A CONTEMPORARY STORY
Hal (Timothée Chalamet) has spent years rejecting his royal responsibilities as heir to the English throne, instead choosing to live in the debauched neighborhood Eastcheap alongside his mentor and best friend, the washed-up alcoholic knight John Falstaff (Joel Edgerton). But when Hal’s father King Henry IV (Ben Mendelsohn) dies, the wayward prince is forced to leave behind his life in Eastcheap and return to the palace to reluctantly take his place as King of England.
Having spent much of his young life witnessing his father’s feuds and the futility of the wars that followed, the newly crowned King Henry V vows to bring peace to the country. But he quickly finds himself embroiled in the snake pit of palace politics he tried so desperately to escape, and is suddenly unsure who he can trust. Forced to begin a new chapter of his life before the last can be properly closed, Hal feels his idealism being strangled by the loneliness of power, a growing sense of paranoia, and looming threats from France.
In 2013, longtime friends and collaborators David Michôd and Joel Edgerton began writing a script about Hal’s coming-of-age story. King Henry V, one of England’s most renowned monarchs who famously conquered the French at the Battle of Agincourt, is a well-known historical figure — he’s the subject of Shakespeare’s timeless historical plays and two successful film adaptations. But Michôd and Edgerton saw unexplored contemporary themes in young Hal’s story that spanned the 600 years between the 15th and 21st centuries. Together, they crafted a timely and innovative approach to the life and times of King Henry V. Produced in partnership with Netflix, Plan B Entertainment, Porchlight Films, Yoki, Inc., and Blue-Tongue Films, The King is a modern story told through a period-authentic lens that examines the pitfalls of power, the cyclical brutality of war, and how the dangerous vanities of men reverberate through generations to come.
When Michôd and Edgerton first began writing The King in 2013, they knew they had to approach the story through their own unique lens, blending historical fact and literary fiction to craft a fresh artistic take. Edgerton, having played Hal on stage as a young man when he was fresh out of drama school in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1 , Part 2 and Henry V , was thrilled by the prospect of bringing the character to life on screen through a new interpretation. He explains, “We decided to use Shakespeare’s plays as a launching pad, but somewhat depart from them. We’re using elements of true history, we’re borrowing from Shakespeare, and then we’re putting it through our own filter.”
Shakespeare’s plays and historical facts served as artistic fulcrums while Michôd and Edgerton focused on how to creatively swivel and bring a new angle to the well-known monarch’s story. They reworked the language and rebuilt the narrative. Michôd recalls, “We were changing the story so much that we were basically starting this project from scratch. I think our version feels relevant because it speaks to the almost dysfunctional nature of the institutions of power today.”
Over the following years the script gained a great reputation across Hollywood, but Michôd and Edgerton couldn’t find the right producing partners to help get the project off the ground. Meanwhile, both of their careers skyrocketed. In addition to their successful solo projects, the duo continued their creative collaborations on 2007’s short film Crossbow , 2010’s Animal Kingdom , and 2014’s The Rover . In 2017, Michôd partnered with Plan B and Netflix to write and direct War Machine . The director formed a close relationship with Academy Award®-winning Plan B producers Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner. While filming War Machine , the producers brought up the script for The King .
Both Gardner and Kleiner had read the script before working with Michôd on War Machine — it was one of the reasons they were excited to partner with the director. Kleiner says, “Reading the script for The King in its early incarnation made me even more eager to work with David on War Machine . I always remembered that script. There was something haunting about it; it’s a very modern look at power and masculinity. We all want to do better than the previous generation, but so often we end up making the same mistakes. I always thought the script was amazing, and collaborating on this project with Joel and David frankly just felt like a dream come true.”
Gardner recalls, “Our collaboration on The King was so organic. Jeremy and I had read the script when it first made the rounds in Hollywood — it was a script that really traveled in the industry. We were on set for War Machine and Jeremy and I just asked David what was happening with the project. He walked us through the stops and starts the project had gone through over the years, and it all began to take shape. The timing just worked out. I really believe these things happen for a reason.”
