‘The Bastard Executioner’ Premiere Postmortem: Stephen Moyer Talks Milus’s Sexuality, Power, and Plans

Spoiler alert! If you haven’t watched the series premiere of The Bastard Executioner, stop reading now. Stephen Moyer, who plays Milus Corbett, the trusted advisor to Baron Ventris (Brían F. O'Byrne) and the character you’ll love to hate, phoned Yahoo TV Tuesday to chat about some of Milus’s key scenes, a moment that wasn’t scripted, and what we can expect next (while driving around Cardiff, Wales searching for a cup of coffee to make it through the rest of premiere day: “I’m stuck having to get a f–king coffee in Burger King, would you believe,” he said laughing. “This is rock ‘n roll”).

Related: ‘The Bastard Executioner’ Premiere Recap: Trading Places

Creator Kurt Sutter describes Milus as the medieval Dick Cheney to Ventris’s Bush. How do you look at him?
He told me that when he showed me the script. It was good for me to think about the puppet master aspect of that. The fact that this character is there with his hand in Bush’s back, if he needs it. (Laughs) And also, Brían and myself are quite close, and Brían’s the kind of actor who would embrace something like that as opposed to try and block it. I think Brían plays it beautifully, this character that’s in this position but doesn’t quite have the necessary acumen to hold the answers, if you like, and turns to Milus in those moments for that need. But it’s difficult for Milus as well. There’s been a lot made of, “Oh, Milus is just evil,” but he has a friend. We played an idea that we’d been years for like 20, 25, 30 years — man and boy — and I grew up on his right shoulder and I was there whenever he needed me. Milus’s reaction to the loss of him is a powerful one. It’s, “What’s do I do now? This has been the person I’ve served for however long.”

Well let’s back up to Milus’s introduction. We first meet him as he’s counseling Ventris while Ventris is on the toilet. Is that the most memorable entrance of your career, or where does that fall?
(Laughs) I think it’s way up there, if you’ll excuse the pun. Kurt doesn’t shy away from anything, and as an actor that’s just fantastic. Everything he does, he does warts and all. I like that. I like watching that. I like pretty shows, too, I think. (Laughs) But I tend to go toward the dark stuff. So for me, it’s much more interesting to have that kind of, “Let’s show everything.” Kurt made a joke about that, actually, which was, “I used to get criticized that I never had a character ever going to the toilet in seven years of Sons of Anarchy. That’s the first thing I’m doing.” It’s like, “I’m gonna go straight in on the toilet.” But also, I like the fact that Milus is completely unfazed by it. This is the world. This is what we’re in. We’re running a small country or shire, and so we’re never off. We’re always working. (Laughing)

That’s also where we meet the character I like to call the royal wiper (played by Matthieu Charneau). Does he have a proper name in the script?
His name is Frenchie. My 13-year-old daughter said, “Oh, like Frenchie in Grease!” And I kinda went, “No, not really. No.” (Laughs)

Kurt told me that you and he were talking, and you were the one who said, “I think Milus f–ks anything.” And Kurt was like, “Yes, yes he does. It’s about power.” What is the backstory between Frenchie and Milus and their hallway tryst?
I’m gonna really disappoint you. There ain’t any backstory. He sees the new ass wiper, and he goes, “I’m going to f— that.” (Laughs) “That looks pretty. That is mine.”

Related: ‘The Bastard Executioner’ Premiere Primer: Who’s Who

I won’t spoil who Milus is in bed with next episode, but for fans who hope that sex scenes will be a weekly occurrence for Milus, is that where we’re headed?
I just thought of a great idea that we could see him with Ash’s sheep, his favorite ewe, just to upset Ash. (Laughs) I don’t know. There’s no question that sexuality, sexual politics and sexual power, is very much in Kurt’s storytelling and in his wheelhouse. Our female characters are powerful sexually as well. I’m not gonna spoil anything, but there is a couple of moments where sex plays a part again, and not necessarily in the way that you would think, which is quite interesting.

It’s definitely part of what makes Milus tick, there’s no question. When I read the script, I said something to Kurt like, “Milus f–ks everything, doesn’t he? Dog, cat, man, woman, fish. Anything.” And it was Kurt who came back with, “He’s particularly fond of fish.” Or something like that. I think the idea of sexuality was very different in medieval times than it would be now. I’ve said this before, but in cultures where sex before marriage is absolutely forbidden, male sexuality is very much a part of boys’ and men’s first sexual experiences, across the board. When soldiers were off on crusades and in the middle of nowhere or the middle of a desert, to think that they wouldn’t have wanted to get off is kind of ludicrous. So I don’t think it’s something that plants him in any sexuality or any idea of what that means. It’s about sex, and power, and getting off, and what can I gain from this? As I said earlier, when Ventris dies, he’s left with a situation where he has to move forward. It’s not like he’s just gonna roll over and go, “Okay, well that’s me down then.” He has to find out what is next for him.

