Send to KindleBy Abbie Bernstein
Based on Philippa Gregory’s three historical novels THE WHITE QUEEN, THE RED QUEEN and THE KINGMAKER’S DAUGHTER, the BBC/Starz ten-part series chronicles a goodly portion of the War of the Roses, also known as the Cousins’ War. The Plantagenet family ruled England for centuries, but there was a good deal of bloody dispute over whom God had anointed to sit on the English throne.
In 1464, Edward IV (Max Irons) is the King. He unexpectedly falls in love with and marries Elizabeth Woodville (Rebecca Ferguson) who not only on the “wrong” side of the conflict – her family supports Lancaster, while Edward’s followers are with York – but she’s a widow with two sons already and, worse still, the daughter of a man only raised to nobility by marriage. In other words, Elizabeth is seen by Edward’s family as a commoner.
The marriage is a particular affront to Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, played by James Frain. Warwick has fought long and hard to get Edward on the throne, but he’s so vexed by Elizabeth and what he sees as a series of other slights that he eventually works to get Edward dethroned by any means necessary.
Frain is not exactly a stranger to dramas about British royals – the Yorkshire-born performer also played Oliver Cromwell in THE TUDORS. He continues to play the conniving and possibly fratricidal Prince Eric Renard on NBC’s GRIMM, which returns for a third season this fall. Other recent film credits include villains in TRON: LEGACY and THE LONE RANGER.
With THE WHITE QUEEN currently airing in the U.S. on Saturday nights on Starz, Frain recently joined a question and answer session for the series at the Television Critics Association press tour held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. During the panel and at an informal but on-the-record chat afterward, he talked about playing WHITE QUEEN’s Kingmaker and GRIMM’s aspiring king, among other matters.
For starters, does Frain see any similarities between Warwick and Eric, given that both are embroiled in violent family struggles for the crowns in their separate shows?
“Well,” Frain replies, “the similarity is there is such a thing as a political mind, and I’ve played a few characters who have this mentality. What we find kind of disturbing about them is their lack of empathy and concern for others, that life is just a chess game. But the main difference, I think, between the character on GRIMM and the character of Warwick is Warwick, for all of his wealth and all of his influence, is relatively powerless, because he’s not in the center of the family. He’s at the edge of the family. He has influence, he has enormous wealth – greater wealth than the king had at the time – but he’s not in line for the throne. So he has to be operating behind the scenes. The best he can do is marry his daughters into the royal family and he does everything he can to make that happen. In GRIMM, the prince is royal and he’s right at the heart of it. He’s pulling the strings and no one needs to influence him at all. He’s much closer to our idea of someone who wields a monarch’s kind of power.”
“Politically-minded” describes a lot of Frain’s roles. Does he enjoy playing these characters? “Yeah, I do,” Frain acknowledges, “because I’m not that way, but I’m fascinated by them, and our world is made by them. And I think it serves us to be interested in them, because otherwise they sort of run amok. People who want power and seek power will find it and it behooves us to know as much about them as possible, and perhaps balance the personality of the manipulator with people who are canny but idealistic as well.”
There are some real-life near-contemporary political figures that Frain says he’d like to play if someone created a script about them. “I’m really interested in the guys [who were in] the 1945 [U.K.] Labour Government. I’m really interested in that particular moment in history, the guys who set up the National Health Service, those kind of guys. That would be a good story.”
He also wouldn’t mind another crack at Cromwell. “You know, they’re making WOLF HALL [the historical novel by Hilary Mantel]. When WOLF HALL came out, it was like, “Yeah, that’s fantastic.” I sure wish that had been around as research [when THE TUDORS was being made]. Cromwell is such a rich character – would I have another crack at him? Yeah, I’d love another crack at him. You know, an older actor told me when I was first starting, “What’s tough for you guys is, especially coming into the business now, when it comes to Shakespearean roles, it takes two or three times at a role in Shakespeare ‘til you really get it right. And when we were younger, we had that opportunity. You guys, if you’re lucky, you’re going to get one crack at the whip.” I thought that’s a really interesting and perceptive comment, because you can always find more to mine in a character as rich and textured and Cromwell. The character in WOLF HALL felt to me like the guy that I thought I was playing [in THE TUDORS], but it’s more about the context in which the character is perceived. The thing is, it’s like the questions we have about Warwick, you could tell this [THE WHITE QUEEN’s] history from Warwick’s point of view, and the White Queen looks like a very different person.”
Actually, there are a number of versions of the War of the Roses that depict Elizabeth Woodville as utterly evil. However, Frain points out that this is because “Men have written all the history ‘til now, so that’s the way it’s going to go, so that’s why this [THE WHITE QUEEN] is so exciting.”
Why exactly does Frain think Warwick gives up his longtime friendship with Edward and changes allegiance? “Warwick had a very clear plan that he’d made with Edward,” Frain relates. “He switched camps [from Lancaster to York]. He decided that Edward was going to be the king. [Warwick] put all of his considerable wealth and power behind [Edward] and put him on the throne, only to find out that this guy had married someone else in secret, who was from the enemy camp, and had destroyed all of their preexisting treaties. And [Edward] had sort of done this overnight, without consultation. So from my point of view, Edward’s kind of a spoilsport, because he messed up all my plans. We had a deal, and he brought romantic love into the equation and thought that had something to do with politics, which Warwick was appalled by.”
Was Frain happy to get to wield a sword again in THE WHITE QUEEN? “Yeah, that was fun,” he laughs. Especially, he adds, because Cromwell didn’t go in for swordplay. “Cromwell was a pure politician. He did a lot of ordering – he made a lot of death happen, but the Plantagenets [who preceded the Tudors] are the last of the warrior kings. And there was no such thing as ‘England’ at the time. There was no police force, there was no army. There were these little feudal kingdoms, and the king had to sort of manage to bring them together to raise an army, so it’s part of why the Wars of the Roses are they way they are, because of the balance of powers. They were all struggling for power within the same family group, but also, England was being invented. It was still a feudal society.”
Portraying Warwick required learning a new style of swordfighting. “In England,” Frain explains, “you do a lot of sword stuff in drama school, because it’s assumed you’re going to do Shakespeare and you’re going to be on stage and you better know what to do. But I’d never done broadsword fights, so this was original and very, very cool.”
Horse-riding had to be re-evaluated after Frain’s recent experience in the U.S. “I’d just done before this THE LONE RANGER,” he notes, “where we had a month of training in how to ride Western style, and then when I came to WHITE QUEEN, I had to ride English style, which is completely different, and my horse was very confused. He just didn’t know what to be with me at all.”
Ferguson’s performance as Elizabeth impressed Frain greatly. He’s just learned that Ferguson auditioned on videotape – not reading from the script, but simply talking about herself to the producers. “I was there at the read-through. I couldn’t tell she was Swedish. I thought she was fantastic. The whole thing about auditioning on tape – we’re all having to do that much more these days. Really, I think the last ten auditions that I’ve done, six or seven of them have been putting myself on tape. So that means we’ve got to get a camera, someone to operate the camera, someone to read the other role, and it’s just part of the job now. What I found amusing was that they just wanted her to talk about anything. I was like, ‘Well, how the hell do you do that? If you’ve got a script …’ That’s our job. I thought it was ballsy of her to just sort of record herself talking about whatever came to mind,” he laughs.
Written by Abbie Bernstein
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Abbie Bernstein is an entertainment journalist, fiction author and filmmaker.