Gardner and Kleiner were both attracted to the script’s timely themes. Gardner explains, “I admired that David and Joel didn’t just want to do a literal translation of the Shakespeare text. They were more interested in the ideas behind the words, and that made the story feel very modern to us. When we see things set in a different era, we assume that it’s not a story about us. But sometimes the best way to examine and talk about what’s happening right now is to go back to a different place in time. I want people to see the movie and recognize themselves, not something that they can store away as period trifle.”
Michôd also recruited Australian producer Liz Watts of Porchlight Films, with whom he has a long-standing relationship dating back to his 2010 feature film directorial debut Animal Kingdom , to join the film. Watts had also been familiar with The King script for years and, similarly to Gardner and Kleiner, had been immediately struck by how it tackled modern themes. She says, “David has transformed a story set in the middle ages into something that is really relevant, and feels fresh and young. It’s a firmly anti-war film, and it’s also about the inheritance of mistakes; Henry V repeats his father’s mistakes, and I think that that transference is very interesting, particularly in a world run by men. David’s films have always examined men’s hubris and their ability, or inability, to deal with power. This movie has a real relevance to what’s happening in the world right now, and asks really pertinent questions about masculinity and the privilege of that power.”
To bring the complex narrative to life on screen, Gardner and Kleiner suggested a continued partnership with Netflix. In addition to War Machine , the producers had previously partnered with Netflix on 2017’s Okja , which earned director Joonho Bong a Palme d’Or nomination at the Cannes Film Festival, and both seasons of The OA . Gardner says, “Our experience with Netflix has been one of real risk-taking, and of real commitment to a filmmaker’s vision. War Machine and Okja are strange, wonderful, and singular films. We’ve had a lot of fun working with them because we’ve been able to dream as big as the filmmakers want to dream.”
With Netflix on board, production began in May 2018. The team shot in England from May through June, then moved to Hungary through the end of August to capture the large-scale battle sequences. Throughout the process, Michôd focused on how to visually and thematically differentiate The King from past iterations of the story. He says, “We wanted to create a world that was raw, dirty, and felt historically authentic, but also felt slightly otherworldly. Joel and I realized pretty early on that this movie was about power, and how people in positions of great power almost invariably find themselves incredibly lonely and isolated, and then become paranoid. When Hal becomes king his great desire is to be a different kind of king; to unite these warring factions by being a man of peace. He takes those ideals into an institution thinking that he’s going to transform that institution, and then suddenly realizes that once he’s inside it, he feels lonelier than he’s ever felt before. Instead of controlling the kingdom, the kingdom controls him.”
CASTING A NEW GENERATION
From the very beginning, Michôd wanted to make a film with a young cast. “Not only does it bring a certain energy to a movie,” he explains, “but it’s also historically authentic. The dirt and disease of the time period meant that people died much younger than they do today. I liked the idea of creating a world in which younger people were forced to grow up very quickly and to take on very adult responsibilities early in life. That younger age range also opened up a whole world of actors.”
For the lead role of wayward Prince Hal, there was no better fit than Academy Award® nominee Timothée Chalamet. Gardner and Kleiner had worked with Chalamet on 2018’s Beautiful Boy , for which the actor earned a Golden Globe® nomination, and immediately thought of him for the titular role. “There is just no one like him,” Gardner says. “He’s singular. Aside from his vast talent, which we’ve all seen, he’s also preternaturally mature. And yet he is still only 23 years old. I talked to him about the role, and he was looking to do something different — and this is different than anything he’s ever done. That’s exciting for an artist.”
Kleiner says, “There was a version of the film that would have a character who was a bit older in age, but by casting Timothée — who’s not just this incredibly gifted actor but also younger — you really see the story’s coming-of-age theme; you feel Hal’s loss of innocence and idealism. Timothée inhabits those themes and communicates that shift without a lot of dialogue.”
Michôd quickly agreed on the casting choice. “I needed a young man whose open soulfulness was completely visible,” the director says, “and Timmy’s exactly that. There’s something so beautifully commanding and yet soulful about him. He has a soulfulness that I haven’t seen in a young actor for quite a while.”
