– Special Feature –
by Staff | PBS Masterpiece | April 29, 2025
Mark Rylance’s riveting, quiet, and intense portrayal of Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light marks the culmination of a decade-long journey. In this exclusive interview, Rylance reflects on revisiting Cromwell and the emotional evolution of the character. Rylance also delves into Cromwell’s hyper-vigilance and vulnerabilities, and the realities of his being torn between reforming the world and surviving it. [Note: This interview contains spoilers related to Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light Episode 6.]
MASTERPIECE:
Ten years have passed between your portrayals of Thomas Cromwell. Did the passage of time lead you to bring anything different to him?
Mark Rylance:
You can’t help but reveal yourself when you do anything artistic, particularly acting. And so, the events of the years since we made the first series and this new one have had profound effects. I’ve also done a lot more film work in those years than I had done in the years previous to it. So, I suppose my craft is developed. But you’re talking really about the soul of artists and that keeps changing all the time.
MASTERPIECE:
What was it like for you to have such an intensity for Cromwell, to have this near constant hyper-vigilance and hyper-awareness not knowing if he was like the hunted or the hunter during the run of this?
Mark Rylance:
Cromwell carries a bit of rue and rosemary in his hands that he crunches to smell. And he says it helps his memory, but the only thing he doesn’t remember is what he doesn’t know. No one believes this little affectation. His mind is intensely busy, hence the size of the novel, 900 plus pages of his thoughts and his observations.
Hilary [Mantel] writes that he thinks about other people, and he thinks about things that they say. Sometimes four or five pages will go by before he answers yes, no, or maybe, something quite short. But in that time, he will have thought all these wonderful different thoughts about things. He was very, very, very busy and capable and saw things through, and knew the income and the names and the history of all the powerful people in England. And then of course behind that, there’s feelings and other things going on that are uplifting and undermining.
MASTERPIECE:
What has it been like for you to leave Cromwell behind after this long journey with him?
Mark Rylance:
It’s funny when you play certain parts, and you find something that you wish you had. [In this case] there are a lot of things I’m very glad I don’t have. But I wish I had his sense of self-worth and sense of authority. Though, as all the viewers will have seen, that in itself gets transformed towards the end of his life, I suppose. Obviously, it’s in me and I was able to find it and play it in a way that when I look at the TV series, I don’t recognize myself. Really, have I got that strength or that weight, gravity or authority, a different sound to my voice even? I admire that guy [laughs]. I’m thinking, who is that guy? I’d like to meet him. I’d like to have lunch with him. Maybe I could employ him.
MASTERPIECE:
Did you have a favorite scene with Damian Lewis, and would you share it?
Mark Rylance:
Yes, the last scene when we talk about [having gone] to Kent and Cromwell knows he never went to Kent. I love the space he takes before and the care with which he contradicts the King’s reality. There’s almost an acceptance that he’s done with me, so I might as well be honest. But it’s so beautiful. As all the scenes with Damian, he was just so fascinating, exquisite, and completely unpredictable, but someone that Cromwell loved, as indeed I loved Damian, he is a wonderful man. And so, it was always a joy to come to our scenes.
MASTERPIECE:
I wanted to think of Cromwell’s motives as pure, but of course, he’s just a human being. In Cromwell there is his ambition and there’s some authenticity to his beliefs. Can you speak a little bit about those parts of him?
Mark Rylance:
Yes, what an opportunity. That’s a great thing to remind me of; this is a story of a common man. But unlike all of us, he really does get an opportunity to change the world, and the opportunity matches the skills that he has. So that’s a remarkable thing to happen in a life, isn’t it?
There’s a hardening of Cromwell. I only ever had a lot of responsibility when I ran Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre for ten years. I tapped into that, I suppose, playing Cromwell because you get tired. Initially you suffer a lot of fools because you don’t know who’s who, and you inherit a situation. … People come to know you more and they know your weaknesses and your strengths, and you know your weaknesses and strengths. And some of the mistakes you make are not easy to wash off your conscience. This was a tiny, tiny taste of what someone like Cromwell faced, I would imagine.
