Thomas Cromwell
Season 1
short | 03:00 | CC
Learn more about the enigmatic Thomas Cromwell, real-life adviser to King Henry VIII and protagonist of Hilary Mantel's novel Wolf Hall.
(choral music) - [Wolsey] Where are you from?
- [Cromwell] Putney.
Let when I was a boy.
- [Wolsey] Your father?
- Blacksmith.
- Ah, at last a man born in a more lowly state than myself.
(laughs) I might find a use for you.
- Thomas Cromwell is a complex character.
One of the real challenges in adapting Wolf Hall, is that it's written very much as an interior monologue.
You have to find an actor who can convey, sometimes non-verbally, a great deal of what is conveyed on the page in a novel.
- [Cromwell] Why did you send for me?
- I'm told that Wolsey kept you because you always knew the London gossip.
If you find out who's responsible for this, I want you to tell me.
- You can just look at Mark Rylance's face as Thomas Cromwell.
He's an actor who can convey any number of emotions, thoughts, plans, memories without saying a word.
He doesn't have to say much, you just watch his face.
- I feel like it was a real, hardcore masterclass in film acting.
To have the opportunity to work for 17 weeks, every day for long hours in different scenes, and in complicated scenes.
- Who says I shouldn't employ the son of an honest blacksmith?
- Cromwell, the wonderfully complex character that straddles the moral line between trying to do the right thing, and trying to survive.
- I knew there was something about you that I didn't like.
But I couldn't put my finger on it.
Don't take us for fools.
You're nobody.
- At a time when the court was filled with nobles, people with titles, this was a guy who grew up scrapping on the streets of Putney.
- Who knows what he is?
He comes from nothing.
- He'd served as a mercenary in the French army in Europe.
He'd served in banks in Antwerp.
He came back to England with a worldliness that the dukes, the nobles could only dream of.
And they looked down on him, and said who's this arriviste upstart, and why on earth is the king giving him so much time?
- You are not a gentleman born.
You should not meddle in affairs of those set above you.
- There can't be a character who has had more of their thoughts written down than Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall.
Do you remember how you used to compare the King to a tamed lion?
You can pet him, you can pull at his ears if you wish, but all the time you're thinking to yourself, "Those claws, look at those claws."
(dramatic music)
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