Battle for the crown

King & Conqueror star James Norton joins fellow executive producers Kitty Kaletsky and Lindsey Martin to preview the epic historical drama, which explores the friendship and rivalry between Harold of Wessex and William of Normandy that led to the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

While thoughts of William the Conqueror, 1066 and the Battle of Hastings conjure images taken from the Bayeux Tapestry – and King Harold with an arrow in his eye – a forthcoming historical drama sets out to tell a story many viewers might think they already know from a more intimate perspective.

King & Conqueror is described as the story of a clash that defined the future of a country – and a continent – for a thousand years, told through a pair of interconnected family dynasties struggling for power across two countries and a raging sea. Harold of Wessex and William of Normandy were two men destined to meet at the Battle of Hastings in 1066; two allies with no design on the British throne, who found themselves forced by circumstance and personal obsession into a war for possession of its crown.

James Norton (Happy Valley) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones) star as Harold and William, respectively, with Emily Beecham as Edith Swan-neck and Clémence Poésy as Matilda.

The cast also includes Eddie Marsan as King Edward, Juliet Stevenson as Lady Emma, Jean-Marc Barr as King Henry, Luther Ford as Tostig, Geoff Bell as Godwin, Elliott Cowan as Sweyn and Bo Bragason as Queen Gunhild.

The eight-part historical epic is produced by The Development Partnership, Rabbit Track Pictures, Shepherd Content, RVK Studios and CBS Studios, in association with the BBC, which will launch the series this year on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. Paramount Content Global Distribution is handling sales outside the UK.

The series is written by Michael Robert Johnson, with the opening episode directed by Baltasar Kormákur.

Norton joined his Rabbit Track Pictures co-founder Kitty Kaletsky and CBS Studios senior VP of international coproductions and development Lindsey Martin for an exclusive King & Conqueror case study at Content London last month, where the three executive producers discussed the origins of the show, its international appeal, filming in Iceland and why HBO series The Nevers was involved in the decision to cast Norton as Harold.

While King & Conqueror tells a tale many viewers might be familiar with, the series tells a more intimate, character-led story.
Kaletsky: It’s about two men who, in reality, were friends. They were brothers in arms. They fought alongside each other. They were related by marriage and really should have been lifelong partners. Instead, thanks to baronial factions and warring nations, they were forced apart and destined instead to meet on the battlefield, and one of them had to die. It’s a really tragic and incredibly dramatic story, but it’s also one about love, marriage, family, sibling rivalry, betrayal and much, much more.

Norton: We start at the beginning of their relationship, and we track it all the way until the final battle in episode eight, where their relationship ends because – spoiler – one of them dies. It was a structure readymade for us, really. They meet halfway through episode one at the coronation of Edward the Confessor [Marsan] and then there were significant points in history when Harold traveled to Normandy to fight alongside William. We take a necessary amount of artistic licence but, really, the structure was there. The years from their meeting through to the battle is our template.

The project has been years in the making after creator and lead writer Michael Robert Johnson first pitched the idea to The Development Partnership executive producer Robert Taylor, leading to the wider coproduction partnership. When it came to the scripts, Johnson conducted “incredibly thorough” research to ensure the series stands as close to the real history as possible.
Norton: You have two levels of the story. You have the narrative of the battles, and then the more creative part from me as an actor and us as storytellers was the domestic space. What was really important to us was making sure that this wasn’t just about Harold and William. It was about Matilda, William’s wife, and Edith, Harold’s wife, and their family units, and that is obviously less documented but is as important because it contextualises these men’s journeys. They’re not just on these meaningless grabs for power. They are fathers and they are husbands, and a lot of it is rooted in that more intimate, private space.

The clash between Harold and William isn’t just a British story.
Martin: The potential [for the show] to resonate globally is huge. Of course, it’s a well-known story in the UK, but so much of the story takes place in or originated in Europe as well. Then William the Conqueror, Wessex… these are terms that, globally, people are aware of. They might not know everything about them, but there’s an inherent familiarity there. For us [at CBS Studios], that ticks a huge box. It has really built-in international appeal.

