Jonathan Rhys Meyers Was ‘Slightly Horrified’ ‘The Tudors Lasted So Long

The Tudors star Jonathan Rhys Meyers said he was “slightly horrified” that the Showtime series ran as long as it did.

Meyers played King Henry VIII in the historical drama and told Radio Times that he started to feel burned out in the later seasons. He also said he had to put himself in a different mindset to play the king, who was a larger man.

“I didn’t want it to be four seasons. I was slightly horrified. By season three or four, I wasn’t happy doing,” Meyers said. “Psychologically, I had to be 6 feet 3 inches and I’m only 5 feet 10 inches – and Henry’s size was a huge element of him.”

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who will be playing the lead role in Sky Living and NBC’s Dracula, said working on a television series can be hard and tedious.

“Doing a series is like making four movies at once: you have many more opportunities to fall on your backside,” he said. “There are days when going into work in the same studio with the same people, uttering your lines in the same costume…”

Meyers also joked that he is cast as the villain because of the way he looks.

“I’m cast as bad guys because I look like one. I can convey that sense of conflict, I suppose, because I’m a guy who lives in conflict a lot of the time,” he said. It’s not something I have to search for, that sense of looking for some sort of peace or balance – it’s evident in me regardless of what I do.”

In a separate interview with The New York Post, Jonathan Rhys Meyers said there was “a kind of feral element” in him. He also said that he drew inspiration for his Dracula from classic films, but wanted to make the character work within the confines of network television.

“I have to say there was a weight on my shoulder,” he said. “I really loved Gary Oldman’s version and Nosferatu. But I knew it was going to be a network show, and I was going to find a way to make it fascinating within those parameters.”

NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt said Dracula won’t take a contemporary approach to the story.

“It will be faithful to the period, which is 1896, but it will be sort of looking to the future and hopefully be a really cool, new version of Dracula,” he said.

Fans can catch Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Dracula starting October 25 at 10 pm on NBC.

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