The Madness of Sir George
Season 5
short | 02:55 | CC
Jack Farthing and more discuss what it was like filming George's emotional descent into madness.
(unsettling ambiance) (whooshing) (distant woman giggling) - He's trying to close down his emotions about Elizabeth, he's gonna leave Trenwith, he's gonna leave it behind, but he can't.
- Valentine then, finds an old, little cameo.
Take it away!
Totally takes him by surprise, and he starts to bring her back.
- [Elizabeth] Will you not say goodnight to your son?
- Then he starts to see Elizabeth in the maid, so he talks to the maid if she's Elizabeth.
Would you favor us with your opinion?
- We're just about to do one of the best scenes, where I'm sort of pretending that everything's all right with George, even though we've got company, and they can see that he's clearly distracted, to say the very least.
I never knew a man to be so absorbed in business matters.
- He's an MP, he's a land owner, he's a mine owner, he's a hugely wealthy and influential person in the area.
His career would be ruined if he was found to be sort of being treated for lunacy.
Are you quite sane, uncle?
Elizabeth is here.
And then, he brings Elizabeth back entirely, and she's in the room with him.
She's a comforting presence, she helps him do things, she supports him, she becomes a kind of moral compass for him.
- [Elizabeth] Can he be trusted?
- And they are barbaric methods by today's standards, but at the time, were perfectly commonplace, punitive measures to try and bring them back to themselves, which obviously don't work.
- [Cary] This is inhuman.
- [Doctor] As is the patient.
- [Jack] He's tied up in leather restraints on the bed.
- One of the few times that as an audience, I think we can really feel for that character.
- [Karen] Running around the Tremwith grounds, almost like a ghost himself.
- The most surprising, unexpected type of behavior, and so vulnerable, and he's rescued by Dwight.
- These methods will induce madness, not cure it.
In the later books, Winston Graham has Dwight treating King George's madness.
So a way of bridging that gap with Debbie was to have his major case study, George Warleggan.
There is no fault in any of this.
- And basically ends up making him confront the memory of what he's lost and what happened, rather than avoid it.
I felt the life go out of her.
And through that, he gradually comes back to himself.
He can manage it, he can control it, it doesn't overtake him.
- I knew as soon as I read it, I thought wow, if there's anyone that can do it, it's Jack.
- He's phenomenally well-researched.
He knows exactly where he is at every point.
Where did you get that?
- I spoke to four psychiatrists, two of which specialize in what's called post-bereavement hallucinations, traumatic grief.
In everything really, what I'm trying to do is find real things to hang on to, so that this fiction that we've created feels authentic, and real, and genuine, and respectful and powerful.
Why did you do that?
(shaky breathing) - I thought you were about to fall.
(sorrowful string music)
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