Jude Law plays the terrifying Henry VIII, the English king who was married six times and had no mercy on most of his women. That he created a religion so he could get divorced. That he lived, ate, drank. A spree of life in which there was not much room for personal hygiene and health.
“I read several interesting testimonials that said that you could smell Enrique from three rooms away. His leg was so rotten that he tried to hide the smell with rose oil ”, confessed the actor Jude Law at the press conference of Firebrand, film in competition in the Official Section of the Cannes Film Festival. “I thought it would have a big impact if I smelled horrible.”
Directed by the Brazilian Karim Ainouz, in her first project in English, and co-starring Law and Alice Vikander In the role of Catherine Parr, the last wife of the monarch, the one who survived him, firebrand It was presented on Sunday at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival to applause at the gala screening and mixed reviews among the press.
A period film explored from the current Me Too perspective that doesn’t mind changing some historical aspects. With a huge Jude Law, literally, fat as Henry VIII and already surviving his last years of life in which those leg ulcers of his low life stank. And to the actor such information seemed important to him. give realism to your interpretation and his co-stars.
The actor sought out a perfumer to create that awful smell for him. “It makes wonderful scents and also horrible,” he explained at the press conference. “And somehow he came up with this extraordinary mix of blood, fecal matter and sweat”. An unpleasant essence that began by splashing carefully in his wardrobe and ended up pouring out without limit.
At his side, everyone laughed, remembering the terrible stench that the actor spread throughout the set, invading everything: goal achieved. “When he walked on the set, it was horrible”, Aïnouz shared.
Despite the smells and unpleasant attitudes that the characters demanded of them, the two actors remembered “many laughs” during filming.
royalist gossip
At the press conference they also took the opportunity to ask Jude Law about his monarchical sympathies. He confessed not to follow the adventures and misadventures of his royal family for “to be against gossip” (being as he has been a regular victim of the English tabloids, it is understood). “But there was something extraordinary about looking at photos of this medieval ceremony and how it looks today, it seemed modern to me,” she said, hinting at the coronation of Carlos III and Camila.
