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Thomas Seymour is a charismatic asshole.
As played by Tom Cullen on StarzsBecoming Elizabeth, hes handsome, funny, and oozing sexuality.
Despite his emotionally abusive and manipulative nature, Thomas is this live-wire kind of guy.
With this, because the language is quite dense, I wanted to get it in my body.
My sister, bless her, Zoomed with me for an hour every day for about three weeks.
A lot of discovery of who Thomas was was in that space.
I also had a great relationship with the prop team.
Id be like, This wine here, can I drink it?
This fruit, can I eat it?
Whats in this book?
Can we get something here before we start shooting?
And they would be very responsive.
But it wouldnt be planned.
But I also improvised a lot of it.
In that scene, one of the extras was a guy I went to school with, James.
Is that all right?
That was really fun, to be able to work with him doing that scene.
And I tried to develop a relationship like that with all the people playing servants.
Theres a moment where I chase one of them, and he didnt know that was going to happen.
I think he was running out of actual fear.
But it was fun we were pals.
I wasnt just bullying them!
If you dont, youre a bit of an asshole.
This part of Elizabeths history isnt written about so much because its not the fireworks of her reign.
And Anya Reiss is just extraordinary.
She was like 27 when she was writing this, and her research was just unreal.
In terms of the relationship between Thomas and Elizabeth, that certainly is up for interpretation.
Elizabeth could have lost her life.
But I think Anya wanted to humanize her.
Shes giving us the story of a woman whos had trauma, which had a profound effect on her.
But its her resilience that shaped the person she became.
Thomas Seymour lusted after, groomed, and then raped a 14-year-old.
People were quite rightly appalled and shocked.
And at the age of 14, Elizabeth just wasnt.
She was a child.
And Thomas most certainly wasnt a child.
Hes in his late 30s or early 40s.
Thomas has taken an innocent young childs crush and manipulated it into something a lot darker.
And she just isnt.
So even if she says yes, this is not a consensual relationship.
This is a 14-year-old child and a 40-year-old man.
I hope it might be cathartic for them.
Seeing his head get chopped off was very cathartic.Give the people what they want.
It is a pretty epic death to play.
But you acted it …But when youre in it, you have absolutely no idea.
I mean, I certainly didnt.
I wasin,in,in.
The only way I could play Thomas was to make him the hero of the piece.
I had to Jedi-mind-trick myself to do it.
I have people Im very close to who exist on the bipolar spectrum.
Playing him opened a lot of doors for me.
It wasnt something I told anybody else in the cast I was playing, but I told the directors.
Leading up to him shooting the dog, hes snowballing at that point.
It was challenging and a bit of a blur.
They couldnt get hold of it.
Your head or Thomass prosthetic head?The prosthetic head.
Its quite weird to see your head in a box, you know.
It was raining, and we were running out of time because the weather had delayed a lot.
It was just chaos.
There were a lot of cooks that day.
I hope it looks all right.
They have to go in and chop it twice before it actually works.Theres a great story to that.
Which is actually what happened.
It took two to get it off.
I hadnt had my head chopped off yet, so that was a new one, which was great.
Ive been drilled in the stomach, stabbed in the stomach gosh, I cant remember the rest.
Like I said, give the people what they want.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
