‘The Bastard Executioner’ Postmortem: Director/EP Paris Barclay’s Deep Dive Into Episode 3
Spoiler alert! If you haven’t watched episode 3 of The Bastard Executioner, “Effigy/Delw,” stop reading now. Executive producer Paris Barclay, who directed the hour (as well as last week’s two-part premiere), talks to Yahoo TV about the key scenes, the brewing mysteries, the joys of shooting in Wales, and what’s next.
Related: ‘The Bastard Executioner’ Recap: Winning By a Nose
After the death of Ventris last week, Lady Love (Flora Spencer-Longhurst) really came into her own this episode as a character as she decided the fate of a young rebel girl, Nia (Rebecca Hayes).
She’s so petite, but she’s so shrewd and she’s smart. She’s really quite the equal — and maybe even the better — of Stephen Moyer’s character, Corbett. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. I think of her as a real leader, the kind of leader that I admire, who really lives and breathes the tough decisions and can stand up to the people that would challenge her, but at the same time is not so stupid as to not be able to utilize a person like Corbett to keep her agenda going. You’ll see as time goes on obviously she’s on a collision course. She wants to meet with The Wolf. Who wouldn’t want to see Flora Spencer-Longhurst and Matthew Rhys together? I certainly would. She wants to have a sit down with him and I would wager that she’s going to get it.
Let’s talk about that scene where Lady Love is talking to Nia’s mother, Dafina (Lisa Palfrey) hoping she’ll arrange that meet so she has a reason to spare the girl’s life. What are the challenges of filming by the sea?
That was one of the best days of filming I’ve had in the entire series. Because our crew is so crack, we searched every possible beach where we could have horses and control the landscape. We wanted something that looked unique, maybe with rocks and a massive fishing village we had to create, and we ended up going to Swansea, which is about an hour away from Cardiff, and using this beach in Oxwich. We had exactly eight hours of beach to shoot everything that had to happen in that scene.
So it was choreographed within an inch of its life. There was very little beach when we got there, so we had to face toward the berm and the dirt. As the water receded, we turned around and did all the things on the beach, and then when the water came back up, we came back up the beach and did all the stuff with Mabon and his interrogation with Wilkin. We couldn’t do it in the order of the scenes themselves; we had to choreograph it by the direction, and the sun, and where the water was. Literally, when we arrived there was virtually no beach. Slowly the tides go out, and we just keep marching and shooting and turning around until they come back. Fortunately, Lisa Palfrey, who played Dafina, was so great. She helped Flora really up her game, and the actor who played young Mabon, Jack Quick, was also terrific. It didn’t take a lot of takes to get their performances. They’re so emotionally connected — she was sort of Frances McDormand strength and he was all quivering vulnerability — that it was pretty easy to do.
The hardest part of all was getting the horses to behave. For some reason they don’t always like to do what we want them to do. All the actors actually rode their horses. You see them coming in — Stephen Moyer, Lee Jones, and Sam Spruell, and even Flora riding side-saddle. She’d never ridden before, took lessons, and rode in on the beach like a pro.
I remember during Sons of Anarchy’s least season hearing a story about how you guys were filming the scene when Jax gets that gruesome delivery in the public park, and a lot of fans were hanging around to watch. I assume you don’t have that problem in Wales?
No. We are so in control of this country right now. (Laughs) We’ve made a significant contribution to the Welsh economy, and if we would like to film on a beach they will make it happen for us, and they did. No, there were no issues whatsoever with passers-by. Some people came and stood on the top of the berm and took pictures. We asked them if they would please move for the shot, and you know what they do, unlike people in New York? They immediately move. (Laughs) People in New York say, “What do you mean? I can take a picture anywhere I want. I’m here. Blah, Blah, Blah, this is my city.” But in Wales they immediately get out the shot and we can proceed to film.
I talked with Stephen Moyer last week about how much he loves doing sword fights, and we saw Milus get some action this week when Lady Love’s entourage was attacked by the rebels on the way back from the fishing village. What was that sequence like to film?
The hardest part of all these sword fights — which I think confused some of the people when they saw the pilot — is trying to make them look more realistic than just the sword and sorcery stuff you saw in an Alan Ladd movie or that you might see in another popular drama series. (Laughs) We’re trying to figure out a way to choreograph them so they would be safe and people wouldn’t get hit by aluminum swords — they’re actually using real aluminum swords and they’re heavy — but then they have to kind of mess up in the actual doing of it, so that it feels more real.
