Wolf Hall: Watch Damian Lewis play a sinister Henry VIII in new BBC trailer
The Homeland actor stars alongside Mark Rylance's Thomas Cromwell
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Your support makes all the difference.A new trailer for the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall has been released, showing Damian Lewis as a sinister Henry VIII.
The Homeland actor stars alongside Mark Rylance’s Thomas Cromwell in the upcoming six-part series, based on the Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name and sequel Bring Up The Bodies.
Directed by Peter Kosminsky with a screenplay by Peter Straughan, the story follows Cromwell’s rise from humble blacksmith’s son to the Tudor monarch’s closest advisor.
“Now is the time for you to become the king you should be,” Cromwell tells Henry in one scene.
“I keep you because you’re a serpent,” is his ominous reply. “Everything that you are, everything that you have, will come from me.”
Claire Foy plays the king’s doomed wife, Anne Boleyn, with footage of her beheading hinted at in the latest teaser.
Henry VIII’s first wife Catherine of Aragon will be played by Joanne Whalley, while Jonathan Pryce stars as Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.
Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss appears as Secretary Stephen Gardiner, Game of Thrones actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster plays Cromwell’s ward Rafe Sadler and Anton Lesser, Mathieu Amalric, Charity Wakefield, Jessica Raine, Bernard Hill, Richard Dillane, Natasha Little and Saskia Reeves complete the cast in more minor roles.
“I love it when an author, such as Hilary Mantel, does her research and discovers an original understanding of a very familiar piece of history,” Rylance said earlier this year.
“Even during our rehearsals her detailed imagination of the world of Thomas Cromwell is alive in Straughan’s ingenious and faithful adaptation.”
Wolf Hall stars on BBC Two on Wednesday 21 January at 9pm.
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