To get into the mindset of her latest character, Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr, Alicia Vikander would put in her AirPods between takes, alternating between classical music and “a lot” of techno. “It gave me a bit of physical stress,” she recalls. “Something that never stopped, like a heartbeat that always goes a bit too fast.” Jude Law, who plays her on-screen husband, got into character by dousing himself in the scent of blood, faecal matter and sweat. “It was unbearable – like rotten fish,” says Vikander. “It was a very present reminder of what it must have been like to enter the same room as Henry VIII during that time.”
Karim Aïnouz’s handsome, visceral film Firebrand is a distinctly modern take on Tudor history, getting under the skin of what it might have been like to be married to someone who could at any point call for your beheading. For many viewers, it will provide an introduction to the somewhat overlooked historical figure of Parr, the first woman to be published under her own name in England. It also marks a shift in the way Henry VIII has traditionally been portrayed: less of a vigorous womaniser, and more of a domestic abuser prone to petty cruelties and violent mood swings. “If you’re showing an abusive relationship, in which you’re afraid for your life every day, you can’t shy away,” says Vikander. “It was pretty grim. There would have been 300 men in the palace and about 12 women, who were confined to two chambers. Just imagining these women, never being able to go outside – it dawns on you emotionally, what that can be like.”
