Summary
- The Winter King is a fresh and brutal adaptation of the King Arthur legend set in the Post-Roman Dark Age of Britain.
- The show combines the high-stakes politics of Game of Thrones with the intimate set pieces of the Arthurian legend.
- Executive producers Julie Gardner and Lachlan MacKinnon discuss the show's authenticity, the portrayal of female characters, and the casting of Stuart Campbell as Derfel.
The legend of King Arthur gets a fresh and brutal new take with The Winter King. Adapted from Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles trilogy of novels, the historical fiction novel acts as a retelling of Arthur's rise to become a king of Britain, setting the story in the Post-Roman Dark Age of the country and finding him trying to work his way back from banishment with the of Merlin, Nimue, Morgan, and Derfel and put a stop to the invading Saxons.
Iain De Caestecker leads the ensemble Winter King cast as Arthur alongside Stuart Campbell, Steven Elder, Valene Kane, Simon Merrells, Ken Nwosu, Olumide Olorunfemi, Billy Postlethwaite, Daniel Ings, Nathaniel Martello-White and Andrew Gower. Blending the high-stakes politics of Game of Thrones with the intimate set pieces the Arthurian legend invites, the show is a gripping and powerful new take on the iconic British hero.
Screen Rant recently spoke exclusively with executive producers Julie Gardner and Lachlan MacKinnon to discuss The Winter King, bringing a fresh new take to the Arthurian legend, their hopes for the longevity of the historical fiction show, and more.
Julie Gardner & Lachlan MacKinnon Talk The Winter King
Screen Rant: The Winter King is really quite the exciting show from the six episodes I've seen so far. Now you both are no strangers to period dramas, to high fantasy, to pretty much every genre corner that this show covers. I'll start with Julie and then Lachlan, what about this material, whether it be the novel or the scripts of the show, really sparked your interest to want to be a part of it?
Julie Gardner: So, I've long wanted to tell the Arthur legend on television. Back 100 years ago, when I was at university, I did an MA in Renaissance studies, which was not very practical for getting a job, but I loved it. So, I read and studied all those early iterations of the story, and then over the years, I have pretty much watched just about every adaptation for screen, and it is a story that I've loved for so many reasons. It has the personal [arc], it has the affairs, the adultery, the sacrifice, the friendships, what is it to be a good man, you know, it has all that intimate, good human stuff. Then, it also has the very big political state stuff of what is it to rule, what does it mean to try and unite a country, and what will I sacrifice for that? Will I take what I want versus acting for the greater good?
I think you put all of that together, which is some soap opera, but some big themes about what it is to be human and the choices we all get to make. It's no surprise to me that the story has endured across generations, so for Bad Wolf, we wanted to tell that story, we knew we'd have incredible locations in Wales and the West Country of England, and we wanted to see what we could do on — you know, we're not in a budget, obviously, of a Game of Thrones or a House of the Dragon, or Lord of the Rings has, what can you do to bring the intimacy of that story together with some of the more epic kind of set pieces. It was a challenge, but one that we were very, very excited to grapple with, because we loved Bernard's novels, and you should pick up on this Lachlan, so we both cover this, but that trilogy of novels is just the North Star for everything that we want to try to achieve.
Lachlan MacKinnon: Yeah, I think before reading Bernard's novels, you're used to the kind of headlines of the King Arthur story. But Bernard just takes it to a whole new different level, it's such a refreshing read, and I think what's so unique about the novels, in a way, is the fact that you're told Arthur's story through the different points of view. Obviously, part of it's Arthur, but it's principally through Derfel, and it's just a different way into seeing this figure of the legends, and also through Nimue as well. So, I think that was what felt particularly fresh to me. But, it was also beyond that, just the fact that in all the previous iterations of the Arthurian legends I'd seen, whether it's on the screen or on the page, this felt it was doing something really interesting with the female characters, because it's always felt a bit male-gazey in previous versions, and I think with Bernard, what he's done, in a really fresh way, is to give the female characters agency in his stories, his interpretation of it, whether that be Morgan or Nimue, as we've been talking about.