Chalamet was eager to join a project that would ultimately redefine his idea of Hollywood movies. He explains, “In my naiveté, it used to seem that filmmaking always fell between the poles of gritty truth and Hollywood blockbusters. But with David Michôd on this project, we’ve gotten to do both. This is the biggest movie I’ve been a part of, it’s an epic story, but David hasn’t sacrificed his commitment to truthful storytelling for the sake of scale.”
The actor was also excited to explore a new stretch of the emotional spectrum with the role of Hal. “I savoured the opportunity to play someone who had to be very guarded,” Chalamet says. “I often find myself in projects where the characters wear their emotions on their sleeves, and this was not the case at all. To be a politician, to be a leader, there’s an element of performance to it — but you also have to have a poker face and an ability to guard yourself.”
Like the producers, Chalamet immediately felt the story’s modern resonance. He explains, “We’re seeing this horrible global trend right now where people would rather assert themselves over the truth. Hal’s fighting against the machinations of power and at the same time trying to find himself as a man. Most political leaders assume power with the most moral of intentions, but there are forces at play that make it difficult to rule with a good hand. If you’re not careful, power can corrode your sense of self, and you can lose your purpose. At first, Hal uses his pacifist instincts in an attempt to differentiate himself from his father and every toxically masculine leader in this time period. In some ways, the movie’s about his inability, even with his strong ethical compass, to overcome that.”
Sir John Falstaff, Hal’s best friend, mentor, and one of the few people who will speak to him honestly even after he becomes king, was one of the script’s key characters from the beginning. Michôd says, “John Falstaff is one of the great Shakespearian characters, and an entirely Shakespearian conceit. We knew that if we were going to build a film around the relationship between Falstaff and Hal, we were never going to be able to leave Shakespeare behind completely. But we also knew that we wanted to invent a story and character of our own.”
The role had to be adapted for the new narrative. Falstaff appears in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2 , but is wholly absent in Henry V when his offstage death is only mentioned. “We knew that for us to mash this thing into the big beautiful movie we wanted to make that we needed to keep that character alive,” Michôd says. “What Joel and I have hopefully created is an interpretation of Falstaff that is our own. We wanted to engineer a Falstaff who was different, because we wanted to engineer a different relationship between him and Hal. Our Falstaff represents vanity and insecurity, but also fun and freedom. For us, he also needed to be a man who could hold himself on a battlefield.”
For Edgerton, the role offered a new avenue into an iconic character. “Falstaff is usually depicted as a very old, jolly, fat, and cowardly — yet realistic — person,” the actor explains. “Our challenge was to take that classic character and, with all respect and delicacy, mold him into something very different. Our Falstaff is younger and not in opposition to war because he’s cowardly or silly, but because he’s a battle-weary man who’s seen bad things and has decided he doesn’t want to go back. Yet, because of his friendship with Hal, he’s somewhat unwillingly drawn back in.”
The complex friendship between Hal and Falstaff plays a pivotal role in the film, both in the bar and on the battlefield. “It’s a challenging relationship,” Edgerton says. “After Hal becomes king, he soon finds himself surrounded by his father’s old inner circle. The one person he knows will speak to him openly and honestly is Falstaff; he represents an honest voice, someone who only speaks when necessary.”
Chalamet appreciated his character’s layered on-screen dynamic with Edgerton’s Falstaff. “Hal values Falstaff’s honest approach to life,” says Chalamet. “He speaks plainly and honestly with him. He’s also boisterous and free-spirited. Falstaff is the provider in some ways; he’s the supplier of the good time and knows how to do it because he’s of that world, he’s not a royal like Hal.”
Chalamet and Edgerton both felt privileged to share screen time together. “Timothée is such a fresh, sturdy young man, and very intelligent,” says Edgerton. Chalamet echoes, “Joel brings such life to this character. If you read the script you would think that Hal is the role you would want, but a wiser reader would go a layer below that and read the script and go, ‘Oh, wow, Falstaff is the role you want to do, this is fun.’”