Lead director Baltasar Kormákur (Katla, Everest) was attached to the project early on and had a clear ambition for the show to be a “visceral” experience – something that was achieved by shooting in built sets in the filmmaker’s home country of Iceland.
Kaletsky: We looked all over. We looked at the UK. We looked at various other parts of Europe. In the end, Iceland made sense to us because of this incredible scale it afforded us. It could double for Normandy, for other parts of France and for three different parts of England, which all look really distinct. It was exciting because it was never going to be a drone-heavy, pure VFX show. It would have intimacy, but the way Balthazar was going to shoot those domestic interior scenes was as meaty as the way he wanted to shoot the battle sequences – in your face, frightening, what it really feels like, rather than just 10,000 men from up above.

Norton: I was covered in mud for six months. He really did deliver. We must give credit to the crew out there because our costume designer, makeup and every department really did deliver on Balthazar’s vision and brought that home. I was wearing six layers of leather and chain mail, and some of them you wouldn’t even see. But for me as an actor, it just gives me so much support. Everyone was excited about delivering on that vision, as true as possible to the history. Everyone talks about visceral and meaty, but really this does take us into a new space as far as historical dramas go.

Martin: There was huge commitment to the authenticity. That was important to Balthazar and everyone on the creative team. But if that meant sourcing the exact table from India, that was what had to be done because it needed to feel very authentic, textural and real.

Norton initially wanted to play William rather than Harold because he was drawn to the character’s “wily, cerebral nature.”
Norton: Then what happened was I was attached to an HBO show called The Nevers, which then didn’t go on beyond its first season. But at the time, HBO said very clearly, ‘You can go and shoot King & Conqueror, especially considering you’re an EP and you’re developing it, but [your character] must die because if it’s a hit and then you end up doing a second season, then there’s a kind of conflict.’ That’s what often happens with actors’ contracts. You’re allowed to do small, piecemeal miniseries and limiteds, but you’re not allowed to commit to anything that has a risk of going on.
So my arm was forced. Looking back, that was within the first six months of the development process, and I can’t imagine it the other way around [now]. Nikolaj is so right for William. I loved the journey I went on with Harold, and I think he did with William.

King & Conqueror marks the third time Norton has starred in and executive produced a project, following Rabbit Track’s Netflix movie Rogue Agent and ITV drama Playing Nice, which debuted earlier this month. But shooting Playing Nice while also preparing for King & Conqueror meant he was worried he hadn’t done the “work” to play Harold.
Norton: You usually have a lot of time to rehearse and concentrate on the accent and the character and just sit in that headspace and find the familiar. I just like thinking his thoughts. It’s the way I prep. And I hadn’t done as much of that as I would have liked because we were literally coming off the back of a show [Playing Nice] we were shooting and EP’ing. And actually, when I got to that first day on set [of King & Conqueror], I realised I had been in this character’s head for six years, and I felt more empowered than I had ever been as an actor, because the work had been done for me. Unlike other roles where I turn up and everything’s decided for me, I had been in the room around that table deciding on Harold and his journey and his inner private life, so I was more prepared than I ever thought I was.

Norton and Kaletsky believe the intimacy and the domestic settings used through the series mean King & Conqueror will stand out among other historical series when the show launches this year on the BBC.
Kaletsky: There’s a really moving throughline on both William’s side and Harold’s side that propels you forward in relation to the central marriages and their relationships with their children and with their siblings. I’m not just talking cosy chats – there’s anger, resentment and betrayal that is propelling those stories forward, which leads to the battles. They’re inextricably linked, and that feels really unique. It’s not just a political drama, nor is it just a drama about swords. It really feels like it’s both, and there aren’t that many of those around.

Norton: What’s interesting is that you’ve got two storylines, which could almost be two separate TV shows or two separate movies. They are self-contained, so we don’t have a villain and a hero in William and Harold. And we wanted the audience to be there at the end, sitting on their couches and completely torn and conflicted. Obviously, they know which way it goes – most people will – but that, I think, is quite a unique structure. Within the storylines there are antagonists of sorts. We were all keen to avoid leaning into that kind of stock character in the fantasy space, which plays with these more archetypal roles. William and Harold are very sympathetic and both will grab your heart, we hope.

Depending on the success of the series in the UK and around the world, the three executives would love to do more – though perhaps without Norton on screen unless a Harold prequel is commissioned.
Martin: It’s still very early days in terms of those conversations, but it’s been such a great experience working collaboratively with this team. These characters probably have more to say and more to do, so we’d love to, if possible.

tagged in: BBC, CBS Studios, James Norton, King & Conqueror, Kitty Kaletsky, Lindsey Martin, Paramount Content Global Distribution, Rabbit Track Pictures, RVK Studios, Shepherd Content, The Development Partnership