“Anne Boleyn doesn’t know she was going to have her head lopped off by a swordsman from Calais,” says Peter Kosminsky in a British Film Institute panel discussion about the Wolf Hall TV series, that he so brilliantly directed. 

You can watch an excerpt of the wonderful panel discussion here:

On the same panel are Hilary Mantel the author, and a heavily pregnant Claire Foy, who plays Anne Boleyn to great acclaim. Hilary makes the point that to authentically re-create the characters on screen, we must remember they don’t know their history. They are living in the now and for Anne Boleyn, she was living in the belief that she would be Henry’s queen forever. Their fates are not predetermined, they made decisions based on their ambitions and circumstances at the time. 

As Hilary says, “They are walking in the dark, as we are, and thinking about getting through the next five minutes.” 

Claire Foy says she had read the books before she was cast in the role as Anne Boleyn and got the script. It was in that reading of Wolf Hall that she discovered Hilary’s main protagonist Thomas Cromwell for the first time, however she’d heard the popular folk tales that Anne had six fingers and warts and had to forget all that.

In playing Anne Boleyn, Claire says she had, “ A sense of real responsibility to honour the things that she went through.” And in trying to understand what Anne might have been thinking, in the case of Hilary’s Wolf Hall, Claire says she had to do this through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, which is the mode of narrative that Hilary used in telling the story.

“I knew about Anne Boleyn but had no idea who Thomas Cromwell was. And then in playing Anne in the TV series I had to get to know Anne again through Cromwell’s eyes.” – Claire Foy talking about playing Anne Boleyn

Peter Kosminsky says that Hilary’s Anne Boleyn is portrayed as being “pretty horrible” and yet, “she has to completely break your heart at the end.” He says that Claire absolutely does that in her portrayal of Henry’s queen. Peter says that Claire’s great achievement was not to “soft peddle” the aspects of Anne’s character that are difficult, when many actors would have pulled back from Hilary’s portrayal of Anne’s ruthless ambition.

In another interview in the house at Cadhay Manor, Hilary says that she acknowledges that Anne Boleyn reached the position of queen to Henry VIII partly through  her sexuality. She was an attractive woman, who beguiled the king, but their three year relationship together was tumultuous. Henry wanted a son. Instead he got a daughter, followed by two miscarriages. He got bored with her and his eyes began to wander, causing Anne to become jealous and angry.

There’s no question in Hilary’s mind that Anne sought to restore her confidence in relationships with other men, as she spent less time with Henry. Henry accused his wife of committing adultery with five men, one of whom was her brother George, based on spurious evidence produced by his first minister, Thomas Cromwell. 

Hilary’s Anne does little to behave like a chaste wife until it’s too late. As an author she does try to help her readers to see the events unfold as if through their eyes, without knowing the outcome until it becomes inevitable. In her final execution scene, Hilary has Anne looking for any sign that Henry will change his mind and show mercy. Of course he does not.

“Whether Anne was guilty as accused, or not guilty, the outcome was a tragedy on a huge scale.” – Hilary Mantel

You can watch the Anne Boleyn interview with Hilary at Cadhay House here:

Make sure you join us on the weekend of June 22nd and 23rd, 2024, as we discuss the life of Anne Boleyn as seen through Hilary’s magnificent books and compare her version with the views of some of the most qualified historians on her life: