The Big Picture
Jude Law and Alicia Vikander share insight on tackling historical roles in Firebrand.
Firebrand approaches King Henry VIII’s final years and it’s based on historical fiction.
Law reflects on Henry VIII’s murderous reign as a product of his upbringing in a chilling interview.
Firebrand is unlike many period dramas fans have come to expect, though it may appear to be with its stars, Academy Award-nominee Jude Law (Peter Pan & Wendy) and Alicia Vikander (The Green Knight), in Tudor garb, playing the roles of King Henry VIII and the wife who survived, Katherine Parr. The way it was approached by filmmaker Karim Aïnouz (Mariner of the Mountains) is as a heart-pounding thriller that trims down the pageantry to a boiling look at the final four years of this untold relationship. In this interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Law and Vikander share their insight and preparation for bringing these two historical lives to screen.
Alicia Vikander is Katherine Parr, the volatile King Henry’s sixth and final wife. The Queen became known as a gentle spirit who tended to the King’s failing health, as well as nurturing his children, but how she survived her dangerous husband is often overlooked. Based on the scripts of Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth (Killing Eve), inspired by Elizabeth Fremantle’s novel Queen’s Gambit, Aïnouz opts to tell this harrowing narrative as a suspenseful, dark fairy tale that leans heavily into historical fiction in favor of psychological horror.
As for the King, Jude Law is nearly unrecognizable as the paranoid, violent Henry VIII, and discusses how he and Vikander “both did a lot of reading, a lot of prep, [and] talking to historians” to give life to what we now only know as history on pages. He also shares his views on Henry VIII, attributing the King’s murderous reign as a product of his upbringing. “This sense of answering only to God, that your will is the way of God, is insane,” Law muses, “And he used it brutally.”
You can watch the full interview in the video above or read the transcript below.
Firebrand
Katherine Parr, the sixth wife of King Henry VIII, is named regent while the tyrant battles abroad. When the king returns, increasingly ill and paranoid, Katherine finds herself fighting for her own survival.
Release Date June 21, 2024
Director Karim Ainouz
Runtime 120 minutes
Writers Henrietta Ashworth , Jessica Ashworth , Rosanne Flynn , Elizabeth Fremantle
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COLLIDER: I’m a fan of both of your works, but there are gonna be people out there that have never seen anything you’ve done before for those people. What’s the first thing you’d like them to watch and why from your resume?
ALICIA VIKANDER: I think maybe I would choose my first-ever film, my Swedish film, Till det som är Vackert, or Pure in English, because it’s where it all began, and I guess it’s a film that I don’t think a lot of people maybe have seen, and I’m very proud of it.
JUDE LAW: If I could insist on a double bill because I’d love them to see Firebrand, which is obviously why we’re here, and I think Alicia’s answer is brilliant because to watch her first film and then watch her in this, it gives you that sense, also, of the journey of an actor, how far you come and how different you can be from the roles you’re given when you’re younger. I would probably choose The Talented Mr. Ripley because I was 20-something and young and bright-eyed.
Image via Miramax
VIKANDER: You were so good in that. I just watched it. I even texted you because I watched it on Netflix just a few weeks ago. I was like, “Fuck, you’re so good in it!” [Laughs]
LAW: Thank you. Anthony Minghella is a brilliant filmmaker. To go from that and then look at Firebrand, that’s the wonderful thing, I think, about our work is that the older, you’re playing characters who are matching your age, and so you get to go a little deeper, maybe, into someone who’s lived a little more and experiencing a little more.
100%. Completely.
Was Henry VIII a Serial Killer With a God Complex?
Image via Magnolia Mae Films
Do you think Henry VIII was a serial killer or just an asshole?
LAW: Both. I mean, he wasn’t just responsible for the deaths of two of his wives, but you could probably add 30-odd thousand people to that, given the number of people that were executed under his reign. The asshole aspect is probably because of the way he was brought up and the power that was put upon him from a young boy. This sense of answering only to God, that your will is the way of God, is insane, and he used it brutally and treated people appallingly because of it.
I’m fascinated by how actors get ready for a role and to deliver performances. For both of you, for Firebrand, when you know you’re getting ready to film on a Monday in five weeks, how are you actually getting ready for those the month leading up to production?
VIKANDER: At the start, it’s a job that you do yourself. It’s a lot of hours that you spend at home with the script, with your lines. Obviously for this film, we had a lot of history books that we could get inspiration from and references. We shared whatever we had between us. Then we started rehearsals a few weeks before we started to film.
LAW: It’s like you’re moving in slowly from the outskirts of other people’s ideas or thoughts and history and details, accuracies of the period that your characters are set in, or the story is set in. Slowly, you end up just being two or three people in a room saying, “How are we gonna do this?” You want to know as much as you can. We both did a lot of reading, a lot of prep, talking to historians, talking to people who could tell us how to wear the clothes or how they would have eaten and where they would have sat in rooms because there wasn’t much furniture, but in the end, one of my fondest memories are just the two of us with Karim, our director, just looking at a scene, going, “Okay, what do we wanna do? How do we do this?” Then it becomes almost like playing, and it’s, “Well, you could start there,” or, “I’ll be here, and let’s try that,” and, “That doesn’t work. Let’s try this.” You’re looking for truth.
VIKANDER: Exactly. I think the work that you do before, like you said, that’s just something that you gather, and the more time you have or the more time you spend digging into that, it just naturally finds its place somewhere within your body. But then, you are gonna try and find a real human being inside of these imagined characters. When we get to the point, which you mentioned, that’s when I feel like it actually starts to happen. I also have a thing of, like, I have all these ideas and thoughts of what I wanna do, but then everything kind of goes out the door because I just don’t know what’s gonna happen as soon as we try it out. [Laughs]
Jude Law and Alicia Vikander Find the Be-Headspace for Tricky Scenes
You see the shooting schedule. Was there a day you had circled in terms of, “I cannot wait to film this,” or, “How the F are we gonna film this?”
VIKANDER: I do that. Do you know that? Sometimes I put three stars on scenes.
LAW: Like a good day?
VIKANDER: No, like scenes that I’m nervous for.
LAW: That makes sense.
VIKANDER: [Laughs] I have, like, the three-star, the two-star because, also, you’re going into a very intense shoot, and you never have enough time, you feel like. So, I do it sometimes to know, “Is this a week when I’m going to have three three-stars?” So, of course, there are scenes that you know will have, or should have, a certain kind of emotional impact in the film, or a pivotal plot change, you know? So, without wanting to think too much ahead of it, I can’t help but prep myself for those days.
LAW: And prep is the word. You definitely know what’s coming up — you have to — and gear yourself up for it. If it’s a day when it’s hugely emotional, that starts the minute you wake up. Maybe it even starts the night before because you’re thinking about, “Okay, I’ve got to get into this headspace and potentially stay in it emotionally for the duration of the day.” So you sort of plan everything from what you eat or what you listen to or what you watch, or how you talk to people, or avoid everyone, because you’re thinking, “I’ve got to stay in this zone.”
VIKANDER: And then I always want to just fall asleep.
LAW: When it’s done.
VIKANDER: When you feel like, “Oh, okay, I think we’ve got the scene.” I just want to go and rest.
LAW: It’s so true. There’s a sort of euphoric sense of achievement and release, and then absolute exhaustion. [Laughs]
Firebrand is in theaters now. Check the link below for showtimes.
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