Inside the palace walls, the newly crowned king finds a new chief advisor in William Gascoigne, a member of his late father’s coterie, played by Sean Harris. Complicated and cunning, William is the most mysterious player in palace politics. “I want him to creep up on you,” Michôd says of the character. “I loved watching Sean Harris bring William into scenes I had written. He would make these words that made complete sense to me sound so mysterious. The way he held himself and the way words came out of his mouth felt so gloriously unique and strange.”
To establish his character, Harris delved into the high-stakes reality of court life. “You’re in a world where you can be killed for looking at the king in the wrong way. You have to box clever and be very alive to the world that you’re in,” he says. “Ultimately, it’s about surviving.”
Harris also developed a close bond with Chalamet on set. “Timothée has a courage that is way, way ahead of his years. He isn’t frightened of not getting it right, not seeming cool,” Harris says. “He’s done me a lot of good, so I’m lucky to work with him. I probably got more from working with him than I have with any other actor in my career.”
Chalamet believes William is the richest role in the script. “The wisest reader would go a layer below Hal and a layer below Falstaff, read the part of William, and go, ‘Oh, this has all the room to play,’” Chalamet says. “Sean Harris has done a really brilliant job playing the role. What Sean does in this film is really a testament to the power of what goes unseen, or is seen in the background but just out of focus.”
CASTING A NEW GENERATION
From the very beginning, Michôd wanted to make a film with a young cast. “Not only does it bring a certain energy to a movie,” he explains, “but it’s also historically authentic. The dirt and disease of the time period meant that people died much younger than they do today. I liked the idea of creating a world in which younger people were forced to grow up very quickly and to take on very adult responsibilities early in life. That younger age range also opened up a whole world of actors.”
For the lead role of wayward Prince Hal, there was no better fit than Academy Award® nominee Timothée Chalamet. Gardner and Kleiner had worked with Chalamet on 2018’s Beautiful Boy , for which the actor earned a Golden Globe® nomination, and immediately thought of him for the titular role. “There is just no one like him,” Gardner says. “He’s singular. Aside from his vast talent, which we’ve all seen, he’s also preternaturally mature. And yet he is still only 23 years old. I talked to him about the role, and he was looking to do something different — and this is different than anything he’s ever done. That’s exciting for an artist.”
Kleiner says, “There was a version of the film that would have a character who was a bit older in age, but by casting Timothée — who’s not just this incredibly gifted actor but also younger — you really see the story’s coming-of-age theme; you feel Hal’s loss of innocence and idealism. Timothée inhabits those themes and communicates that shift without a lot of dialogue.”
Michôd quickly agreed on the casting choice. “I needed a young man whose open soulfulness was completely visible,” the director says, “and Timmy’s exactly that. There’s something so beautifully commanding and yet soulful about him. He has a soulfulness that I haven’t seen in a young actor for quite a while.”
Chalamet was eager to join a project that would ultimately redefine his idea of Hollywood movies. He explains, “In my naiveté, it used to seem that filmmaking always fell between the poles of gritty truth and Hollywood blockbusters. But with David Michôd on this project, we’ve gotten to do both. This is the biggest movie I’ve been a part of, it’s an epic story, but David hasn’t sacrificed his commitment to truthful storytelling for the sake of scale.”
The actor was also excited to explore a new stretch of the emotional spectrum with the role of Hal. “I savoured the opportunity to play someone who had to be very guarded,” Chalamet says. “I often find myself in projects where the characters wear their emotions on their sleeves, and this was not the case at all. To be a politician, to be a leader, there’s an element of performance to it — but you also have to have a poker face and an ability to guard yourself.”
Like the producers, Chalamet immediately felt the story’s modern resonance. He explains, “We’re seeing this horrible global trend right now where people would rather assert themselves over the truth. Hal’s fighting against the machinations of power and at the same time trying to find himself as a man. Most political leaders assume power with the most moral of intentions, but there are forces at play that make it difficult to rule with a good hand. If you’re not careful, power can corrode your sense of self, and you can lose your purpose. At first, Hal uses his pacifist instincts in an attempt to differentiate himself from his father and every toxically masculine leader in this time period. In some ways, the movie’s about his inability, even with his strong ethical compass, to overcome that.”
