Merry monarch

Rufus Sewell found the king, whose father was beheaded, could be sentimental and tough, good and bad and quite moral... when he wasn't being a little naughty with the ladies.

RUFUS Sewell embarked on portraying King Charles II in the lavish new BBC1 series aware that most people know only two things about this particular historical figure - his orange-selling mistress Nell Gwynn and spaniels.

Both put in appearances in the four-hour drama, but the actor says: "We've avoided having spaniels coming out of our ears - there's just the odd one."

He's making a return to BBC Television eight years after his appearance in Cold Comfort Farm. Filming Charles II: The Passion And The Power took him back to Prague, where part of the set was built into the ruins of the 17th century castle of Tocnik.

He was last there filming A Knight's Tale two years ago, which wasn't always a comfortable experience. "I was wearing black metal armour and sitting on a horse in 110 degrees," he says. "At least playing Charles I can take the wig off when it gets too hot. That's what they did in those days and that's why their own hair was cut very short." His close-cropped pate had an even closer shave to portray the monarch on his deathbed.

"He had a stroke and they shaved his head to do a series of grotesque and agonising treatments, so I agreed to have my head shaved completely to play the scene," explains Sewell.

The 36-year-old actor hopes the series shows the man in all his contradictions. Over four hours you have a chance to show a very developed portrait of someone, he says.

"Charles II was many conflicting things. He was a weak man and he was a strong man. He was sentimental and he was tough. He was good and he was bad. He was quite moral and he was a naughty old bugger.

"So it was very complicated in the way that normal human beings are. You get a chance to see of it in this drama, whereas in films often everything is cut down and people tend to be reduced to their simplest elements."

The series features his mistresses, including Nell Gwynn (Emma Pierson), Barbara Villiers (Helen McCrory) and Louise de Keroualle (Melanie Thierry). The cast also includes Diana Rigg as Charles's mother; Rupert Graves as his closest friend and rival, the Duke of Buckingham; and The Office's Tim, Martin Freeman, as politician Lord Shaftesbury.

Writer Adrian Hodges found the story of Charles II "an incredibly colourful, sexy and lively period of history" and that "huge themes of power, compromise, passion and betrayal run strongly through his reign".

The king was often known as The Merry Monarch, but the writer points out he lived through the most appalling experiences while still barely more than a child. "He lost his father to the executioner, he was very nearly captured and killed himself, and he was the victim of vicious political intrigue," says the writer.

"It all went to make him a much more complex and fascinating character than the traditional view of the witty, womanising monarch. He was all those things, but he had a much darker side as well.

"Charles II was an exceptionally clever man, a serious thinker, a devious politician, a considerate husband but also a serial adulterer, a man who was remarkably tolerant of religious differences - it was a frighteningly bigoted age in that respect."

Sewell recounts that in the new era of post-puritan freedom, women made themselves readily available to Charles, who fathered at least 13 illegitimate children. "Well, he was a king," says the actor, who played George Eliot's hero Will Laidslaw in the award-winning BBC adaptation of Middlesmarch.

"Being a king at that time was like being king, prime minister and the most famous film star in the world rolled into one. And if you can't pull with that combination..." he says.

Sewell had little time to step out of character during a schedule that demanded often 12-hour days and six-day weeks for three months. "It's not that you actually become someone else, but you get comfortable in the skin," he says.

"And the feeling of being Charles settled on me after the first couple of weeks and it never really went away, and that's such a luxury. I felt very, very comfortable as Charles and that's a lot to do with how immersed I was in the part."

Although viewers will see the actor fencing away across the screen, he confesses that he can't really fence. His seeming ability is all down to the magic of rehearsal and cameras.

"At drama school I did a little fencing and lots of jobs required it, so I've done bits and bobs before. Basically, you learn whatever is necessary for when the cameras are on. But complete the sequence and if someone were to say, 'all right, carry on', you'd be crap," he says.

As the story of Charles unfolds on TV screens, he'll be filming Tristan And Isolde - first in the west of Ireland and then, ironically, back in Prague.

* Charles II: The Power And The Passion begins on Sunday on BBC1 at 9pm

Published: 13/11/2003