How “Firebrand” makes Henry VIII's final wife, Catherine Parr, more than the last line of a nursery rhyme

Stars Alicia Vikander and Jude Law tell EW about the movie that leans more into the "domestic drama" than royal history.

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Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived…

If you know nothing else about Henry VIII and his reign, you’re probably familiar with this grim rhyme that neatly sums up the fate of his six wives. But while there have been plenty of films and historical dramas about Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and his tempestuous relationship with Anne Boleyn (ending with her execution), very little has been told about Catherine Parr, Henry’s sixth and final wife.

“The wife that survived is the wife that people know the least about,” reflects Alicia Vikander, who portrays Catherine in Firebrand, a provocative new drama that traces the horrors of Catherine’s experiences during the final years of Henry’s reign.

Once Vikander signed on to the film, directed by Karim Aïnouz, she read everything she could about Catherine, learning that Parr was the first woman to publish an original work under her own name in English (1545's Prayers or Meditations).

The movie, in theaters June 14, showcases Catherine as a devoted religious radical (to her own detriment in a religiously divided nation), an author and intellectual, and a survivor of intense domestic abuse. “I thought about what must have gone into [her efforts] to stay alive during those years,” Vikander tells Entertainment Weekly. “She was one of the few people who probably got to know her husband and the king pretty well.”

As for her husband, Jude Law takes on the role of Henry VIII, portraying the legendary monarch as an aging, mercurial, festering wound of a human being. Law, with his piercing blue eyes and magnetic good looks, might not be the first person one imagines when thinking of an obese, dying king — but that was all part of Aïnouz and Law’s goal to put a different spin on this man so many think they know.

"Most Brits have a sense of him and his legacy,” Law tells EW. “Through the process, I was suddenly able to look at him like a man. What Karim really wanted to bring to this piece was looking at Henry and Catherine as a married couple, albeit slightly dysfunctional, but as a domestic drama almost.”

"The goal,” Law continues, “was not to modernize, but to humanize and take off the mantle of history. To take them out of the spotlight of royalty and look much more at what was going on between them. Obviously, the trappings of royalty and power have an influence on how he behaves, but what I'd never really considered was just how appalling his behavior was, and how terrifying it must have been to be that final wife. I kept wanting to bring it back down to Henry the man and Catherine the woman.”

Vikander shares that goal. “Karim wanted to undress this costume drama in the sense of wanting it to feel authentic and intimate,” she details. For her, that meant finding Catherine’s own sense of vanity and entitlement in her role as queen, right alongside her reputation as a pious, devout woman.

Much of that came from Vikander’s interpretation of Catherine’s own writings. “She’s a good Christian, and she did write these books, but she's also a woman who does care a lot about what she looks like and loves to be queen. I enjoyed seeing a part of her that wasn't as shimmering when I read her own words, which gave me more of a flavor of creating a human being.”

Playing off each other, the two actors dug into the script as if it were a marital drama, something more akin to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? than one of Shakespeare’s history plays. While Law leaned into Henry’s chronic pain and heightened paranoia, Vikander showed up as a sparring partner, which allowed him to indulge Henry’s unpredictability and worst impulses. “We were safe to really push the boundaries,” he reflects. “I wanted to be led more by her because she was the person at the receiving end of the abuse, and she was absolutely fearless and often was the one who was saying, ‘We need to push this further to make it more shocking.’”

That move is part of Vikander’s pursuit of authenticity and the historical realities of what Catherine would have endured.  “It’'s very important when we make these films to honor that these are real lives and people,” she says. “In court, there were like 300 men and about 10 women. That really gives you a sense of entrapment. To know that it was an everyday thing to have people being executed around you and a king who had a temper that could change every second, that's when it gets extremely horrific and terrifying. You can start to imagine what they had to live through on an everyday basis.”

Maybe modern life ain't so bad after all...

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Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.