Wolf Hall: Damian Lewis, Jonathan Pryce Set to Join Mark Rylance in Second and Final Season, Filming Soon

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, based on the final novel in the late Hilary Mantel’s award-winning trilogy, will begin filming shortly, MASTERPIECE PBS and the BBC announced on Monday morning.

Mark Rylance will reprise his role as Thomas Cromwell, whom he played in Wolf Hall‘s first season nearly nine years ago. Damian Lewis, Jonathan Pryce, Kate Phillips and Lilit Lesser are also confirmed to return, respectively playing King Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s third wife Jane Seymour, and Princess Mary (daughter of Henry and first wife Catherine of Aragon).

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Additional returning and new cast members will be announced at a later date.

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light will be directed by seven-time BAFTA award winner Peter Kosminsky (The Undeclared War, The State), adapted for television by Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy).

Novelist Hilary Mantel had been serving as a consultant on this concluding season at the time of her passing in September 2022.

“We are all determined to complete what we started – and to honour the final novel written by one of the greatest literary figures of our age, Hilary Mantel,” Kosminsky said in a statement.

“The Mirror and the Light picks up exactly where Wolf Hall ended, with the execution of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn,” the director shared. “I’m overjoyed to be able to reunite the extraordinary cast we were lucky enough to assemble for Wolf Hall, led by the brilliant Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis, with the original creative team of Gavin Finney (DOP), Pat Campbell (Designer) and Joanna Eatwell (Costume Designer).”

The Mirror and the Light opens in May 1536, with Anne Boleyn (previously played by Claire Foy) dead. Cromwell in turn “emerges from the bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour,” the synopsis reads.

“Cromwell, a man with only his wits to rely on, has no great family to back him, and no private army. Navigating the moral complexities that accompany the exercise of power in this brutal and bloody time, he is caught between his desire to do what is right and his instinct to survive. But in the wake of
Henry VIII having executed his queen, no one is safe.

“Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future,” the synopsis says. “All of England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and religious reform. But as fortune’s wheel turns, Cromwell’s enemies are gathering in the shadows. The inevitable question remains: how long can anyone survive under Henry’s cruel and capricious gaze?”

Are you looking forward to Wolf Hall resuming, and concluding, its story all these years later?

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