USA TODAY International Edition
Henry VIII’s ‘ Six Wives’ finally have a say
PBS’ riveting retelling takes the women’s point of view
Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. You know how the old rhyme goes. Do we really need another TV series about the six wives of maritally challenged Henry VIII?
Yes, because this time, instead of another lavish historical drama about the obsessed English king who married six times ( as in Showtime’s The Tudors and PBS
Masterpiece’s Wolf Hall), we have a historical re- enactment documentary series coming to PBS that is told from the point of view of the wives themselves.
This is new because Henry tends to hog the stage in the telling and retelling of Tudor history. But the truly unprecedented aspect of the three episodes of Se
crets of the Six Wives ( Jan. 22, 10 p. m., PBS; times may vary) is that the historian- host herself plays a role in the re- enactments in the BBC co- production.
“I play the part of the most nosy servant in history,” says Lucy Worsley, chuckling.
There she is in a corner, wearing a 16th- century servant’s dress and listening closely while Henry examines an exquisite Christmas gift from his eventual second wife, the doomed Anne Boleyn. As the king and Anne depart for a walk in the garden, Worsley breaks scene and addresses the camera, explaining how this is a start of a relationship that will change history — and not end well.
This approach is different, says Worsley, who got the idea from her real- life job as chief curator of Britain’s six Historic Royal Palaces, such as the Tower of London and Hampton Court, which are open to the public as museums.
“I spend a lot of my time in these palaces taking people around and very often we use costumed guides, which is more an American thing,” says Worsley, familiar for her programs about Britain’s royal history and palaces and a more recent documentary on Ovation about the Palace of Versailles that accompanied the BBC2 drama series of the same name.
“I am interested in experiencing what it was really like in the past,” she said. “When you put on a Tudor velvet cloak at Hampton Court ... it’s amazing how just a glimpse of a costume down a corridor can bring ( the past) to life.”
In Secrets, Worsley aims to bring to life a part of history she thinks has been neglected. The wives, she says, have been mistreated by historians over the centuries, almost as much as they were maligned by Henry as mad, bad and slutty.
“What tended to dominate is what Henry wanted us to think,” she says. “It’s when you look at it from the wives’ point of view that you get fresh insight into what is going on. You look at old sources in a new way.”
The first wife, Catherine of Aragon, has come down through history as bitter and twisted, hanging around and haranguing Henry, refusing to be divorced. “I wanted to introduce her to people anew, as someone who was admirable and who behaved with enormous dignity,” under lifethreatening circumstances, Worsley says.
It’s time to tell this tragic Tudor story in a new way, Worsley says.
“It’s almost like a myth in that each generation has to tell it afresh,” Worsley says. “Ours is very much a 2017 version. ... Ours is about the real- life trials and tribulations, dramas and traumas.”