There’s a cruelty to him. I was shocked by the scene when the common people have risen up in ignorance; they’re being misled. But his response is military. His response is to bluff them until it’s winter, and then the winter will kill them, they’ll starve, they’ll go back home, and then we will go in and kill the leaders. He prefers mercy to execution, and he prefers peace to war. But by this point, you see he’s starting to have had enough. His teeth show at different points in this last episode.
MASTERPIECE:
If you could ask Cromwell one question what would it be?
Mark Rylance:
Why did you not remarry? I was reading some old notes of mine, and Hilary writes, sometimes he thinks he would like to marry again as it is seven years since he lost Elizabeth and his daughters, but no woman would tolerate this kind of life.
His soul, his consciousness, was created by Hilary Mantel, [and] I came to feel after a month of filming that I was playing a woman within a man. So, when he says things like, no woman would tolerate this kind of life, there’s a thoughtfulness about women. When she’s writing his thoughts, I feel she’s really channeling something from him, but something from her as well. I can’t imagine that this enormous amount of work she put into this was just to do with history. There was something that he unlocked in her as an artist and a writer.
MASTERPIECE:
I feel like Cardinal Wolsey is at the center of this and that the love Cromwell has for Wolsey is why he collapses after seeing Dorothea. Then, in that final scene, I feel like we’re given some comfort—as if we’re being shown Cromwell is forgiven. Do you feel like the Cardinal forgave him?
Mark Rylance:
The Cardinal is the one who dubs him a butcher’s dog. And if you have a dog as I do, I based a certain part of [Cromwell] on my dog. … The loyalty to a master who treats you well never goes away. And that’s the animal basic element of this character I play, Cromwell towards Wolsey and then towards the King, too. … There’s an enormous amount of loyalty and connection [and] Wolsey is definitely the very heart of it. Damian was saying [it’s true for] the King as well, both of them very tied up in loyalty to Wolsey and regret about what happened to Wolsey in their different ways. Perhaps that’s partly why the King is unable to forgive Cromwell, because he’s unable to forgive himself.
Yes, I do believe Wolsey forgave him. I do believe that he knelt down. I certainly [found] it incredibly hard to act that [final] scene. I don’t know how people did that. … Certainly, I feared when I walked onto the platform and saw [the executioner] drunk and then a crowd of people who despise you and are spitting at you and hurling insults. I mean, for Cromwell [he’s] going to be defiant. [He’s] not going to give you what you want, which is tears and cowardice.
I suspect [Cromwell] was made of harder stuff. But what’s another beautiful thing I was seeing today that Hilary wrote very early on in the book. [Cromwell’s] father was a blacksmith. He has affinity with iron, steel, with everything that is mined from the earth or forged, everything that is made molten or wrought or given a cutting edge. … He has an affinity with the edge of that ax. He knows where that ax was made. He knows how it’s made. He knows what blacksmithery is. He has a good ability to distract himself, doesn’t he, with thoughts?
MASTERPIECE:
Do you have anything that you might want to share with audiences whose hearts are utterly broken because of Cromwell’s end?
Mark Rylance:
I don’t know. What could I say? We all have to deal with difficult bosses, don’t we, at all levels? Maybe your brother or your sister is your boss, or your husband or wife. … Or you’re dealing with prime ministers and presidents and state. … Who are you going to serve? As Bob Dylan sang, we all have got to serve somebody. So, it’s relevant to that. I mean, if you can decipher and imagine what [he] might have done differently, that would’ve meant that he didn’t get his head cut off, well then, you’re onto a good path and good luck.
Yeah, there’s not much to cheer you up, but … a good thing I think would well cheer his spirit up, wherever he is, is how well his sons did, and went on.
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