interview - DAVID MORRISSEY

All in the Family

The Other Boleyn Girl is more than the tale of Henry VIII’s doomed wife Anne with an extra Boleyn, her sister Mary, thrown in. It’s got adultery, incest, same-sex affairs and impotence that decides the fate of nations.

“It’s the political story we all know and love with a lot of sex in it, brilliantly told,” says David Morrissey, who plays the Duke of Norfolk, the Tudor court powerbroker he describes as Henry’s Dick Cheney.

None of the sex involves Norfolk though, “which really pissed me off,” Liverpool native Morrissey quips in a recent L.A. interview. “And y’know what? Eric Bana [who plays King Henry] had a codpiece that was much bigger than mine. You could hang your coat off it!”

Scripted by Peter Morgan (The Queen, The Last King of Scotland) and based on the best-selling book of the same name by Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl stars Natalie Portman as Henry VIII’s second wife Anne — the one for whom he started his own church — and Scarlett Johansson as Mary, the “forgotten” sister who was the mistress of two monarchs (Henry and the King of France).

Awash in soap opera, Gregory’s book — complete with a chapter of academic sources — has dismayed historians even as it has sold a million-plus copies. It is what Stephen Colbert would call a work of “truthiness” with its gossipy treatment of real figures. (Did Henry VIII sire a male heir by his wife’s sister? Was one of his children a product of incest?) At the very least, it is movie-worthy intrigue of the sort that the claustrophobic court of the Tudors would have produced.

“Henry had his affair with Anne’s sister — who was married — before Anne was even on the scene, and there was a rumour she bore him a son,” Morrissey says. “And, of course, Henry was married [at the time] to Catherine of Aragon and was part of the Catholic Church. Then all of a sudden he meets Anne Boleyn, he starts thinking with his d--k and the rules are out the window.”

In the movie, Anne is a schemer who uses the occasion of her sister’s pregnancy to make her own move on the monarch. Norfolk is in a position to see it all happen, being related to seemingly everybody. “The Duke of Norfolk was Anne Boleyn and Mary Boleyn’s uncle. He was also Catherine Howard’s uncle and she lost her head as well,” Morrissey says, adding with a chuckle, “He gave great Christmas presents, but you know what? There was a downside.”

Morrissey sees his character as an operator, describing him as the power behind the throne. “Sort of Henry VIII’s Cheney in the way everyone went to him to get to the King,” he says.

“Anne Boleyn was not only devastatingly attractive, but she was an operator, a political mind,” Morrissey continues. “She was a force to be reckoned with as far as Norfolk was concerned, and those politics are kind of what the film is about.

“What she finally realizes is that once she couldn’t give Henry a male heir, she didn’t have a leg to stand on and suddenly all her friends start disappearing into the wallpaper…. My character actually sets her up to be Queen, and once she becomes Queen she says, ‘I’m sorry, I do this now, not you.’ And when she gets into crisis, I just step back.”

With Morgan’s imprimatur and, as Morrissey puts it, “a great cast to work with,” The Other Boleyn Girl is a bona fide prestige picture — which, for the actor, makes quite the contrast from two years ago. At that time, the film he’d hoped would vault him into the ranks of Hollywood leading man — Basic Instinct 2 with Sharon Stone — was greeted with a fistful of “Worst” nominations from the Oscars’ evil twin, the Razzies.

He’s philosophical about that experience.

“You don’t work any less hard [on movies that bomb],” he says. “Part of being an actor is you stand up there and say, ‘This is me, what do you think?’ You can’t get too upset when people say, ‘You know what I think? I think it’s rubbish.’”

Jim Slotek writes about movies for the Toronto Sun.