Sir John Falstaff, Hal’s best friend, mentor, and one of the few people who will speak to him honestly even after he becomes king, was one of the script’s key characters from the beginning. Michôd says, “John Falstaff is one of the great Shakespearian characters, and an entirely Shakespearian conceit. We knew that if we were going to build a film around the relationship between Falstaff and Hal, we were never going to be able to leave Shakespeare behind completely. But we also knew that we wanted to invent a story and character of our own.”
The role had to be adapted for the new narrative. Falstaff appears in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2 , but is wholly absent in Henry V when his offstage death is only mentioned. “We knew that for us to mash this thing into the big beautiful movie we wanted to make that we needed to keep that character alive,” Michôd says. “What Joel and I have hopefully created is an interpretation of Falstaff that is our own. We wanted to engineer a Falstaff who was different, because we wanted to engineer a different relationship between him and Hal. Our Falstaff represents vanity and insecurity, but also fun and freedom. For us, he also needed to be a man who could hold himself on a battlefield.”
For Edgerton, the role offered a new avenue into an iconic character. “Falstaff is usually depicted as a very old, jolly, fat, and cowardly — yet realistic — person,” the actor explains. “Our challenge was to take that classic character and, with all respect and delicacy, mold him into something very different. Our Falstaff is younger and not in opposition to war because he’s cowardly or silly, but because he’s a battle-weary man who’s seen bad things and has decided he doesn’t want to go back. Yet, because of his friendship with Hal, he’s somewhat unwillingly drawn back in.”
The complex friendship between Hal and Falstaff plays a pivotal role in the film, both in the bar and on the battlefield. “It’s a challenging relationship,” Edgerton says. “After Hal becomes king, he soon finds himself surrounded by his father’s old inner circle. The one person he knows will speak to him openly and honestly is Falstaff; he represents an honest voice, someone who only speaks when necessary.”
Chalamet appreciated his character’s layered on-screen dynamic with Edgerton’s Falstaff. “Hal values Falstaff’s honest approach to life,” says Chalamet. “He speaks plainly and honestly with him. He’s also boisterous and free-spirited. Falstaff is the provider in some ways; he’s the supplier of the good time and knows how to do it because he’s of that world, he’s not a royal like Hal.”
Chalamet and Edgerton both felt privileged to share screen time together. “Timothée is such a fresh, sturdy young man, and very intelligent,” says Edgerton. Chalamet echoes, “Joel brings such life to this character. If you read the script you would think that Hal is the role you would want, but a wiser reader would go a layer below that and read the script and go, ‘Oh, wow, Falstaff is the role you want to do, this is fun.’”
Inside the palace walls, the newly crowned king finds a new chief advisor in William Gascoigne, a member of his late father’s coterie, played by Sean Harris. Complicated and cunning, William is the most mysterious player in palace politics. “I want him to creep up on you,” Michôd says of the character. “I loved watching Sean Harris bring William into scenes I had written. He would make these words that made complete sense to me sound so mysterious. The way he held himself and the way words came out of his mouth felt so gloriously unique and strange.”
To establish his character, Harris delved into the high-stakes reality of court life. “You’re in a world where you can be killed for looking at the king in the wrong way. You have to box clever and be very alive to the world that you’re in,” he says. “Ultimately, it’s about surviving.”
Harris also developed a close bond with Chalamet on set. “Timothée has a courage that is way, way ahead of his years. He isn’t frightened of not getting it right, not seeming cool,” Harris says. “He’s done me a lot of good, so I’m lucky to work with him. I probably got more from working with him than I have with any other actor in my career.”
