If a recent internet meme is to be believed, men are obsessed with the Roman Empire and will think about it several times a week.
Iwan Rheon can understand this impulse. As the star of Prime Video’s new sword-and-sandal series Those About To Die, he’s had to think about this period of history more than the average man on the street.
He told Zavvi: “It’s always something that’s interested me, but it’s now hard for me to say how often I was thinking about it – for the majority of last year, it was all I thought about, for obvious reasons! This period shaped the world we live in today, it’s everywhere in the culture of western civilisation, it’s clear why it’s always on our minds.”
The former Game Of Thrones star leads the series as anti-hero Tenax, who has built his own criminal gambling empire which lurks in the background of every gladiatorial battle and chariot race. Rheon is quick to push back on any initial assumption that this character is a “psychopath” in the mould of his most famous role, suggesting this is one of the richer and more morally complicated parts he’s played to date.
“He’s not just a fruitless product of his environment, he operates in a world where getting to the top means cracking some heads. His began his journey living on the streets, and you don’t become the most powerful crime lord in all of Rome from there by buying everyone flowers.
“As the season develops, you come to understand that he’s not a monster; his internal conflict is between the very compassionate person he is inside, which you see with the children he takes under his wing and helps feed, and the ruthless persona he has to project to the world. As an actor, that’s what was so fascinating about him as the link between every part of this society, navigating between different identities depending on who he’s with.
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“It’s hard to call him a monster when he’s in an environment as ruthless as Ancient Rome. If he didn’t act the way he did, he’d get swallowed up.”
Rheon is more hesitant to call him someone to root for – he will only concede that he’s “much easier to root for than Ramsay, but I’ve played quite a few characters much nicer than him!” – but says it’s understandable why audiences may end up feeling an unexpected affinity for Tenax.
“He’s a man of the people; he doesn’t enjoy killing people for fun and doesn’t inflict pain as a hobby. He’s a ruthless operator who circumstances have forced into doing these things.”
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Tenax is at the centre of this world, but his path is most entwined with Cala (Sara Martins), a Numidian trader who has journeyed to Rome to do whatever it takes to reunite her family. Her son (Kwame, played by Ted Lasso star Moe Hashim) was sold as a slave and now fights for his life regularly as one of the city’s top gladiators.
The unlikely relationship Tenax forms with Cala is what helps him confront the inner vulnerability which hides behind his seemingly uncompromising tough guy facade.
“They both need each other, but until she comes into his life I don’t think he realises how lonely he is – he has power, but until she becomes his companion in a weird way, he doesn’t have anybody he could call a friend. For the first time, there’s someone in his life he can be vulnerable in front of, and it’s a lovely part of this story for him to discover that feeling that way doesn’t make him weak”.
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Stories set during this period don’t usually let the male characters feel that way – and for the female characters, it’s typically the opposite case. This was part of Death In Paradise star Martins’ attraction to the project, playing a strong female character in a period when women had no legal rights.
She explained to Zavvi: “It doesn’t matter what class they came from, as even if you had money, you didn’t have rights. What I love about Cala is that, despite this, she’s still a strong woman, just as intelligent, not just a character who is written for a man to save her.
“I was also drawn to how it shows that Rome was made by all the different cultures from the countries the Roman army had conquered. The book Those About To Die only offers facts and figures about the games, which puzzled me – the scale of the Roman Empire goes beyond what the imagination can comprehend, and the book is difficult to read just because it offers the numbers and the statistics in a very dry way.
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“This show isn’t a documentary, and it’s difficult to prove exactly what happened at the time, but from what we’ve been able to trace from the accounts written at the time, this series is very accurate.”
Disaster movie legend Roland Emmerich – the German filmmaker behind the likes of Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow – directs five episodes of the series and has long been attached due to his similar astonishment at the scale of the games.
“From a modern perspective, the most amazing thing is that a third of the Roman economy was spent on the games, the same amount that they’d spend on roads and buildings, which really underlines how important this was to their culture”, he explained to Zavvi.
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“I did intensive research during the early stages, but it quickly became clear that you can’t research everything, and you must focus on the ways they were unexpectedly like us. I mean, they were a lot less squeamish about killing animals and seeing blood, but they all hungered to obtain power in an unequal society in ways I think many of us can relate to.
“What I loved about this show is that none of these characters are black and white; even the most wholesome people here often must do really bad things. At the centre you have a social climber who perfectly exemplifies that.”
For Emmerich, this was refreshing, as he has had to seek out independent funding for his two most recent movies – Freeway and Moonfall – to ensure that studios won’t meddle in his creative process. And after years spent making movies with clear heroes and villains, he’s found a new lease of life making a show about the more compromised people who exist in-between.
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“I’m too old to listen to other people”, he laughed, “which is why this show was produced as independently as possible. We had some notes which we listened to before shooting started, but after that, we made sure nobody told us anything until we began editing – it was something I came to love about TV, that the shoots were so long and so out of sequence, nobody could interfere with the creative side!
“I’ve only discovered TV shows later in life, and now I’d love to do more stuff in this format. Hopefully we have a second season coming, I’ve got a show about Lawrence of Arabia in the works, and there’s another big show that feels a little like a spiritual sequel to The Day After Tomorrow.
“But would I make another disaster movie again? Well, when you have a truly great idea, then it only makes sense as a film…”
Those About To Die is streaming on Amazon Prime Video from Friday, 19th July.