Sword fights aren’t perfect. They can’t be like dancing. When you see Stephen Moyer battling, some of it is exactly what was originally choreographed and some of it is a surprise to him, but he’s agile enough and flexible enough to know how to handle that. That’s what [creator] Kurt [Sutter] and I really feel this show should be like. What’s the jumble of it and the mess? Does is take a long time to actually kill someone? So we choreograph it very carefully and very safely, and then we mess it up still keeping within the parameters of no one being hurt and shooting it in a way that makes it feel like, “Wow, you’re just on top of the fight, you’re in the middle of it,” and not something that is done on a stage, like in a Shakespeare play or something. When we shoot, we don’t want the camera to be in the perfect place to receive the blow all the time. We want it to be a little bit messy and a little bit off-center. And when we edit it, we edit it that way, too. I think some people have found that disconcerting — they think it looks sloppy or cheap — but they’ll get used to it because that’s going to be our aesthetic. We’re approaching this more like The Shield than Game of Thrones.
So far, knock on wood, we’ve been through eight episodes and we haven’t injured anyone yet. With all the fighting that you saw in the the pilot, no one was injured. The credit has to go to Lee Sheward, who’s been our stunt coordinator since the pilot, and all the stuntmen who come in in between doing the James Bond movie or Star Wars. They fly into Cardiff to help us do these parts and then they go right back to England. It’s really been the best of times for that.
You have these very straight-forward action sequences, and then there’s the Annora side of things. Are we supposed to know what we’re seeing when she takes Wilkin’s hand and there’s a flashback to, presumably, when he was a boy being raised by monks and learning to fight under the watchful eye of the Dark Mute?
I hope you don’t completely understand what happens because it’s only the third episode. I think careful study of that and the fans, they’ll start putting a lot of things together. We dole out a little bit of information with each episode about their relationship and what it’s been like. Fortunately because we have Lee Jones and we have Katey [Sagal], who’s at the top of her game here, the two of them just play so well together. That whole opening sequence in front of their cave was done in absolutely pouring rain — not fictional pouring rain, real pouring rain. For ten hours, we were in a hole and it rained on us and we filmed it. I think it looks fantastic, but it’s not something we created artfully, it is actually Wales. (Laughs) Sometimes it rains, and sometimes it doesn’t stop raining. The fact that she was able to really connect with him and have that kind of performance between the two of them, something that she’s really just getting to know, was really awesome. It took her years to feel that way with Charlie Hunnam [on Sons of Anarchy]. Here, in one of their first big scenes together, there’s a real connection there that I think is beautiful.
Not beautiful is the body that is later discovered with severed limbs, no hands and feet, carefully positioned in the forest. Later, Annora pulls a snake out of its mouth and hangs it with others in her cave. What can you tease about that situation and how soon we’ll understand it?
The bodies aren’t arbitrary. People are losing their lives in pursuit of someone or something. Annora seems to be the one who has the overall view of this, but she’s not sharing that with all of us yet. As each episode goes on, you’ll learn a little bit more about what’s actually happening and why these bodies are there, and why they’re arranged in such a way, and how that ties in with the whole mythology of our series.
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Wilkin gets his hands bloody in this episode, being asked to torture Nia to get information out of her.
Oh, we just pulled off a fingernail.
But there was the threat of the pear.
The pear is a real medieval torture device, which has been uncovered by our crack research team. It’s one of the most gruesome ones. I’m just really, really fortunate that they didn’t ask to film it being put to use. It has that little dial on it and when you turn the dial it sort of spreads and opens up. When it is actually placed inside someone’s, you know, regions, it could cause some very gruesome harm. Believe you me, there’s been lots of times the crew has said, "Don’t make me bring out the pear.” (Laughs) It’s become a catchphrase and it may even become a T-shirt. This is what happens on a series.
Obviously it was a choice not to show Wilkin taking her fingernail, just showing us the aftermath. Why?
I don’t think you want to see Wilkin doing that, especially to a girl who actually has some great nobility. Her scene with Lady Love when you actually see what’s driving her [which is to make Wales quiet again]. We’re with them — we support the Welsh rebellion and we’re on the side of the angels here, as is Wilkin really in his heart, but in playing the role of the executioner he has to be the one who has to torture her, which really makes a interesting, dramatic situation for him. As he finds out what her sentence is, I think he feels it’s awful, but at the same time he feels relieved. It certainly could’ve been worse.