Chalamet believes William is the richest role in the script. “The wisest reader would go a layer below Hal and a layer below Falstaff, read the part of William, and go, ‘Oh, this has all the room to play,’” Chalamet says. “Sean Harris has done a really brilliant job playing the role. What Sean does in this film is really a testament to the power of what goes unseen, or is seen in the background but just out of focus.”
For the vital role of King Henry IV, Hal’s father, Michôd turned to actor Ben Mendelsohn, who he had previously worked with on 2010’s Animal Kingdom . “I knew very quickly that I wanted Ben Mendelsohn to play that role,” the director says. “Because that character dies, I knew I wanted someone who could just set the screen on fire in that holy, beautiful, dangerous, unpredictable way that Ben can.”
Mendelsohn completed his scenes in three days of filming, and was thrilled to work with Michôd again while exploring a divisive character. “David has a great deal of patience with his performers,” Mendelsohn says. “King Henry IV is quite a capable king, if you like old school, iron fist ruling. But the kingdom’s in a bad way, and he’s dying. And he’s afraid because young Hal is showing every sign that he’s going to be a disaster of a ruler.”
Though King Henry IV only appears in a few key scenes, Michôd knew he was crucial in highlighting Hal’s core motivations. “I wanted to highlight the great contrast between Henry IV and Henry V,” says the director. “Henry V vows to be a different kind of king, to not be the tyrant that his father was, and then you slowly discover over the course of the movie that tyranny might be unavoidable.”
The film opens with the last scene shot during production: Sir Henry Percy, better known as Hotspur, roams a smouldering battlefield, his army victorious over the rebel Scots. An English noble as famous for his temper as his fighting skills, Hotspur is Hal’s foil in every way.
Michôd explains, “Hotspur is the embodiment of an entire country’s dissatisfaction with the rule of King Henry IV. All of that chaos and strife that has come as a consequence of Henry IV’s maniacal and completely dysfunctional rule is encapsulated in this fiery young man who, at the beginning of the movie, represents everything that Hal is not. He has conviction, stature, and a great sense of bravery and selflessness. And Hal, by contrast, is seemingly lost, ineffectual, and selfish.”
Actor Tom Glynn-Carney won the role by sending in a taped audition. “Tom’s tape was bold,” Michôd recalls. “More than anything, I could just see that fire in him that we needed to burn bright at the opening of this movie. He was instantly powerful.”
Glynn-Carney was attracted to Hotspur’s unpredictable nature. “He constantly feels like he’s at a boiling point,” the actor says. “Those characters are always fun to play because the stakes are always higher; everything is on the brink of an eruption. He’s feral, explosive, and loyal.”
When Hal inherits the throne from his father, he also inherits a long list of his father’s rivalries, including a contentious relationship with France’s King Charles (Thibault de Montalembert) and his son and heir the Dauphin (Robert Pattinson). Hal ignores the Dauphin’s rude coronation gift — a single tennis ball with no note — and is only swayed to take action and invade France when an assassin arrives at the palace claiming to have been given orders from King Charles himself to kill the King of England.
“The Dauphin is an arch villain and a dandy psychopath,” says Michôd. “He manages to get under Hal’s skin and wreak havoc. This movie is about an English king invading France for multiple complex reasons, but it was always important to me that one of those reasons be Hal’s anger about being taunted by a jerk.”
Michôd had previously worked with Pattinson on 2014’s The Rover and knew his inventive, playful nature would lend itself well to the role. “I just knew that he would have fun with this character, and I knew it would be very different from anything he had done before,” says Michôd. “This cast is so young, and as young as Rob is, he’s part of an older generation in the movie. I liked the idea of him and Timmy having such an antagonistic relationship and seeing how that might play out.”
Pattinson agreed that the role offered him new artistic territory. “It’s definitely something different,” he says. “The Dauphin is a bit of a mischievous antagonist. It’s fun to play a slightly unhinged character, especially one so flamboyant and fearless. He’s quite a dispassionate person; he’s not thinking about how to be a good leader like Hal, he just wants to be rich and live life as a vain lush.”
