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Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light: Who is in the cast of season 2?

Harry November 9, 2024

It’s been ten years since Wolf Hall aired on BBC 2 and brought the late Dame. Hilary Manteldreams of his life and times Thomas Cromwell onto our screens.

Season 1 covered the first two books Mantel’s doorstop trilogy will feature Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, and season 2 will be based on the series’ final book, The Mirror and the Light.

Many famous faces will return to play characters everyone knows from Tudors classes at school. However, over the past decade, some episodes have been rearranged to fit the players’ schedules, and some new characters will join the fight.

In keeping with popular period dramas like Netflix’s smash hit Bridgerton and Hulu’s cult favorite The Great, the BBC has decided to move with the times and adopt colorblind casting for the second season. “There are a lot of roles played by people of color, and that’s not something we did in the first series. “I’m very happy we were able to achieve this,” said Wolf Hall director Peter Kosminsky. But most of the main cast still seems to be played by white actors

Mantel approved the decision, saying “we need to embrace new thinking.” Unfortunately, the Booker Prize-winning author, who died in 2022, will not be here to see the final act of his beloved Cromwell’s life, which became prime time television.

Mark Rylance is Thomas Cromwell

BBC/Playground Fun/Nick Briggs

Oscar winner Mark Rylance Coming from humble beginnings, VIII. He returns as Thomas Cromwell, the lawyer who became Henry’s right-hand man. Rylance said of his character in a BBC interview: “I was fascinated by the fact that Cromwell was a runaway at 14 and was someone who had learned to survive on the streets.” Mantel was also influenced by Cromwell. “I didn’t want to rehabilitate him. “I do not run an Order clinic for the dead,” he wrote in his 2012 memoirs. “On the contrary, I was driven by a strong curiosity. If he’s a villain, he’s an interesting villain, right?”

Cromwell definitely became one of the villains when he picked up the plot of The Mirror and the Light in 1536, following the execution of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn (portrayed by Claire Foy). He has reached the peak of his power and wealth, but his relationship with the sea killer ruler is strained. Spoiler alert: It won’t end well for the King’s chief secretary. Cromwell was the architect of England’s break with the Roman Church 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 was heading for his own execution on Tower Hill.

Rylance won a Bafta for Wolf Hall, will the sequel add to the collection of awards his television has stashed away?

Damien Lewis is Henry VIII

BBC/Playground Fun/Nick Briggs

Damian Lewis also King Henry VIII, perhaps best known for his divorce, beheading, and tormenting his six wives. He will return as Henry. But the first season’s handsome, charismatic young King is gone, replaced by a gouty, hotheaded tyrant.

“I have changed greatly in the past ten years,” says Lewis’s Henry VIII in the trailer for The Mirror and the Light. Fortunately, Lewis didn’t have to undergo a radical physical transformation to reprise the role. Instead, the show’s clients dressed him in “a gorgeous foam suit, which was actually a blessing because it was pretty cold this time,” Lewis told Hello! magazine.

Actor, King Henry VIII. He said he found playing a villainous character like Henry quite liberating. “There’s a freedom, there’s something therapeutic about being able to behave the way you want,” he told Radio Times. With his second wife dying on his orders, Henry VIII went on to marry Jane Seymour the same year. After her death in 1537, he remarried Anne of Cleves three years later at Cromwell’s suggestion. Dissatisfied with the match, the 49-year-old king annulled his marriage and set his sights on 17-year-old Catherine Howard. She married Cromwell the same day he had her executed.

Kate Phillips is Jane Seymour

BBC/Playground Fun/Nick Briggs

Kate Phillips reprises her breakout role as Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third queen. She was Boleyn’s lady-in-waiting, but now that her boss is dead, there are few obstacles to her blossoming relationship with the king.

In Mantel’s fiction, he implies that Cromwell himself fell for Seymour’s innocent charm. Still, it facilitates their marriage, which will feature in Mirror and Light. A tragic end awaits Seymour; She dies two weeks after the birth of Henry VIII’s first (legitimate) son.

Timothy Spall, Duke of Norfolk

BBC/Playground Fun/Nick Briggs

The Duke of Norfolk is back again, but this time he looks a little different. Bernard Hill played Anne Boleyn’s uncle and Cardinal Wolsey’s enemy in Wolf Hall. Now Timothy Spall He was chosen for this role, and it is unlikely that the Duke would have been thrilled by the part he played in the death of Cromwell’s favorite nephew.

