James Norton has revealed he was set on playing William the Conqueror in upcoming Middle Ages drama series “King and Conqueror” but was thwarted by HBO, who had an option on the actor for another series.
Norton, who is also an executive producer on the upcoming BBC/CBS show about the iconic Battle of Hastings, was already starring in Joss Whedon’s HBO sci-fi series “The Nevers” when he began developing “King and Conqueror.” Under the terms of his HBO contract, he was not allowed to appear in another returning series, meaning his only option was to play Anglo-Saxon king Harold, who famously died on the battlefield in 1066 after being shot in the eye with an arrow.
“HBO said very clearly, ‘You can go and shoot “King and Conquer,” especially considering you’re an EP and you’re developing it, but you must die,” Norton revealed during a panel about “King and Conqueror” at U.K. television confab Content London. He explained the concern was that if the medieval show was a hit and returned for a second season, there would be a conflict.
“That’s what often happens with actors’ contracts. You’re allowed to do small, piecemeal, mini-series, limited, but you’re not allowed to commit to anything which has risk of going on. So my arm was forced,” he added.
Norton said his producing partner Kitty Kaletsky, with whom he runs prod-co Rabbit Track Pictures, suggested his desire to play William stemmed from the fact that the Norman-French aristocrat ultimately won the battle. “Which is probably true,” the actor confessed, although he added that “the wily, cerebral nature of that character was attractive to me initially.”
“Game of Thrones” star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau was ultimately cast as William. “King and Conqueror” also stars Clémence Poésy, Eddie Marsan, Juliet Stevenson and Luther Ford.
Having completed filming the series in Iceland earlier this year, Norton said he “can’t imagine it the other way around now.”
“Nikolai is so right for William,” he continued. “I think he would say the same thing. I loved the journey I went on with Harold. And I think he did with William.”
Norton added the shoot had been “dirty, messy – I was covered in mud for six months.”
Kaletsky also addressed why the production team, which included director Baltasar Kormákur (“Everest”), chose to film one of the most renowned moments in British history in Iceland.
“We looked all over, we looked at the U.K., we looked at various other parts of Europe, and in the end, Iceland, where Baltasar is also from, made sense to us because of this incredible scale that it afforded us. It could double for Normandy, for other parts of France, for three different parts of England — which all look really, really distinct — for Norway,” the producer said. “And Baltasar’s vision was both visceral in terms of the way he wanted to shoot it and had real scale. So it was exciting, because it felt it was never going to be a drone-heavy, pure VFX sort of a show. It would have intimacy, but the way that Baltasar was going to shoot those domestic interior scenes was as meaty as the way he wanted to shoot the battle sequences — in your face, frightening, what it really feels like — rather than just 10,000 men from up above.”