Both Chalamet and Pattinson found their characters’ dynamic fascinating. Chalamet says, “The more interesting sublayer to their relationship is that Hal feels a real brotherhood with the Dauphin. He sees him as the son of a royal who’s also dealing with power in self-destructive ways.”
Pattinson adds, “Timothée is one of the best young actors around. It’s fun to play two people who are in such different mindsets. The Dauphin doesn’t really realize the level of Hal’s determination. He got the impetuous genes and his sister Catherine got the sensible genes.”
Catherine de Valois, the Dauphin’s sister, proves a pivotal character in the story. After King Henry V’s victory at the Battle of Agincourt, King Charles offers his daughter Catherine up as a bride for the King of England. During her few crucial scenes, Catherine proves to be intelligent, observant, and one of the few people who’s unafraid to tell Hal the truth.
Michôd says of the character, “In the Shakespeare play, Henry V just has a series of deeply unsatisfying flirtations with Catherine and then the story is over. We knew that we wanted her to serve a much more potent function than that. This world is so completely dominated by vain men that women get squeezed out. But then they are able to look at the world from the outside with a clarity that the men in the middle of it don’t have. And that’s what Catherine offers in this story.”
For the role, the director cast actor Lily-Rose Depp because of her arresting audition. “It’s a really challenging role,” says Michôd, “not just because of the subtle movements of the scenes themselves, but the accent is difficult. Lily-Rose has an American father and a French mother. She speaks fluent English and she’s capable of speaking with a flawless French accent. We got lucky with her. She had every skill we needed, and she’s young but world-wise in the same way that Catherine is. They’ve both seen a lot of the world, and seen it in strange forms.”
Depp was pleasantly surprised by Catherine’s arc when she read the script. “I had never seen, or read, such a strong female character in a story that takes place in this time period,” she says. “I was really impressed by her ability to speak all of these truths to King Henry with such confidence and power. She was a very smart and powerful woman, especially for an era that was full of male domination and male power.”
In the film’s third act, Hal’s newly betrothed bride plays a vital role in offering the king much-needed perspective after the brutal and perhaps ill-advised Battle of Agincourt. She calls attention to Hal’s questionable motives and dangerous dissent into warmongering when others won’t.
Chalamet recognized the importance of his scenes with Depp. “I think Catherine represents what’s good, right, and intelligent; what’s well thought-out and not driven by toxic masculine instinct, but rather by perspective,” he says. “Lily-Rose played the role with this almost otherworldly quality, which contrasts with the grimness and violence of war.”
On a broader level, Catherine highlights one of the film’s consistent themes. Michôd explains, “I’m not unaware of the fact that I’ve gone and made yet another movie that is about, on some level, toxic masculinity and the dangerous vanities of men. This is a movie that’s full of men. But when I make these movies that are about narcissistic, if not psychopathic, men who are ruining the world, it’s always important for me to find the places that women occupy in that world and how they function.”
In addition to Catherine, the film’s other key female characters — King Henry V’s younger sister Queen Philippa of Denmark (Thomasin McKenzie) and the Eastcheap tavern hostess Hooper (Tara Fitzgerald) — offer essential perspective. After King Henry V’s coronation feast, Philippa offers her older brother some hard-won advice about the men who seem so eager to support him now. Court, as she’s learned in her time as a young queen, is full of men who will always value their own personal kingdoms above Henry’s.
McKenzie says of her character, “I was attracted to this role because Philippa has wisdom beyond her years. She was married off very young for the political advantage of England. But she is strong and very smart and has been able to see through her own experience how the world works. She loves her brother and is able to advise him on how to beware of the people in his court who are seeking to manipulate him.”
McKenzie also sees the contemporary themes in her character’s arc. “We are still looking for ways in which women’s experience can be valued in a man’s world,” she says. “The scenes in which women appear in The King are all crucial to how we judge the story. We are like a magnifying glass on this world.”
Hooper, a character who’s always observant and candid, serves as a similar source of truth for Falstaff. Fitzgerald says, “Hooper is there to remind Falstaff about friendship, and about reality. She matches him in ingenuity. I was taken by her spirit and relative freedom. She’s a woman who has economic independence, who is successful in business, and is mistress of her own domain. This isn’t a typical medieval period film. It seems to have a gimlet eye on the present and to possess something very real and subversive in its belly.”