Wilkin getting the order to chop off her nose (since Nia had broken the nose off Ventris’s effigy) — it wasn’t something I saw coming, though it was the right call for Lady Love.
When I first met the actress, this is one of the first things she’s actually done. I thought she was just terrific. I told her, “Now you realize we’re actually going to cut your nose off? I just want you to know that we’ll be able to take you to a plastic surgeon, it’ll be one of the best in the UK, and we’ll be able to put your nose back on.” She looked at me like, whaaaaat? (Laughs) I said, “Just kidding. Your nose is not going to come off. It’s going to be visual effects. Don’t sweat it.”
But my biggest thing is, I just don’t want people to think that this is going to somehow become the torture or the execution of the week. It just happens that after the pilot in all its complexity, Kurt decided to settle into a story that was open and closed in a single episode. I think it’s really shrewd to sort of live with the characters and get to know more about them, and to reveal more about what drives Lady Love and what the rebellion is all about, and how it affects even the youngest people and get us into the Welsh countryside, and give us a little bit more of a sense of parts of the world that we didn’t really get into so much in the pilot.
So it’s not going to end up being CSI: Wales where we have an episode that involves some kind of torture every week. This one does have a great form to it and a real emotion to it. I think it’s actually one of my favorite episodes so far because I think the guest cast really came to play, and we felt like, “Oh, so this is who we are.” The actors came back after doing the pilot a few months before and just jumped right into their shoes and their outfits and started breathing more life into the characters. Now that we’re on [episode] 9, I’ve seen they’re growing faster than I think they did on Sons, to really become the people, to add new dimensions, and then Kurt sees the new dimensions in the editing room and then he writes to them. It’s becoming a really great, creative breeding ground of back and forth that, I think, makes a good series.
But will we get to see Stephen Moyer have a sex scene every week?
His character only uses sex when it suits him and when he needs some kind of a release. People have said, “Oh my God, he’s bisexual and he’s bad.” I’m thinking, do they realize that this is 1311? There isn’t really bisexuality, there’s just power. As far as Corbett is concerned, whatever he’s doing is about the flexing of power and his own amusement and where his position is in the castle.
It’d tinged a little bit, which I think is another thing that makes Kurt brilliant, with sadness. When he’s having sex with the twins, he’s holding the doll that he took out of Ventris’s belongs, that he had such an emotional relationship to. It makes you wonder about the fact that there’s also a lost childhood mixed in there, that I think makes the undercurrent really interesting. He doesn’t overplay it because Stephen Moyer doesn’t really overplay, but he just laces it in there. It makes it, to me, much more interesting than, oh there’s another scene of the humpty dance.
I got a lot of heat on the pilot because of his having sex with Frenchie and Matthieu Charneau, as you know, is quite a popular figure out there. He actually feeds a lot of people’s imaginations. I had to unfriend people and things like that because I was getting direct messages about the abuse of poor Frenchie. (Laughs) Although, Matthieu seems to revel in it. There’s more to that story, too.
I was hoping we’d see him again.
He comes back. He lives in the castle. He has quite a big story in [a later episode]. A lot of things come to the head with him. He’s a good actor.
Let’s talk about Wilkin’s relationship with Lady Love. They meet in the chapel again and she compliments him on his refined swordsmanship and he jokes that he’s a mystery to both of them. He seems to have this sweet smile reserved just for her. Are those moments something you all have conversations about how to play?
Yes. We spend a little bit more time rehearsing their scenes. I told Flora, “It’s really a cello and violin duet. You guys have to really know where the low notes are, where the high notes are, and when you come together and when you cadence. It really is like music that you’re playing together, and it’s not arbitrary. Finding the rhythm of it and finding the smiles and the lightness and the humor — if you look through the oeuvre of Season 1 when it’s all over, you’ll see that Wilkin was lightest when he was with Lady Love. She brought something out in him that made him feel more comfortable and opened him up in a different way. Even though he’s lying to her, he lies with a smile and with amusement. His lies are always sort of fractionally correct. He seldom tells overt lies. Usually they have some sort of heart of truth to them. In the pilot where she says, “Where did you get the scar?” He says, “Oh, a healer gave it to me,” which is true. Then she says, “It looks kind of fresh.” He says, “Well, I renew it whenever I lose faith,” which is sort of not true. He’s always walking the tightrope with her, this banter-y tightrope, which you can expect will continue to develop and deepen as time goes on.
