English - Writer | September 21, 1952 -
If you're in America or Europe, walk for three blocks, and you'll pass about 14 Vikings. Their reach was immense.
Michael Hirst
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Of course I had written a film about Elizabeth I, and I loved the Tudor period, and I think at the time Working Title and I had debated on whether to do Elizabeth I or Henry VIII. I'd always wanted to do Henry VIII. Like Elizabeth, I'd had this feeling that it had never properly been addressed.
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With 'The Tudors,' I had a huge amount of material, I mean so many books and so much stuff about what they really said. So, in a way it was kind of trying to strip it out and find the stories inside all this material.
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Once I engage in something, I really engage in it, and I love the process of reading and researching because I come from an academic background.
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Nobody knows what really happened in any historical period. There are some periods where we know more than others, though.
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People love cliches. If you can give people cliches, that's very good TV, then.
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I'm very bad at delegating writing responsibilities, because I've never been able to do it; I've never had any help or looked for any help.
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When you're a screenwriter working on a film, you're not really even welcome on set, even if you know... When I wrote 'Elizabeth' and Shekhar Kapur was a friend of mine, but I wasn't really welcome on set, because the director is God and it's a very difficult position for a screenwriter who's put so much passion into that, into the writing.
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When you're making a TV drama, the showrunner is God, and so however onerous and difficult and consuming that responsibility is, you're being treated with respect, so it changes your whole outlook to the production. You're being asked about costumes, set design, music, every aspect of the show.
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It works better if your lead character is complex and interesting and not perfect.
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My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way. Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples' ideas of what character should be.
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I only have one idol: John Lennon.
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