Britannia Series Three | Interview with David Morrissey (Aulus)

How did you feel when you got the scripts for this series?

I heard that Sophie Okonedo had been asked to join the cast as Aulus’s wife, so I was very excited by that, as I’d worked with Sophie before and she’s a friend. When I got the scripts, I thought, “Gosh, I hope she says yes” because it was so perfect.

Aulus and Hemple have a really interesting but volatile relationship, very sexy, very territorial, and I knew it would be fun to play that with her, so I was delighted when she said yes!

A lot of the relationships are bedded in now, there’s great history with a lot of the characters. Lucius (Hugo Speer) has developed brilliantly, obviously Cait (Eleanor Worthington-Cox) has developed, as well as the whole Druid and Roman worlds, so there’s lots going on. When Hemple comes to pursue Aulus, she brings all this history with her, so that was really good.

We see Aulus do an unspeakable thing quite early on, but then we have moments of empathy for him as well. Are the writers playing with how we’re meant to feel about him?

He does something which is absolutely reprehensible and disgusting, but we also see him suffering because of that. But I think what’s great about Britannia is that they’re not conventional goodies and baddies.

He does things, but he also has a conscience, and we see that he’s led by forces which are beyond his control. We’re in a world where belief systems, faith, the idea of the underworld, the idea of damnation, but also the idea of salvation and immortality, are all very real. There are people literally making pacts with the Devil.

We have not so much a sympathy for Aulus but probably an empathy for him, because we see the dilemmas he’s working under, the conditions he’s working under, and the belief systems he’s working under. He’s not somebody who’s blithely doing bad deeds with no conscience. He makes a decision, and his mental health suffers because of that. We see him have a terrible descent.

It’s a breakdown of sorts, isn’t it?

Yes, it is. All the things that he built his world on, the foundations, suddenly start to crumble, and he doesn’t know what he stands for anymore. He doesn’t know why he made those sacrifices. He’s starting to question everything, and the very basis of his existence starts to unravel. It’s an age-old tale of the Faustian pact that people make. They sell their souls to the Devil to have something here in the present life, then they realise as they go along that the bargain wasn’t worth it. That’s very much where Aulus is.

Were you surprised by this backstory?

No, I always felt that Aulus had made some sort of pact. Right from the first series he’s been working from an agenda that nobody in his team has knowledge of. He’s marching to a different drum and very much under the control of something that is not Rome. I think we’ve known that for a long time. I don’t know the specifics of it, but that’s part of the fun of it. I’ve known for a long time that Aulus is in league with some dark force, and that it would be revealed to us as we went along.

How would you describe Aulus’s marriage to Hemple?

Hemple is someone who rules the roost; she has the power. Aulus has created a world away from Rome, which he is master of, in which he is politically negotiating with very complex deals and allegiances with different factions. He is the ultimate Roman politician, as well as the Roman warrior.

She comes into his world with a different agenda and destroys all that, because she has a power over him that nobody else has. She publicly belittles him, but she also privately belittles him. She publicly builds him up and privately builds him up as well. Obviously, he doesn’t know where he is with her. But they have this amazing attraction to each other, and an amazing need for each other. They also made a blood pact with each other and they have to honour that, so she arrives in Britannia to make sure that he has the courage of his convictions. They’re the convictions that he made – not to her, but with her to Lokka, their god – and she’s here to make sure he carries that out.

When she was in Rome, she could feel he was wavering even from that distance, and she saw that things hadn’t happened that should have been happening. She’s come to Britannia to read him the riot act and to get things moving – and of course that means there will be clashes. She also doesn’t arrive on her own, but with an entourage of dangerous people who Aulus also has to deal with. They’re a thorn in his side.

She really turns the place upside down, doesn’t she?

Yes, she brings a very familiar Roman morality to the world. She’s very much in Caligula mode. We know this from real life, that Nero and Caligula were very debauched, hedonistic people who liked to party. That type of hedonistic world is a way of controlling people, as they do things when they’re in a state of drunkenness or drug addiction that they can be shamed about.

