'Knightfall' sneak peek: Jim Carter claims 'pope's privilege'

Mandi Bierly

The second episode of History’s new drama Knightfall, airing Wednesday, finds Landry (Tom Cullen) formally stepping into his new role. As you see in our exclusive sneak peek, Pope Boniface VIII (Jim Carter) appoints him Master of the Temple in Paris and reiterates his mission — find the Holy Grail.

This show is, of course, a reunion for Carter and Cullen, who co-starred on Downton Abbey as the stalwart Mr. Carson and Lady Mary’s scorned lover Tony Gillingham, respectively. Cullen always wished they’d had more scenes together. “For the first day of Downton, I remember Jim was serving me some grapes and a haddock, or something like that, and I turned to him and went, ‘Thank you.’ And the historical adviser came over and went, ‘Don’t. Don’t say ‘thank you.’ ‘Oh, OK.’ So then he came over the second time, and I went [nods]. He went, ‘Don’t acknowledge him. Just ignore him; he doesn’t exist.’ My working-class polite manners — every time he came over, it’s like fighting the urge to look at him. So that was the most interaction I had with Jim [onscreen],” Cullen told us earlier this fall. “And I remember the first scene we did [together on Knightfall], I was like, ‘Oh, it’s Mr. Carson with us,’ but he’s such a great actor that within 10 minutes, I just completely forgot.”

As Cullen reported in his recent takeover of our Instagram, the two men did get plenty of quality time together while making Knightfall. “We were shooting this scene about an hour and a half outside of Prague, so we had to travel in every day. Jim would always share a car with me. Every morning I’d play my music until one day Jim asked me to switch it off, describing my taste in music like ‘Three Frenchmen pissing in a bucket.’ I’ve never laughed so hard,” Cullen captioned a photo. “He emailed me last week asking if my taste had improved … it hasn’t.”

Knightfall airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on History.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
‘Knightfall’ star Tom Cullen takes us behind the scenes, into the muck
‘Knightfall’ star Tom Cullen talks chain mail, bloody hotel sheets, and battles that mean something
History’s ‘Knightfall’: How 3 men from ‘Downton Abbey’ are going medieval