But, more importantly is Guinevere, Guinevere has always come across as this kind of femme fatale character, and I think that it does her such a disservice, and it's something that Kate and Ed, our screenwriters, really leaned into, just so that we make sure that Guinevere has that agency, and also, she's like Arthur's consult. She's shoulder to shoulder with him when it comes to making those big decisions of state, so it felt just really fresh. And, also with Arthur, I think there's nothing more contemporary than the bigger questions of how to unite, whether it's countries or [people], so if you think about it, Arthur was the one that wants to try and find the third way in politics. He's the one who was trying to unite the warring tribes of England, because he was aware that the bigger risk was the threat from the Saxons, but the other guys couldn't quite see past this, so he was the one that had to try and unite it. But the story is so complex, because you've got the politician Arthur, but then it dips into the personal, and that's when Guinevere arrives, and of course, things get quite complicated, so yeah, it just felt so fresh to me.
I do love the politics aspect of this story, like you say, it feels like such a refreshing approach to the Arthurian legend. But that being said, you can't have Arthurian legend without having some, as Julia mentioned earlier, big set pieces, and even though you felt like you were on a shorter budget than these other genre competitions, I didn't feel that at all, it felt very grand and epic, especially the fight sequences. I'm surprised at how brutal the latter are, what was that was like for both of you working with the showrunners to really balance some of the brutality of those sequences without feeling like they were too exploitative or too over the top?
Lachlan MacKinnon: I think it goes back to the genesis of the project, really, because I think when we were speaking with Otto Bathurst, who you probably know from setting up Peaky Blinders, he was our lead director and EP. It was really leaning into the world of authenticity, you want to lean into space where you feel those characters actually exist, and it was such a brutal time, as we discovered when speaking to a historian, Ronald Hutton, he really advised us in a lot of the aspects of the show. Because if you're making a medieval show, it's very easy to go to the National Portrait Gallery, look at the old masters and get a real snapshot of what life was like in those days. But it was as brutal as if you wanted a man's land, you just killed him, it was straightforward, and that's just the rules of that world. So, in order to make the show feel different, and stand out from some of the slightly more silicon/satiny shows that have come before, it felt important to really embrace what that space was like, but not to say that there wouldn't be moments of beauty, and romance, and all that you'd expect in a series of this type. So, I guess that was part of the big reason for us in approaching it in that way.
Julie Gardner: Thank you for telling me that you think the production values and the budget works, because we really, really worked hard in our prep to identify where we would spend the money and why. Without going into a spoiler, you've obviously seen it, but the fight in episode 5, the climax of that episode, I love how we realized that, because it's where everything comes together where you've got the swords, you've got the battle, but you've got the intimacy of two characters and the dynamic between them as you know what is happening here, it's where everything in my mind comes so perfectly together. It's like a big thing across any adaptation of books that you love, what do you realize in the adaptation, and what don't you, and where do you place the creative vision, and where do you place the budget? You can't always get it right, but what we tried to do is create an authentic world that makes sense for us, and also with an idea that we're building in success across multiple seasons.
Episode 1 deviates quite significantly from the novels, because the two major things we did was we wanted to introduce Arthur early, and so we needed to create a backstory early in episode 1 that isn't in the novels, but where we created that backstory, it came from a line in Bernard's novels, which was something like, "High kings fear their bastard sons, but love their bastard daughter." So, with that one line, you're like, "Oh, let's formulate this backstory for Arthur, so we introduce him earlier." Then, in the novels, we all love Derfel as the voiceover, you know, old Derfel looking back at his life, and I love the poetry of that in the novels, I'm very drawn to it. But when you think about a new audience coming to the television adaptation, that hasn't experienced the novels, you don't want them to think Derfel's going into a fight that he's obviously going to win. When you're telling a story of an ordinary man going on this journey, where he's killing for the first time, where he's becoming a warrior, you want there to be real risk to that. So, along the way, every decision you make, whether it's creative, or financial, or production, is about trying to hold to what's the essence of what we're doing with Bernard's novels.