Then there’s the real executioner’s wife, Jessamy Maddox (played by Sarah Sweeney). I’m fascinated by her: Is she a bit crazy, simply relieved to have her abusive husband out of her life, or totally right to never break character because of the consequences? Is there time to look at that story as the series continues on?
Obviously we’re spinning a lot of plates in the series already, but that’s one of my favorite plates. Whenever I see a script and I find out what’s happening to Jessamy, played incredibly well by Sarah Sweeney, I’m really interested. He assumes a different identity, now has a new family, and that the family accepts him is interesting. You would expect that they’d have frank conversations about what this means, but the twist that’s happened here with Jessamy is she’s just bought into it. She’s just playing it like he is the executioner. You’ll see as time goes on, it becomes more and more difficult for him to communicate with her because she is living the fantasy. Maybe that came from being so abused by the executioner before, or maybe it’s just that she’s just crackpot crazy, but she makes things really difficult for Wilkin as time goes on, and also there’s jeopardy for poor Luca [played by Ethan Griffiths] because of her increasing insanity.
I love the little smiles that Luca gives Wilkin when he’s handing him a tool of his trade. It’s not creepy, it’s oddly sweet.
He’s such a good little actor, Ethan Griffiths. He’s only nine, I think. He just really seems to understand the character. It’s really kind of superhuman, I think. Also, he’s got this great Oliver Twist-y, kind of Dickens-y face. He wins Wilkin over the same way that he’s kind of won us over. He’s just a really sweet kid who’s in a very bad situation. Now the situation is gone. He hardly knows what to do with himself he’s so happy. He has a dad who’s, like, somebody he can really look up to. It’s changed his world. Of the many different subplots we’re doing, that new Wilkin’s family story is, I think, one the interesting hearts of the series. We do spend time in every episode developing it. It gets ugly, and then it gets better, and then it gets ugly.
Related: ‘The Bastard Executioner’ Series Premiere Recap: Trading Places
Sons fans will enjoy the fact that this episode started with an opening musical montage. How much of a challenge has music been for you guys, doing a medieval series?
Music has been tough. Trying to find a sound, trying to find a way to do the right music for this period that doesn’t seem like we’re at a Renaissance Fair or something has been difficult. We’ve used a lot of contemporary music and things that only have nods to the period. As time goes on, you’re going to see we’ve developed it even more sophisticatedly. In episode seven or eight, we used a rebec, which is a violin of the time, to play a pivotal part of music and to score the episode. It’s been very tricky. I’m not quite sure we have all the rules of the music yet. Normally you like to have some sort of set of rules that say, “This is what the show is going to do.” We’re still finding our footing there and trying different things. We had harsh guitars and heartbeat drums in the pilot. That sort of said, “We can go anywhere we want.” Now we’re just looking for what’s the right thing. We just know it’s not corny and exclusively period.
Any other teases you can give us?
Fans should be on the lookout for two characters. One is Leon Tell, the character that Alec Newman plays, who is the knight who let Petra go and took her cross. Aside from being one of the strongest actors in the whole ensemble, there’s a story there that is just beginning and is not going to end the way that I think a lot of people expect it to end. I think that story’s going to come to a head with both Wilkin and Corbett in a way that’s really, really interesting, so people should watch him. He doesn’t always have a lot of screen time, but what he does is sometimes hilarious, like when he introduces the twins. (Laughs) “The king gave us these twins and the baker and something else.” He’s just so dry. But at other times it’s awesome.
Then, you got to keep your eye on Toran Prichard. Sam Spruell is one of the strongest and most talented people in the ensemble. Even though he’s Wilkin’s friend it’s going to become harder and harder for him to play the role as time goes on. The fraying of that relationship is fascinating.
He’s the one who got Wilkin to tell us that he doesn’t have a father (hence him being the Bastard Executioner). I keep wondering who his dad is. Is that a question we’ll learn the answer to this season?
Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to be quite that simple, though. When you read the Dickens thing and it ends up the person who’s right next to you is really your father — Kurt’s going to be a little bit more complex than that. But it’s not the central part of the story to find out who his parent is. Doesn’t he have some sort of a flash with Lady Love in the pilot of some sort of baby being born? What does that mean?
Is that the baby that she could have with him that she couldn’t have with Ventris?
Was it actually [Wilkin] when he was born? Is it a connection between them and his birthing? Is that what they’re flashing back to? Why do they both have the same flash? Were they both there? Is it some sort of shared vision in the Annora sense? I don’t know. Stay tuned.
The Bastard Executioner airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.
