Michael Pickard (Drama Quarterly) talked to Executive Producers Julie Gardner and Lachlan MacKinnon, who are behind Andrew Gower‘s upcoming series The Winter King.
As epic Arthurian drama The Winter King nears completion, executive producers Julie Gardner and Lachlan MacKinnon tell DQ about adapting Bernard Cornwell‘s Warlord Chronicles for television, playing with magic and being inspired by The West Wing.
Source: Drama Quarterly
Commissioned by ITVX in the UK and MGM+ in the US, 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 Saxons arrive on our shores and they’re the true enemy of the kingdom, so [Arthur] was trying to find a new way to rule and to unite the various tribes together to stand up against them. But, of course, it’s never that simple, and love and Guinevere get in the way. There are so many different layers to it.”
Source: Drama Quarterly
With Australian streamer Stan announcing that the series will launch down under on August 21, the same day as it arrives in the US, work is rapidly progressing to deliver the finishing touches to the show, which is distributed internationally by Sony Pictures Television.
Filming took place last summer in places such as St Audries Bay in Somerset, Rhossili Bay on the Gower Peninsula, Cheddar Gorge and Morlais Quarry, while Caer Cadarn was a set build near Cribbs Causeway. Avalon, Merlin and Nimue’s home, takes its exterior from Blaise Castle, while its interior was constructed at a studio in Bristol.
“When you’re doing deep period, it’s like doing an alien planet on Doctor Who. You’ve got to build the rules and the logic,” [Julie Gardner] says. “We felt a lot of deep period could either be muddy, brown, dark and rainy, and a tough visual viewing experience, or incredibly beautiful, where you’ve got gorgeous people in chiffon and furs. What we’ve tried to do in this piece is bring the two together and give it real beauty, but also make it quite grounded so there are real emotions and real issues playing through the piece.”
Source: Drama Quarterly
[…] it’s a very grim world to live in. Avalon is full of colour and beauty. But Otto [Bathurst, lead director] wants this to be the definitive version of Arthurian legend and to really get under the skin of the real Arthur. It’s not the slightly colourful Arthur who’s very pumped up with shiny armour. He’s very much a man of his time and of his people as well. It’s a different side from the Arthur we’ve seen before.”
Source: Drama Quarterly
With Merlin among the roster of characters, The Winter King features magical elements.
“Every time there’s been a moment involving magic, we’ve always made sure it was grounded within the narrative and not making it feel like something that takes away from the power of Merlin, for example,” MacKinnon notes. “If it’s a vision or something that Merlin’s having, it will be within the narrative. It won’t be some sort of deus ex machina moment that takes away from the audience’s enjoyment of it.”
Source: Drama Quarterly
The series stars Iain De Caestecker as Arthur Pendragon, alongside Eddie Marsan as High King Uther, Ellie James as Nimue, Nathaniel Martello-White as Merlin, Stuart Campbell as Derfel, Daniel Ings as Owain, Valene Kane as Morgan, Jordan Alexandra as Guinevere and Simon Merrells as Gundleus.
The ensemble cast also features Steven Elder as Bishop Bedwin, Andrew Gower as Sansum, Aneirin Hughes as Gorfydd, Emily John as Ceinwyn, Tatjana Nardone as Ladwyss, Ken Nwosu as Sagramor, and Billy Postlethwaite as Cadwys.
Diversity in front and behind the camera was carefully considered too. “We’re not making, in 2023, the white King Arthur story,” Gardner says. “It’s key to us that we cast diversity in the main roles, and we had a script-editing team who really dug deep into the research of the period. This was quite a diverse moment for England at the time, so we’ve really embraced that.”
Source: Drama Quarterly
Executive Producer Lachlan MacKinnon originally thought the series could be drawn out across three seasons – one per book – as was the approach when adapting Philip Pullman’s novel trilogy His Dark Materials.
But once writers Kate Brooke (A Discovery Of Witches, Medici) and Ed Whitmore (Manhunt) began working, “we started to realise there’s way more than three seasons here,” MacKinnon says. “The books are just so rich in character and story, and also in a political context. […] We wanted it to feel much more like a political show, and [The West Wing] led a lot on our thinking of the tone.”
The Winter King includes material from only two-thirds of the first book in The Warlord Chronicles but has made two key changes to the source material. The first is introducing an origin story for Arthur himself, who doesn’t appear until later in the novel of the same name. The second is structural: Cornwell’s novels have Derfel retelling the story as an old man, but that device has been removed for the screen.
The series, however, adopts the multi-character perspectives used in Cornwell’s novels, following Derfel, who as a child is saved by Arthur from a death pit, and Merlin’s apprentice Nimue, alongside Arthur.
“They’re much younger characters, so we see the whole world through their eyes,” MacKinnon says. “And of course, we still have the familiar characters like Merlin and Guinevere. But what Bernard [Cornwell]did so well in the novels is give the female characters agency, so Guinevere is Arthur’s consigliere, so she’s always part of his political thinking and planning.”
Source: Drama Quarterly
Early development is now starting on a potential second season, with filming likely to start this summer if it is greenlit or risk waiting another year. But should the show run to only its initial 10 episodes, despite the huge amount of Cornwell’s material left on the table, the producers are confident they have created wholly satisfactory story arcs for the main characters.
(Photo credit: ITVX)
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