Well, I love that you did take that deviation for Derfel, in particular, because I in doing my research for the show, I saw he was the narrator off in the future, and I was like, "Huh, they didn't do that for the show," but I'm glad because that made me more invested in his story.
Julie Gardner: It's a difficult choice, though, because again, I love it in the novels, because the tone is amazing, it's elegiac, he's got lots of moments where he's like, "Little did we know that we'd sown the seeds of our destruction," and you get a tingle up your spine reading it. So, it's a loss, but I know it's the right decision to pull the drama into the present day of the story.
Well, it was a great decision. Before I let you both go, since Derfel is so important to the story, very much the heart of it outside of Arthur, what was the casting process like looking for him? Because I can only imagine how many people you had to have seen to really find someone that can really embody that character perfectly.
Lachlan MacKinnon: It was so simple, because we'd been working with our amazing casting director Andy Pryor, and literally the minute we saw Stuart's — that kind of slight post COVID world, we were working from self tapes, and Stewart's audition just came in, and it was so different from everyone else that we'd seen. It was one of the easiest pieces of casting ever, because he was just so unique, and he just completely embodied the role. Then he came in, and we met with him and talked with him, it was brilliant.
Julie Gardner: I think he has real soul to him, and, again, spoiler alert, if you've read the novels, the trilogy goes under the umbrella, The Warlord Chronicles, and in the development of the piece, you start to go, "Well, who is the real warlord here?" You'd assume it's Arthur, but really, it's Derfel, because of that journey from seemingly ordinary man to warrior to the reveal of his extraordinary backstory, that his morality, his eventual marriage, the way he lives his life, what he stands for, his moral com, makes him the ultimate warlord. For Derfel, the casting of Stuart, he starts very soulful, slightly delicate, but he's gonna go on this extraordinary journey to manhood and warrior status, and ultimately warlord status.
Lachlan MacKinnon: That's a good point, because I think what's quite interesting, when you're thinking about a series, you want to make sure that you know within season 1, there's a satisfying ending, too, and you see a very clear character arc for someone like Derfel. But at the same time, you're thinking about your bigger goal, which is we want to give five seasons, and you want to make sure that every season beyond season 1 will have suitably satisfying stories for the audience who are watching it, and see that character grow. Also, I guess Derfel's one of the youngest characters in the piece, because he was the kid that Arthur saved from the death pit, so you don't want to rush that story, and I think it's the easy thing to do to turn him into a hero too soon, but you really want to make sure that you take them on that journey across season one.
About The Winter King
The Winter King is an MGM+ original series and a bold and revisionist take on well-loved Arthurian legends, based on Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles series. Produced by Sony Pictures Television-owned Bad Wolf, filming took place in Wales and the West Country. Otto Bathurst (Peaky Blinders, His Dark Materials) serves as lead director and executive producer, alongside Toby Leslie.
The Winter King is set in the fifth century, long before Britain was united, in a brutal land of warring factions and tribes, where lives were often fleeting. The series follows Arthur Pendragon as he evolves from outcast to legendary warrior and leader.
The series stars Iain De Caestecker (The Control Room, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) as Arthur Pendragon, alongside Eddie Marsan (The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, Deceit) as High King Uther, Ellie James (Giri/Haji, I May Destroy You) as Nimue, Nathaniel Martello-White (Small Axe, I Hate Suzie) as Merlin, Stuart Campbell (Rogue Heroes, Clique) as Derfel, Daniel Ings (I Hate Suzie, The Crown) as Owain, Valene Kane (The Fall, Gangs of London) as Morgan, Jordan Alexandra (Mammals) as Guinevere, and Simon Merrells (Good Omens, Knightfall) as Gundleus.
New episodes of The Winter King air Sundays on MGM+.
Source: Screen Rant Plus
