It’s been ten years since Wolf Hall aired on BBC 2, bringing the late Dame Hilary Mantel's imagining of the life and times of Thomas Cromwell to our screens.
Season 1 covered the first two books in Mantel’s doorstopper trilogy, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, and season 2 will adapt the final book in the series, The Mirror and the Light.
Many famous faces will be returning to play the characters that everyone knows from their school lessons on the Tudors. But some parts have been recast to fit with actors schedules in the intervening decade, while some new characters will be joining the fray.
The BBC has decided to move with the times and adopt colourblind casting for the second season, in keeping with popular period dramas such as Netflix’s smash hit Bridgerton and Hulu cult favourite The Great. “There are a number of parts played by people of colour and this is not something we did in the first series. I’m delighted we’ve been able to do it,” said Wolf Hall director Peter Kosminsky. However, most of the main cast appear to still be played by white actors
Mantel gave the decision her blessing, saying “we have to take on board the new thinking.” Sadly the Booker Prize-winning author who died in 2022, will not be here to see the final act of her beloved Cromwell’s life turned into prime time television.
Mark Rylance is Thomas Cromwell
Oscar-winner Mark Rylance returns as Thomas Cromwell, the lawyer from humble beginnings who rose to be the right hand man of Henry VIII. “I was quite struck by [Cromwell] being a runaway at age 14 and someone who learnt to survive on the street,” Rylance said of his character in a BBC interview. Mantel was fascinated by Cromwell, too. “It wasn’t that I wanted to rehabilitate him. I do not run a Priory clinic for the dead,” she wrote in her 2012 memoir. “Rather, I was driven by powerful curiosity. If a villain, an interesting villain, yes?”
Cromwell has certainly become one of the villains by the time The Mirror and the Light picks up in 1536, after the execution of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn (played by Claire Foy). He has ascended to the height of his power and fortune, but his relationship with the mariticidal monarch is under strain. Spoiler alert – it’s not going to end well for the king’s chief secretary. Cromwell was the architect of England’s break with the Church of Rome to allow Henry to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry Boleyn in the first place. By 1540 his many enemies had finally caught up with him and Rylance’s Cromwell will be heading for his own execution at Tower Hill.
Rylance scored a Bafta with Wolf Hall, will the sequel add to his trophy collection that he keeps above his television set?
Damien Lewis is Henry VIII
Damien Lewis will also be returning as Henry VIII, the King perhaps best known for divorcing, beheading and otherwise tormenting his six wives. But gone is the handsome, charismatic young King of the first season, and in its place the gouty and irritable tyrant he became.
“I am greatly altered these past ten years,” says Lewis’s Henry VIII in the trailer for The Mirror and the Light. Luckily Lewis didn’t have to undergo too radical a physical transformation to reprise the role. Instead, the show’s costumers put him in “a fabulous foam suit, which was actually a blessing because it was quite cold this time,” Lewis told Hello! magazine.
The actor has said he found playing as nasty a character as King Henry VIII rather freeing. “There is a freedom, there is something therapeutic to be able to behave in whatever way you want,” he told the Radio Times. With his second wife dead on his orders, Henry VIII goes on to marry Jane Seymour that same year. After her death in 1537 he remarries three years later to Anne of Cleves – on Cromwell’s suggestion. Unhappy with the match, the 49-year-old king had the marriage annulled and set his sights on the 17-year-old Catherine Howard. He married her the same day that he had Cromwell executed.
Kate Phillips is Jane Seymour
Kate Phillips is reprising her breakout role as Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third queen. She served as Boleyn’s lady-in-waiting, but now her boss is dead there is little standing in the way of her budding relationship with the king.
In Mantel’s fiction, she implies that Cromwell himself has also fallen for Seymour’s innocent charms. Still, he facilitates their marriage, which will feature in The Mirror and the Light. Seymour also has a tragic end in store, dying two weeks after the birth of Henry VIII’s first (legitimate) son.
Timothy Spall is the Duke of Norfolk
The Duke of Norfolk is back again, but he looks a bit different this time. Bernard Hill played Anne Boleyn’s uncle – and Cardinal Wolsey’s enemy – in Wolf Hall. Now Timothy Spall has been cast in the role, and the Duke is unlikely to be thrilled at the role Cromwell played in the death of his favourite niece.