What was next for him was condemning his brother (played by Martin McCann) to death. 
I absolutely adore that dude. Martin McCann is a wonderful actor. Losing him, and Brían, and Felix [Scott], who plays the executioner and is a f–kin’ brilliant actor. It’s hard when you’re losing actors like that. But you also have to tell a story.

Milus tells Wilkin that losing his brother, who he saw as a nuisance, solves a problem. He sees Wilkin as being more useful to him. We’ve talked about how Ventris’s death affects Milus. Will we see his brother’s death weigh on him at all?
I absolutely do not know the answer to that question, but I think that it’s an interesting idea. I think that for the time being, there’s too much going in the world for him to have any element of introspection or reflection.

Let’s talk about Milus’s relationship with Lady Love. At times, as a viewer, you’re wondering if you’ll see any sexual tension, and then it seems as though they’re simply competing for Ventris’s ear. Could we see him try to start something with her now that her husband is gone? I have to stress, I do not know the answers, but I will say this: He’s not in the same class as her. So there’s no way that he would immediately think that way because also, it’s his best friend’s Mrs., you know. In the future, it’s going to all depend on how the dice fall for him. He is always playing five or six different hands, if you know what I mean. I think you’ve probably realized he’s looking for ways for Love to be able to secure Ventrishire so that she’s not moved on, as it were. But, does he find her attractive? Yes. Is it something that he hasn’t got his hands on? Yes. Is she going to play back? This is purely me thinking about this: I think when you first meet Love, she is a sort of girl trapped in a woman’s marriage. So it’s going to be the story of her becoming a woman, I think, and working out what that means. A medieval woman, what that means in a man’s world.

As I said earlier, Kurt uses sexuality. All his characters play sexuality. If you look at Sons, and you look at Katey’s character, [Gemma], for instance, that’s a character that had to use what she has, her assets, as you like, to move herself forward and become that matriarch. I imagine that part of the story for Love is going to be learning what that means in a medieval society.

Related: ‘Bastard Executioner’: How Kurt Sutter Chose His Leading Man

I love that scene at the end of the pilot with you and Lee Jones, your characters facing off like cobras, sizing each other up, getting ready to strike. What do you like about that dynamic?
One of the things I think we learn at that point is that [Milus] has known who it was. We get that flashback in the pilot where we see Corbett and Ventris riding along on their horses and Lee’s character hearing them talk, and I hope the audience will realize that [they’d set Wilkin up to die]. That [chapel scene] was one of my favorite moments because it’s the only moment, really, that Milus gets to drop his guard and just go and really show who he is. Of course Wilkin has known from the moment he sees him that that’s who he is. Lee is lovely and very open to playing, doing different ideas when we’re shooting. It’s been a lot of fun with him.

Speaking of who Milus is, in the scene where Milus and Ventris murder Wilkin’s village —
That’s pretty intense, isn’t it?

I’m wondering if the moment where Milus wipes the bloody blade off on his brother’s clothing was scripted or something that you added.
It wasn’t scripted. It was something I just kind of decided to do in the moment and Martin, who’s Irish, was like, “You’re not gonna f–kin’ do that, are you? You f–kin’ bastard.” Costume, of course, were very happy with me at that point, but it just seemed so right.

You get to do more swordplay yourself in next week’s episode. What has that been like for you?
Oooh… When I first went to drama school, I absolutely loved the sword fight aspect of stuff and learning stage fighting. It was really one of the only things that kept me there. (Laughs) I was going to get expelled, because I was a bit naughty, and my teacher went along to speak up for me, bless his heart, wonderful dude called John Waller, and so I managed to stay. This was about two terms in, because it was the one thing that I was absolutely obsessed with. I’d just moved to London and it was party time for a few of us. (Laughs) I was 18. You can drink in London when you’re 18, and I don’t think I need to really carry on with that. But I took lots of certificates and did a bit of teaching of fighting, so part of the attraction of [this role] was I knew that I would have to get to do some, at some point. You’ll see even more stuff coming up. … Any opportunity to fight or jump on a horse, I’m really excited about. And I think the sets are incredible as well. When you do something like this, like True Blood, with no disrespect to anything I had ever done before, but this sort of new version of television that’s coming around in the last 10-15 years, the sets and the scope and the size of it are so enormous and amazing. We have an entire town that [production designer] Giles Masters has built, and this castle, and we’ve got four different stages set up with interiors of castles. It is immense and the interiors are beautiful.

Related: Ken Tucker Reviews ‘The Bastard Executioner’

The pilot is difficult — there’s never a perfect pilot. But I think we do a great job of telling you who everybody is and then sort of actually starting to turn the screw a little bit and make it interesting, and it just gets better, and better. Kurt fans… their jaw is gonna to be on the floor by episode six or seven. It’s absolutely incredible what’s coming through the mill.

The Bastard Executioner airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.