Dont look at him; youll get your head cut off.
The background artists on Karim Ainouzs set comply to orders and stare down at their toes.
Katherine is his sixth and every time she opens her mouth, shes in mortal danger.
(L-R) Eddie Marsan, Alicia Vikander and director Karim AïnouzLarry D. Horricks/Brouhaha Entertainment
How does she survive?
A corpulent person soon appears, bedecked in a bejeweled coat with a fox-head fur wrapped over his shoulders.
It has to be real otherwise it looks like teddy bears, says costume designer Michael OConnor.
Before PETA becomes involved, he quickly adds, Theyre old cut-up fur coats, so theyre sustainable.
The man with the wide girth continues toward the filmmaker and the actress.
Hes having trouble with his legs and the walk is more of a wobble.
Its Jude,Firebrandproducer Gabrielle Tana says matter-of-factly.
Theres Alicia in her civvies.
Theyre all here to rehearse.
Law fills the throne as he sits.
White stockinged legs protrude from ruby-red robes.
They bow, heads down, then dance.
Vikander, who studied ballet when she was younger, moves delicately as Karim and Law look on.
Law shifts his padded frame.
He was up with the larks to be dressed in specially made undergarments of the period.
Such an endeavor signified immense wealth.
You couldnt possibly dress yourself, OConnor scoffs.
Ainouz wanted to work with OConnor because of the costumes he created for Francis LeesAmmonite.
But he wanted to get into what happens behind closed doors.
Its about how to transpose his style onto this subject.
He wanted to coarsen it up a bit, says OConnor, though there is some splendor.
Only thespians portraying powerful sovereigns in a major movie can wallow in such trappings nowadays.
Tana admits that a lot of actors were scared of this Henry VIII.
Hes a murderer, a butcher, she says.
They couldnt get that out of their mind.
Theres something very dark about that period and this Henry.
But Jude relishes this, and he has totally embraced it.
One of Ainouzs edicts is that on the set nobody talks to the actors except him.
So on the set, Jude is Henry, Tana tells us.
Its about protecting those characters.
When theyre on the set thats who they are.
Its his interactions with the actors and those interactions are sacrosanct, Tana says.
Hes the director, hes the auteur.
Theyre discovering their characters as theyre playing them.
She wanted a filmmaker who could look at other peoples stories from the outside.
Tana notes how some British period films fall into the same old tropes.
She says, Karim doesnt countenance tropes, but delights in all the things that are about the period.
In a way, the horrors of it, she says with alarm.
Its not romanticized, its a fascinating portrait of a horrible marriage.
There was no way out of it for her.
And Ainouz has been absorbed with the historical medical details relating to Henrys painful venous leg ulcers.
Its all down to Jude, Shircore says.
He knows what he wants.
He knew he could achieve it.
But Karim has taken an artistic freedom in telling quite an intimate story about a relationship, she notes.
He shows quite a domestic version of what happened at court.
Theres also a coarseness in the court that Ainouz puts on display at Haddon Hall.
Weve really tried to strip down the costumedrama, Vikander says.
Its like when the royal court goes camping for a while.
Vikander studied Parrs own writings to help get a sense of Parrs life.
The question of not having faith almost didnt exist.
Parrs words helped give Vikander a realization.
Not only of Katherine, but of how women at that time lived and how they really came second.
They were such a low-tier citizen.
The stance Parr took often worked in her favor.
The talk then turns to monsters.
The ones who trigger the world now and how they relate to monsters in the past.
Her question is, how would you survive?
How would awomansurvive, she corrects herself.
What would you say and how would you behave?
A look back at Henrys six wives suggests that history doesnt really focus on the survivors.
Theyre only interested in the women if theyre dead.