She’s the ultimate puppet master. She’s the high manipulator of people, and he’s not immune to that – he’s right in the middle of it. You only have to visit places like Pompeii and see some of the readings that have survived to see that there was a real hedonistic lifestyle that these rulers became part of. They were totally corrupted.

There is of course, amusement to be had by cannibalism and orgies, and the writers play with that a lot. How fun was that to do with Sophie?

Well, it was brilliant, but it was in the age of Covid. We were reading the scenes and things and thinking, “How are we going to do this?” Of course, how we did it was everybody got tested, everybody stayed in a bubble. Once we got the all-clear and we were all negative, we were able to interact in a very intimate way, which was amazing.

It was the first time I’d ever worked with an intimacy coach, Coral Messam, and that was a revelation to me, and I loved it. It was brilliant. It takes a little bit more time, but instead of making it less raunchy, it had the opposite effect. We were able to be intimate with people in a way that was very safe and very consensual, because you had this third party there on set who was in control of all that, and everybody felt that they could talk to her, and be able to rehearse scenes with her present, so it felt very safe. That meant that we could really push those scenes in a way that was really liberating and very, very sexy.

Intimacy coaches seem to be a staple now across all sets. Do you welcome that?

I would hope it is a staple. I don’t know whether there are as many intimacy coaches as we need, but yes, someone made the analogy for me that if I was going to do a fight, I would have a stuntman there. I know how to throw a punch but in order to make sure everybody’s safe, you need someone whose job is to make sure we’re safe. Likewise, with those intimacy scenes, we need someone there. From my point of view, it really is a way for me to feel safe and secure, and to know that everybody else is safe and secure. That gives us an atmosphere of real bravery and creativity.

Tell me about the partnership and the chemistry with Sophie.

We have a real laugh together, and not just Sophie and me, but all the guys. We’ve always been very professional, but you have to be able to laugh. They’re long days, it’s long hours, and there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be done.

I also think the atmosphere on the set is always dictated to by the people above us in the production line as well and Rupert RyleHodges, who’s our main line producer, is a lovely man. He really has our wellbeing at heart, and that comes across so it’s always fun. That also means that we could invent things, come up with ideas, bounce off each other, and have fun that way. We all have egos, but there isn’t an ego that’s destroying anybody else’s creativity – we’re all feeding into everybody else. That’s always been the case on this show, but particularly in series three.

The other thing about the year we’ve had, people have recognised how lucky they are even to be at work. But also, that there’s a value to what we do, above and beyond the value that we always knew that it had. People are in their homes, they’re watching television, they need this type of entertainment, any type of entertainment, and we’re bringing it. It was something that we all recognised, having had the year we’ve had, that we were really in a privileged position to be able to do.

Has it always been collaborative, or do you feel even more able to play around with the script now that you’re in series three and know your character so well?

I’ve always felt that, right from the first series. If they’re casting you in the role, they want you to bring your ideas and your input, but you have to be careful. Moving into a third series, one of the things you have to be careful about is with new directors, particularly that you let them discover it, you let them direct you, you let them be part of it. They’re part of the creative process, and they bring new energy to it.

Of course, I know my character, but I still need an outside eye to come in and say, “How about this, how about that?” and I need to be open to that. That creates a great working atmosphere. Also, Sophie is a new character, so you have to be receptive to what other people are bringing. You react to people in different ways, so it still has to be very open.

Talking of new directors, you had Mackenzie Crook directing this time around. How was that?

It was wonderful! He is a really beautiful soul as a person. He’s a spiritual man, and I always love being in his presence. What he brings to the role is extraordinary. Veran is an amazing creation by him – and the makeup department, it has to be said! He’s a very gentle director, a coaxer. It’s all very respectfully done. I loved working with him, and I hope we can continue to do that if we go into a fourth series.

