Jonathan Rhys Meyers - interview

First published on 19 Jun 2009. Updated on 13 Apr 2010.

In real life, King Henry VIII was an obese, syphilis-riddled English king whose subjects were too terrified of his explosive temper to tell him just how fat and scabrous he really was. But Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers, the man who plays him on Showcase's hit drama The Tudors, is cut from handsomer, friendlier cloth. Hunky as heck and talented as hell, the 31-year-old can sing (he performed two songs in Velvet Goldmine), has extremely chiselled cheekbones (he's the face of Versace and Hugo Boss fragrance) and might be seen at your local department store.

You're the prettiest guy to ever grace The Hot Seat. Have you always been this pretty? The prettiest? Wow, thank you. No, I was a fairly regular kid. I was scrawny.

Is that code for "I got beaten up a lot"? That only happens in Hardy Boys books. No one picked on me for my lunch money. Probably because it was the 80s and no one had lunch money.

Now you're a king of the big and small screen, do women throw themselves at you? Nothing like that happens. When you're a young actor and you're not yet successful, you'd imagine things like that would happen. Like you're getting into this incredible bubble where everything is fabulous and the world is just rosy. But actually, nothing changes.

Growing up, were you interested in 16th-century history? It was one of my only good subjects in school. But the show's been modernised for a 21st-century audience. I learned what was necessary to play the role. The difficult part is that I'm playing a man who I look nothing like.

Henry VIII wasn't nearly as pretty as you. He also wasn't as nice. God, of course he's not the best person. So many things he did were ridiculous. Some of them were very terrible. And he made some silly political mistakes: he should have never divorced Catherine of Aragon. He could've saved himself from a lot of problems.

Is it easy to get wrapped up in the way the Tudors dressed, talked and behaved? It's all a fantasy. If we did everything Henry did, it couldn't be on TV because it'd be way too boring. Henry went through three or four hours of ceremonies every morning just eating breakfast and going to the bathroom. And remember, Henry VIII was the first king to put a bath in his castle. They were not the cleanest of people. It may look fabulous in super high-def on a 68-inch screen, but in reality, it was a very dirty, stinky, syphilitic age.

Very dirty! You told Ellen DeGeneres that filming The Tudors' many sex scenes was like doing it in Wal-Mart. Personal experience?
No!

Ah c'mon! Which department would you do it in? It depends on which department the girl works in. It'd have to be with somebody who works there. Why would I have sex in a (department store) otherwise?

Imagine people in corsets and funny pants pulling up to pick up groceries. It would make a funny picture. I made a film years ago with Ang Lee [Ride with the Devil]; we were in the Midwest and went to Wal-Mart. There were a lot of Amish dressed in their typical clothes, and it was so extraordinary to see them because they looked so out of place, it was ridiculous. But I was really more fascinated that you could buy a gun and Cheerios at the same time.

Not like in Ireland.
Absolutely not! In any circumstance you cannot possess a handgun in Ireland. It's too dangerous - you'll just be shooting everyone. I know they say, 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people,' and there's a lot of truth in that, but people still use bats and knives and stuff. Shooting a gun just means that you don't have to get up too close.

Season 3 of The Tudors commences on showcase on Wed 1 Jul, 8.30pm. showcase is part of the SHOWTIME package available on FOXTEL and AUSTAR.