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 The Virgin Queen
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The Virgin Queen
Starts on 91Èȱ¬ ONE on Sunday 22 January at 9.00pm
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Robert Pugh plays Lord Chancellor Gardiner
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It's plain to see what attracted Robert Pugh to the role of hard-nosed politician Stephen Gardiner.
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"The weaponry!" he laughs with a gleam in his eye, as he shows off a dashing cut and thrust with a rather vicious-looking sword.
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But it's the cut and thrust of the political world that Gardiner really excels at.
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A high flyer under Henry VIII, he fell foul of Henry's successor Edward but returned to a position of power when Mary Tudor inherited the throne.
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And recognising his ruthless streak, Mary entrusts to him the task of exposing a Protestant plot to unseat her for Elizabeth.
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"Mary gives my character, Gardiner, the job of getting a confession out of Elizabeth and Thomas Wyatt," explains seasoned Welsh actor Robert, recently seen as Mr Allen in the Oscar-winning Master And Commander.
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"He interrogates Elizabeth rather rigorously; I think he enjoys it!"
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Nevertheless, he gets nowhere with the astute and determined princess, even though she can hear Wyatt's screams as he's tortured in the Tower.
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"We put him on the rack to try and get him to spill the beans on her, and to persuade her to confess, but we get nowhere and Wyatt actually proclaims Elizabeth's innocence just before he is executed – to Mary's displeasure.
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"She wanted him to confess, badly, so she could get rid of Elizabeth who she saw as a real threat.
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"Gardiner wanted her head too," continues Robert, "but through her strong will and the lack of evidence, he doesn't get it."
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In the end he's lucky not to lose his own head when Elizabeth becomes Queen upon Mary's death.
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"He gets his comeuppance when he says to Elizabeth, 'I was only ever acting out of duty' – and she just looks at him and says, 'Your duty's done', and off she goes," reveals Robert.
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"It says it all really because he's put her through a very bad time and she knows that he wanted her to lose her head, so he has to go; out with the old, in with the new.
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"No one knows exactly what happened to him after that, he just disappeared from history," he continues, speculating that Gardiner thought it was better to vanish before Elizabeth changed her mind and decided on a more severe punishment than merely being banished from Court.
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Despite Gardiner bouncing back from imprisonment under Edward, there was little chance of any rehabilitation with Elizabeth.
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"He goes with Mary, his puts all his eggs in one basket and that's it really; that's his big mistake," says Robert.
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"I can't understand why he did it, to be honest, because he's been around a lot, he's a wiley politician. He was used to the life around Westminster, very cut-throat and backstabbing and all that, and very much keeping an eye out for where the power was coming from and aligning to it.
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"He just picked the wrong horse at the last – I don't know why, I think perhaps it was the Protestant/Catholic argument."
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Despite ending up on the wrong side, Robert – whose TV credits number some of the best drama in recent years including Shameless, New Tricks, Hustle, Clocking Off, Waking The Dead and Silent Witness – enjoyed his time as Gardiner.
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"He's as cold as the stone in Whitehall," he laughs, "but that's good [to play] because you know your objective and you just go for it really.
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"All politicians are villainous – he's a treacherous man, self-made, mercantile class; he's come up from the ranks so he's not born of the aristocracy.
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"He has this lust for power, which he gets, but once you get it I suppose you want more and that's his downfall."
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