Edgerton hopes audiences will recognize the message behind the film’s third act, when Hal recognizes how vital Catherine is to his success as a ruler. He says, “The moment Hal sits on the throne, the same pollution that clouded his father starts to consume him. We watch him become a tyrant. This is a film that’s overloaded with men. Yet, there was some kind of joy and satisfaction knowing that at the end of it all, along comes Catherine. From the beginning, David said that Catherine needed to be the voice of reason. She needed to be the mirror that’s held up to Hal, and the person who shows him what he’s become. At the end of it, this incredibly strong woman sees through what he’s done.”
CRAFTING THE KING
To create the realm of The King , Michôd relied heavily on his heads of department, all at the top of their craft. He says, “Any movie, but especially one with as much world-building as this one, requires me having full confidence in the people around me, and especially the heads of department.”
To score The King , filmmakers approached Academy Award®-nominated composer Nicholas Britell. Gardner and Kleiner had previously worked with Britell on Moonlight , If Beale Street Could Talk , Vice , and The Big Short . Kleiner says, “Nicholas Britell is one of our most treasured collaborators. His scores are so different from one another, but are all connected by excellence and ambition. Nick has a gift for finding a language that’s consistent with a filmmaker’s vision, and we were so excited to see what he and David would come up with together.”
Britell worked to craft a timeless sound that, similarly to the film’s key themes, could apply to a story set in any time period. Britell explains, “Although it’s set in the early 15th century, The King tells a story with themes that resonate in any time period. My first instinct upon seeing a rough cut of the film was actually to imagine that the film was set not in the 15th century but in the 25th century. I tried to think of a set of sounds that could work in either the past or the future.”
The first set of sounds Britell created was a series of bass clarinets run through a variety of tape filter effects. “The result was a sound which felt organic yet quite mysterious and strange at the same time,” he says. “I continued down that path and made a set of bent strings and warped metallic sounds.”
From there, Britell added a string orchestra with an instrumentation favoring lower strings over higher strings, and a boys’ choir. “The choir resonated emotionally and symbolically for the story of a young man becoming king,” he says.
To visually translate the film’s timeless themes, Michôd relied on Emmy Award-winning director of photography Adam Arkapaw, who he’d previously worked with on 2010’s Animal Kingdom and the 2008 short I Love Sarah Jane . “Great care was taken in setting this film with authentic historical dressing,” says Arkapaw. “However, we did want it to feel a bit otherworldly. A lot of the color palette is muted to achieve the sense that this boy who had been living free and easy is now trapped in a heavy environment.”
To visually emphasize Henry V’s entrapment and capture the sweeping scale of the film, Arkapaw shot in digital on an Arri Alexa 65 camera. “We shot in the biggest format you can apart from IMAX, and I loved that format for this film because Hal is dragged into governance and suddenly surrounded by all these powerful men who all have agendas,” Arkapaw explains. “With this format, all these people who surround him always feel really present in the frame; they’re on top of him and towering over him at all times.”
Arkapaw and Michôd also discussed the importance of the relationship between King Henry V and Catherine de Valois. “Women really have the most wise perspective in David’s films,” says Arkapaw. “While the men are lost in their vanities and their sea of thoughts and desires, the women are able to tell them what to be careful of and what’s really going on beneath the surface. And Catherine does that.”
THE KING
Release Date: November 1, 2019
Directed By: David Michôd
Written By: David Michôd and Joel Edgerton
Produced By: Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Liz Watts, David Michôd and Joel Edgerton
Director of Photography: Adam Arkapaw
Production Designer: Fiona Crombie
Editor: Peter Sciberras
Costume Designer: Jane Petrie
Music By: Nicholas Britell
Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Tom Glynn-Carney, Lily-Rose Depp, Thomasin McKenzie with Robert Pattinson and Ben Mendelsohn
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