Harriet Walter is Lady Margaret Pole
Harriet Walter is joining the cast as Lady Margaret Pole, one of the last surviving Plantagenets and a peer in her own right. She was one of the nobles who opposed the king’s attempts to divorce Catherine of Aragon, so is on the list of Cromwell’s enemies.
One of the key events covered in The Mirror and the Light is the Exeter Conspiracy, a plot to overthrow Henry VIII for his break with the Catholic Church. The Poles are at the centre of the supposed plot, and Cromwell has Lady Pole’s son, Geoffrey, arrested and interrogated at the Tower of London. His confession led the imprisonment of Lady Pole and her eventual execution.
Harry Melling is Thomas Wriothesley
It’s another recasting for the role of Thomas Wriothesley, previously played by Joel MacCormack. Wriothesley has a big role to play in Cromwell’s downfall.
Despite having spent years in his service, it’s the ambitious Wriothesley who betrays Cromwell by snitching to the king. He told Henry VIII that Cromwell had been indiscrete, suggesting that the annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves was down to his inability to perform on the marriage night. It’s a snakey move, but one that allows Wriothesley to ingratiate himself with the monarch.
Lydia Leonard is Lady Jane Rochford
Lady Jane Rochford has also been recast for the second season. Jessica Raine, who played Boleyn’s sister-in-law, is currently starring in The Devil’s Hour on Prime opposite Peter Capaldi, so may not have been available. Lydia Leonard is more than up to speed with the source material, however, having starred as Boleyn in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s stage adaptation of Bringing Up the Bodies.
Lady Rochford still has a big role to play in the action covered in The Mirror and the Light. Having testified that her husband, George Boleyn, slept with his own sister the queen, she continues to be a big name at the king’s court and serves as lady of the bedchamber to King Henry VIII’s next three queens. She may have had Cromwell to thank, having written to him after her damming testimony.
Amir El-Masry as Thomas Wyatt
Amir El-Masry has been cast as Thomas Wyatt, Cromwell’s poet protégé, formerly played by Jack Lowden. The casting of an Egyptian-British actor in the role of a famous poet has been one of moves that has set some misguided columnists off in a huff.
At the start of Mantel’s novel, Cromwell saves Wyatt’s life by allowing him to testify against his friends. Wyatt was imprisoned in the Tower of London along with Ann Boleyn and her friends, having potentially written some amorous poetry about her. The two remain close, and Wyatt attends Cromwell’s eventual execution.
Lilit Lesser is Lady Mary
Lady Mary, Henry VIII’s daughter from his first marriage, is another player in The Mirror and the Light. Lilit Lesser has been cast in the role – fun fact, her father Anton Lesser played Thomas More in Wolf Hall.
Cromwell has to get Lady Mary to take the Oath of Supremacy, denying the legitimacy of her parents union and denouncing the Pope. It’s something that will prove tricky as she is her mother’s daughter and a devout Catholic. But Cromwell’s securing her signing the oath grants him more favour with his master, Henry VIII.
Maisie Richardson-Sellers is Lady Bess Oughtred
Lady Bess Oughtred, sister to Jane Seymour, is played by Maisie Richardson-Sellers. Born Elizabeth Seymour, she’s married off at just 13 and widowed by 1534. Cromwell favours her as a potential match for his own son, Gregory, but in Mantel’s telling there’s an embarrassing mix-up when Bess assumes that Cromwell intends to marry her himself.
Jonathan Pryce is Cardinal Wolsey
Jonathan Pryce is back as Cardinal Wolsey, Cromwell’s former mentor. By the time The Mirror and the Light picks up, Wolsey is already six years dead. The Cardinal fell from grace for his failure to achieve the annulment of King Henry VIII’s first marriage, and was stripped of his office and palace. Pryce’s recasting suggests there will be more flashbacks – and indeed he gets a split-second appearance in the trailer.
Even though he was a big fan of the first season, Pryce admitted even he was taken aback by the positive reception Wolf Hall got. “I thought it would be well-received, but the level of the response has been a shock to us all,” he told the Liverpool Echo.
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light will premiere on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Sunday, November 10, 2024.
