The Tudors News Site

Hollywood heartthrob Jonathan Rhys Meyers is set to get a royal welcome from Trinity College students in coming weeks.

The Philosophical Society is to award its Honorary Patronage to the Cork-born star of The Tudors at a special ceremony.

Previous personalities who have been given this honour include US presidential candidate Senator John McCain who came to Trinity in 2006 to answer questions from students.

Producers with the Showtime original series “The Tudors” say they will not accurately portray the hefty weight of Britain’s King Henry VIII.

“Tudors” Executive Producer Morgan O’Sullivan, whose series also airs on BBC2, said the decision not to have actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers wear a fat suit in his ongoing portrayal of the notoriously overweight 16th-century ruler was to maintain the star’s appeal, The Times of London reported Saturday.

“We still want him to be appealing,” O’Sullivan said of his series’ star.

“We don’t want to destroy his good looks. An exact portrayal of Henry is not a factor that we think is important.”

The Times said Henry VIII once reached a 54-inch waistline and at one point needed to be helped onto his horse with a hoisting device prior to his death in 1547.

While “Tudors” officials are clearly not intending on plumping up the 31-year-old actor for their historical series, they did tell the Times that Rhys Meyers has been aged for the ongoing second season of the series.

IT would have been the ideal role for Marlon Brando at the end of his career. Instead, the final days of the rotund Henry VIII are to be depicted in a fourth series of The Tudors by the svelte Jonathan Rhys Meyers — without the aid of a fat suit.

In his last years, the English monarch is thought to have swollen to well over 20 stone, with a waist measurement of 54in, and required a crane to hoist him on to his horse.

However, the makers of The Tudors, which has already been accused of taking too much artistic licence, want the Irish actor to keep his “matinée idol looks” right to the end of the saga.

“We still want him to be appealing,” said Morgan O’Sullivan, an executive producer. “We don’t want to destroy his good looks. An exact portrayal of Henry is not a factor that we think is important.

“We are not in the business of making Jonny look like Henry VIII. We have accepted that from day one. We have been criticised for not casting someone with red hair. But you either cast him exactly like Henry VIII or you choose to deal with it differently. We chose from the start to have him looking fit. So there will never be a fat suit. That would be unreal.”

Producers say they have aged Rhys Meyers, 31, “quite a bit” in the third series, but the Dublin-born actor  has made it clear himself he doesn’t intend to pig out to get into character. He has argued that actors “are not famous because they’re pug ugly”, and that there was no point in selling a historical drama “to a country like America” featuring “a big fat 250lb red-haired guy with a beard”.

The third series of The Tudors is currently shooting at Ardmore studios in Co Wicklow, and a fourth series is almost certain to be shot there next year. “We’d be fairly confident that it will be made,” said O’Sullivan. “We have to air season three before the next one is committed, but it has gained tremendous popularity globally. We are in over 70 territories and now have journalists visiting us here from all over the world, including Brazil and Colombia.”

Roy Bodner, a spokesman for Peace Arch Entertainment, the Canadian co-producers, said a commitment to a fourth series is expected from Showtime, the American cable channel, “at some point in the near future”.

The third series, which will wrap at Ardmore next month, will take the saga of Henry VIII up to his divorce from fourth wife Anne of Cleves, played by the singer Joss Stone. It will be broadcast next year.

The fourth series, which will be the last, features the monarch’s final two wives.

“We have started writing scripts for the next series anyway,” O’Sullivan said. “But there will be no more than four, because we are out of story value then.”

O’Sullivan and Michael Hirst, the writer, have had a number of offers to make other drama series after The Tudors ends. “This has been so successful globally that we will do others,” O’Sullivan said. “It has opened myriad doors. We have had approaches from loads of people to do other series, but I’ve no idea what we’ll choose.

“When we started this show, my ambition was for Michael Hirst to be the only writer, and for it to be of feature-film quality, to turn it into event television. I used to work with Mary Tyler Moore, and you had 10 writers on a series like this, but we have one. It is one person’s vision, and that’s easier.”

Apart from obesity, Henry VIII is thought to have suffered a variety of other ailments in the last years of his life, including boils, gout, an ulcerated leg and even a sexually transmitted disease. Given that Hirst has said The Tudors is just 85% accurate, some of these gory details may be avoided.

The idea of beefing up to get into character was made famous by Robert De Niro, who put on 60lb to play boxer Jake La Motta as a bloated loser in the latter half of Raging Bull. Subsequent examples included Charlize Theron who gained 30lb to play murderer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, and George Clooney who put on 35lb for Syriana.

Stars who faked the fat

Julia Roberts put on a fat suit in order to appear about 14st when she played Catherine Zeta Jones’ younger sister in America’s Sweethearts.

Eddie Murphy got into a giant latex suit to play Sherman Klump in The Nutty Professor.

Gwyneth Paltrow donned a 300lb fat suit to star in Shallow Hal.

Ray Winstone wore a fat suit to play Henry VIII in the 2003 TV mini-series.

Henry VII, England’s most famously fat monarch, is to be slimmed down so that he retains his sex appeal for a television audience.

The makers of The Tudors, being shown on BBC2, have said Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays Henry in the costume drama, will not be required to put on a fat suit to reflect the aged king’s swollen girth. Henry, who died in 1547, is thought to have grown to more than 20st, with a waist of 54in; at the end of his life he needed a hoist to lift him onto his horse.

The makers of the saga have already been accused of taking too much licence with history. Now they have decided that, in the planned fourth series, Henry will remain svelte in his old age.

“We still want him to be appealing,” said Morgan O’Sullivan, an executive producer.

“We don’t want to destroy his good looks. An exact portrayal of Henry is not a factor that we think is important.

“We are not in the business of making Johnny look like Henry VIII. We have accepted that from day one. We have been criticised for not casting someone with red hair. But you either cast him exactly like Henry VIII, or you choose to deal with it differently.

“We chose from the start to have him looking fit. So there will never be a fat suit. That would be unreal.”

Producers say they have aged Rhys Meyers, 31, “quite a bit” in the series, but he has made it clear that, as well as shunning the fat suit, he will not be stuffing himself with food to bulk up. Rhys Meyers has argued that actors “are not famous because they’re plug-ugly”.

The second series of The Tudors, now halfway through, is attracting about 2m viewers a week. The third is being filmed at Ardmore Studios, in Co Wicklow, Ireland. It takes the saga up to Henry’s divorce from Anne of Cleves, his fourth wife, played by Joss Stone, the singer.

Critics have noted that the makers of the series, which include Working Title, have been happy to distort history for dramatic effect.

Thomas Wolsey, Henry’s lord chancellor and the Archbishop of York, committed suicide in the series. In fact, he fell ill and died in Leicester in 1530 on his way to London to face treason charges. Henry VIII’s sister is called Princess Margaret in the series, but her character is based on the king’s other sister, Mary. This was done so viewers would not confuse her with Henry’s daughter Mary.