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interview | DAVID MORRISSEY<br />
All in the<br />
FAMILY Y<br />
Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson star as two sisters who share King Henry VIII’s bed in<br />
The Other Boleyn Girl. But it’s British actor David Morrissey, as the girls’ scheming uncle, who<br />
plays matchmaker I BY JIM SLOTEK<br />
T<br />
he Other Boleyn Girl is more than the tale of Henry<br />
VIII’s doomed wife Anne with an extra Boleyn, her<br />
sister Mary, thrown in. It’s got adultery, incest, samesex<br />
affairs and impotence that decides the fate of nations.<br />
“It’s the political story we all know and love with a lot of<br />
sex in it, brilliantly told,” says David Morrissey, who plays the<br />
Duke of Norfolk, the Tudor court powerbroker he describes<br />
as Henry’s Dick Cheney.<br />
None of the sex involves Norfolk though, “which really pissed<br />
me off,” Liverpool native Morrissey quips in a recent L.A.<br />
interview. “And y’know what? Eric Bana [who plays King Henry]<br />
famous 36 | february 2008<br />
had a codpiece that was much bigger than mine. You could<br />
hang your coat off it!”<br />
Scripted by Peter Morgan (The Queen, The Last King of Scotland)<br />
and based on the best-selling book of the same name by<br />
Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl stars Natalie Portman<br />
as Henry VIII’s second wife Anne — the one for whom he<br />
started his own church — and Scarlett Johansson as Mary, the<br />
“forgotten” sister who was the mistress of two monarchs (Henry<br />
and the King of France).<br />
Awash in soap opera, Gregory’s book — complete with a<br />
chapter of academic sources — has dismayed historians even as<br />
PHOTO BY MARIO MARIO ANZUONI/CORBIS<br />
it has sold a million-plus copies. It is what Stephen Colbert<br />
would call a work of “truthiness” with its gossipy treatment of<br />
real figures. (Did Henry VIII sire a male heir by his wife’s sister?<br />
Was one of his children a product of incest?) At the very least,<br />
it is movie-worthy intrigue of the sort that the claustrophobic<br />
court of the Tudors would have produced.<br />
“Henry had his affair with Anne’s sister — who was married<br />
— before Anne was even on the scene, and there was a rumour<br />
she bore him a son,” Morrissey says. “And, of course, Henry<br />
was married [at the time] to Catherine of Aragon and was<br />
part of the Catholic Church. Then all of a sudden he meets<br />
Anne Boleyn, he starts thinking with his d--k and the rules are<br />
out the window.”<br />
In the movie, Anne is a schemer who uses the occasion of<br />
her sister’s pregnancy to make her own move on the monarch.<br />
Norfolk is in a position to see it all happen, being related to<br />
seemingly everybody. “The Duke of Norfolk was Anne Boleyn<br />
and Mary Boleyn’s uncle. He was also Catherine Howard’s<br />
uncle and she lost her head as well,” Morrissey says, adding with<br />
a chuckle, “He gave great Christmas presents, but you know<br />
what? There was a downside.”<br />
Morrissey sees his character as an operator, describing him as<br />
the power behind the throne. “Sort of Henry VIII’s Cheney in<br />
the way everyone went to him to get to the King,” he says.<br />
“Anne Boleyn was not only devastatingly attractive, but she<br />
was an operator, a political mind,” Morrissey continues. “She<br />
was a force to be reckoned with as far as Norfolk was concerned,<br />
famous 37 | february 2008<br />
and those politics are kind of what the film is about.<br />
“What she finally realizes is that once she couldn’t give Henry<br />
a male heir, she didn’t have a leg to stand on and suddenly all<br />
her friends start disappearing into the wallpaper…. My<br />
character actually sets her up to be Queen, and once she<br />
becomes Queen she says, ‘I’m sorry, I do this now, not you.’<br />
And when she gets into crisis, I just step back.”<br />
With Morgan’s imprimatur and, as Morrissey puts it, “a great<br />
cast to work with,” The Other Boleyn Girl is a bona fide prestige<br />
picture — which, for the actor, makes quite the contrast from<br />
two years ago. At that time, the film he’d hoped would vault him<br />
into the ranks of Hollywood leading man — Basic Instinct 2<br />
with Sharon Stone — was greeted with a fistful of “Worst”<br />
nominations from the Oscars’ evil twin, the Razzies.<br />
He’s philosophical about that experience.<br />
“You don’t work any less hard [on movies that bomb],” he<br />
says. “Part of being an actor is you stand up there and say, ‘This<br />
is me, what do you think?’ You can’t get too upset when people<br />
say, ‘You know what I think? I think it’s rubbish.’”<br />
Jim Slotek writes about movies for the Toronto Sun.<br />
David Morrissey with<br />
Natalie Portman in<br />
The Other Boleyn Girl<br />
Inset: Sister Act. Portman<br />
and Scarlett Johansson<br />
get close