World Without End Q&As

19 December 2012

CYNTHIA NIXON (PETRANILLA)

Tell me about your character in World Without End.

I play Petranilla, who's really not what she appears to be. When she first shows up, she seems like a dutiful aunt, sister and mother, and as the story progresses, you discover there's a lot more to play; this is a woman of tremendous thwarted ambition that has driven her to a very murderous place.

They say that most people harbour greater ambitions for their children than they do for themselves.

I think, particularly for a woman living at that time whose ambitions are so curtailed and circumscribed, there are always things she wants for herself - namely, wealth and power - that are really not available to her. However, she has a son and I think a lot of women, particularly in earlier times, rather than have ambition for themselves, they would instead channel it through their children, particularly their sons.

 

Let's talk about Godwyn, because he does become a tool, which she wields to her needs, so to speak. He's an interesting character himself, and he's very much under her sway.

Her pride and joy, and the vehicle for all her ambition is her son, Godwyn. Petranilla feels she's smarter than him, and that sometimes she has to spoon-feed him a little. I think one of the interesting things about their relationship is that she underestimates her son. On the one hand, she puts him up on a pedestal, and he's her everything. He's going to be successful and she's determined to get him there by any means. However, by doing so she unwittingly ends up teaching him lessons in viciousness and duplicity that she doesn't realise might be turned against her in the end.

 

Could you talk about a few of the other characters that Petranilla comes into contact with?

Peter Firth plays Sir Roland, and they have a long, romantic but painful history together. Even though she was never married to him, she sees him as the love of her life. Sir Roland keeps reappearing as a key figure in her world, and he wields a tremendous amount of power within the community, town and even the country. Most of all he has his own power over her because she's still completely in love with him.

There's also Caris Wooler, played by Charlotte Riley, who is her niece. The two of them have a very uneasy relationship and alliance. She needs Caris and Caris needs her, but as the story goes on, my character, Petranilla, unmasks herself more and more and rather than view Caris as the daughter she never had, she starts to see her a s a rival.

 

How does the role of the Church play a part in Petranilla's actions and the community's reaction to the destructive plague?

The Bubonic Plague provides the terrifying and devastating backdrop to the srtory, everyone is affected by it in some way. Like any natural disaster or disease, it's so frightening to know what to do, particularly at that period in history. At least nowadays we think we'll wash our hands and stay inside, but at that time, there were so many contradictory ideas about what might help, or why the plague was happening. Was it a judgement from God? Were there evil people in our midst? Were we not holy enough? Petranilla is not a religious person at all. Even though she has chosen the path of the church for her son, it's because it's a path to power, not for any religious feeling she has. So while other people in the story fall victim to superstition, she uses superstition as a means to an end.

 

Was your initial attraction to the production through the book? Or did you read the script first? How did the story reach you?

As it's an eight-hour mini-series there‘s a lot to read. So even before I read it, I was given a pretty good description of the character and what she's like, what she goes through and perpetrates. I thought she sounded like a really fascinating individual, a really juicy and evil character, so that peaked my interest right away. I read the book once I'd been cast, and it helped me become fully immersed in the character and story. It works on a national level, the emergence of the nation, it works on the emergence of the town, but it also is very much a power struggle within the family. Not a noble family but a merchant family. Our story shows you don't have to live in a castle to do bloody deeds.