because she’s a woman she’s a ‘quarrelsome little minx!’
“We have to stop ourselves at every turn and say, well, ‘Why is she ‘quarrelsome’’? What is she rallying against?’ And that’s when we start to see it through Anne’s eyes.”
- Anne Boleyn, tonight, 9pm, Channel 5. Full series on Demand 5.