What affect did Covid have on filming?

We started in February 2020 and closed down in March, like everybody did. We came back in September as two bubbles, so one would be at one end of the car park and one would be at the other! We couldn’t talk to each other, so that was difficult. Every now and again, I would come across Zoë Wanamaker, who plays Queen Antedia, in the car park covered in mud and blood and I’d be like, “What have you been doing?!”

I don’t do anything with Julian this series. I had one scene with him last series, and it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever done. He’s a great actor, but also a very funny presence, so I’m really looking forward to seeing Nikolaj and him together. Even though I’ve read the script, I haven’t seen any of it.

Is there a particular character or scenario that you’d have liked to have had a scene with?

It’s a case of ‘the grass is greener’, isn’t it? There’s always a feeling that I want to be out on the road with the Magnificent Seven, travelling around, then they meet these guys who are Druid-like figures, and that looks great in the script. They’re on a quest and a road trip, whereas I’m slightly more in one place. At the end of it, I move out of my encampments and go on the road, which I like.

While it might have been frustrating to be mainly in one place, I did feel very safe and contained during Covid times. And at least I was within four walls, whereas the Magnificent Seven were in big fields in bad weather. I bumped into Nikolaj at one point and he looked pretty jealous of me and my encampment!

Did you get to do many stunts?

Yes, some. Our stunt guy, Gary Connery, is one of the best in the business, and I’m so happy to have worked with him. I get to do stunts, and I do a lot of horse riding, which I enjoy. There’s always enough to do, things that you wouldn’t think of as stunts like firing weapons, as well as maybe a little bit of fighting, falling down stairs, things like that, and he’s there to ensure that we’re all safe and well. It’s always great to have him around.

I’m sure when you did the first series, you’d have done lots of research, but did you do anything extra for this series?

Yes, very much so. I find it endlessly fascinating. I recently read Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes, about Greek myths. These stories and myths would have been very, very alive to the Romans, they would have known them, and they’d have been very real for them. I enjoy learning what these people would have taken for granted, and what they would have thought of as real, so that’s been great for me. It’s important to say this isn’t a historically accurate piece – we’re not going for that, it’s more of an atmosphere, and the world – but what I love about what Jez does is that he honours that world, but he also shakes it up. They’re not modern scenarios, but they are very modern sensibilities, and modern dilemmas that we face all the time in our own lives, and he plays them out through the landscape of Britannia.

Is this series about tribalism, faith, or grief? Is there one theme that bubbles up more for you?

I think it is about grief, but it’s also about loss, regret, those types of things. It’s about power, what we will do for power, what we will sacrifice for power, and what power means to various people. In a Roman world, there’s an element that power is external. It’s about the control of people, land, places, and infrastructure.

Whereas for the Druids, power is an inward journey. It’s about the power one has over oneself. It’s about the power one has with your soul, with your guard, with your belief system, and therefore the universe. Those two philosophies are at odds with each other in Britannia, and that’s what I like. It’s about how we exercise power, how we gain power, how we use power, and ultimately, how we are corrupted by power.

Did you have a favourite insult in this series?

Most of Zoë’s insults are brilliant! Quite a few of them are directed at me but were out of my earshot so she would often phone me and tell me what they were! I can never work out whether they’re really aimed at me or Aulus!

Alastair James is the editor-in-chief of Memorable TV, leading the charge in covering today's must-see television. A lifelong television enthusiast, his passion began with a deep dive into the world of classic sci-fi, culminating in his role as editor of "Beyond the Static," a publication devoted to celebrating iconic sci-fi series. While his love for classic television remains, Alastair's focus at Memorable TV is firmly on the present, analyzing the latest trends in the television landscape, from gripping crime dramas to the ever-evolving strategies of Survivor. His insights have been featured in numerous publications. At Memorable TV, Alastair's goal is to provide readers with sharp commentary, engaging reviews, and in-depth analysis of the shows dominating the current conversation.