Harriet Walter is Lady Margaret Pole

BBC/Playground Fun/Nick Briggs

Harriet Walter joins the cast as Lady Margaret Pole, one of the last surviving Plantagenets and a peer in her own right. He was one of the nobles who opposed the king’s attempts to divorce Catherine of Aragon and is also on the list of Cromwell’s enemies.

One of the most important events discussed in Mirror and Light is the reign of Henry VIII due to his break with the Catholic Church. The Exeter Conspiracy was aimed at overthrowing Henry VIII. Poles are at the center of the alleged conspiracy, and Cromwell has Lady Pole’s son Geoffrey arrested and interrogated in the Tower of London. Her confession led to Lady Pole being imprisoned and eventually executed.

Harry Melling is Thomas Wriothesley

BBC/Playground Fun/Nick Briggs

Recast for the role of Thomas Wriothesley, previously played by Joel MacCormack. Wriothesley has a major role in Cromwell’s downfall.

Although he had spent years in his service, it was the ambitious Wriothesley who betrayed Cromwell by spying on the king. He told Henry VIII that Cromwell had been indiscreet and suggested that the annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves was due to his failure to perform on the wedding night. This is a very sneaky move, but one that allows Wriothesley to gain favor with the monarch.

Lydia Leonard Lady Jane Rochford

BBC/Playground Fun/Nick Briggs

Lady Jane Rochford was also redesigned for the second season. Jessica Raine, who plays Boleyn’s sister-in-law, is currently starring opposite Peter Capaldi in The Devil’s Hour on Prime, so she may not be available. But Lydia Leonard, who plays Boleyn in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s stage adaptation of Bringing Up the Bodies, is more than familiar with the source material.

Lady Rochford still has a large role in the action depicted in The Mirror and the Light. Boleyn, who testified that her husband, George Boleyn, had slept with his own sister, the queen, remains a big name in the king’s court and is a member of King Henry VIII. She serves as mistress of the bedchamber to Henry’s next three queens. He may have had Cromwell to thank for writing to him after his damnation.

Amir El-Masry as Thomas Wyatt

Amir El-Masry will take on the role of Cromwell’s patron poet Thomas Wyatt, previously played by Jack Lowden. The casting of an Egyptian-British actor in the role of a famous poet was one of the moves that angered some misguided columnists.

At the beginning 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 with Ann Boleyn and her friends, and he probably wrote amorous poems about her. The two remain close, and Wyatt participates in Cromwell’s eventual execution.

Lilit is Lady Mary the Lesser

BBC/Playground Fun/Nick Briggs

Lady Mary, Henry VIII’s daughter from his first marriage, is another actress in The Looking Glass and the Light. Lilit Lesser was chosen for this role; fun fact, his father Anton Lesser played Thomas More in Wolf Hall.

Cromwell must ensure that Lady Mary takes the Oath of Supremacy, rejecting the legitimacy of her parents’ union and blaming the Pope. This is something that will be difficult since she is her mother’s daughter and a devout Catholic. However, Cromwell’s ability to get him to sign the oath gives him more credibility in the eyes of his lord Henry VIII.

Maisie Richardson-Sellers is Lady Bess Oughtred

BBC/Playground Fun/Nick Briggs

Lady Bess Oughtred, Jane Seymour’s sister, is played by Maisie Richardson-Sellers. Born Elizabeth Seymour, she married at the age of 13 and became a widow in 1534. Cromwell favors her as a potential spouse for his own son Gregory, but according to Mantel’s account, an embarrassing mix-up occurs when Bess assumes Cromwell wants to marry her.

Jonathan Pryce is Cardinal Wolsey

Jonathan Pryce returns to his role as Cromwell’s former mentor, Cardinal Wolsey. Wolsey had been dead six years when The Mirror and the Light began. Cardinal, King Henry VIII. Because she failed to annul Henry’s first marriage, she fell into disgrace and was stripped of her office and palace. Pryce’s recast suggests there will be more flashbacks, and it actually appears within seconds in the trailer.

Although he was a huge fan of the first season, Pryce admitted that even he was surprised by the positive reception Wolf Hall received. “I thought it would be well received, but the level of 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 10 November 2024.

Semainede4jours

Semainede4jours

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light: Who is in the cast of season 2?

Harry

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Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light: Who is in the cast of season 2?

Harry

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