Capturing the cunning of Tudor women in Wolf Hall

The Mirror and the Light opens with a tale of two queens. We return to the Tower of London, where the first season of the BBC’s dazzling Hilary Mantel adaptation concluded almost a decade ago. Anne Boleyn, played by Claire Foy, is about to be executed, ostensibly for treason and adultery. Then, we cut to the palace, where a radiant but timid Jane Seymour, played by Kate Phillips, vows to marry a king who has just condemned his ex-wife to death. It is not the most auspicious start for a union. “Once you set a precedent for cutting off your wife’s head, I don’t think it makes for a very comfortable life for the wife that comes next,” Phillips says. Understatement of the (16th) century.

These juxtaposed scenes form a stark reminder for viewers that in the world of Wolf Hall: women (especially ones that catch the king’s eye) are often expendable. Fall out of favour — or fail to give birth to a son — and their lives are at risk; there are younger, more fertile and docile replacements, manoeuvred by grasping male relatives, who are ready to take their position. In The Mirror and the Light, which is based on the final instalment of Mantel’s virtuosic trilogy charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, played by Mark Rylance, that sense of peril only becomes more distinct, for Henry’s wives, daughters and the women who surround them.

Henry, played by Damien Lewis, is older, more desperate for an heir than ever, and high on a sense of his own supremacy after breaking with the Catholic church (to get himself out of his first unsuccessful marriage, to Catherine of Aragon). “While I think Jane knew that she was a very different person to Anne, I don’t think that she went into that marriage with a sense of safety,” says Phillips, who also played Seymour in the original 2015 series, when she was “very green” and fresh out of drama school, her nerves echoing Jane’s. “I think she probably went into that marriage thinking, ‘Oh my fucking god, how am I gonna get through this?”

But that’s not to say that Mantel rendered these Tudor women as feeble pawns — she was far too deft and subtle a chronicler of power relations to fall into that trap. Just as she probed beyond the accepted version of history in her portrayal of Cromwell (a man who’d been seen as the “big bad” of Henry’s reign), she wrought layered portraits of female figures, too.

Jane has often been characterised by historians as demure, even slightly dull, but Mantel’s book — and screenwriter Peter Straughan’s script — makes us question whether that was a clever performance, designed to secure a spot in Henry’s good graces as a kind of anti-Anne. “Coming back to the scripts and the book, and trying to get myself into (Jane’s) mindset, I was reminded of what an enigma she is,” Phillips says. “She’s written through Cromwell’s eyes, certainly, as someone that does have agency, does have spark, does have an inner power. And yet loads of other people are referring to her as meek and mild and plain. But then she managed to get herself into a position where she is liked by the king, which I think is a very canny thing to do.”

Henry’s court was all for the survival of the fittest, and the women of Wolf Hall must become savvy operators themselves, constantly reacting to shifting allegiances and the king’s fluctuating favours. Whispers and rumours could be co-opted as their political tools, used to make and break reputations. “For the women, gossip is a currency,” says Lydia Leonard, who takes on the role of Jane Rochford, wife of George Boleyn, and who was instrumental in the bloody downfall of her husband and her sister-in-law. “Cromwell has such a close, interesting relationship with all the women of the court and recognises that power. And it was gossip that brought down Anne Boleyn.” Leonard has taken over the role from Jessica Raine, who played Rochford in the TV show’s first season, but she is not new to Mantel’s Tudor milieu — far from it. She starred as Anne Boleyn in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s productions of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, eventually earning a Tony nomination when the shows moved across the Atlantic to Broadway.

“Wolf Hall and Hilary specifically have been a really large part of my life,” she says. Mantel was heavily involved in the process of bringing the books to the stage — just as she was with the initial TV production of Wolf Hall, before her death in 2022 at the age of 70 — and so Leonard had the chance to learn about her characters first hand, through “lengthy conversations” with the author. “I felt like I already knew Jane Rochford when I got this part because of having spent so much time in (Mantel’s) company already,” she says. Her questions to Mantel would be met with “not an err, not a pause... You received this wonderful, long, specific, enriched answer. It was really special”.

Rochford has been vilified by history thanks to her role in Anne’s demise.