Can you help me, and others who will watch it, understand why an unsuccessful religious insurrection is still celebrated?

The ‘Game of Thrones’ actor stars in and produces a new thriller set around the origins of Guy Fawkes Night

Kit Harington as Robert Catesby in ‘Gunpowder’. by a group of young men. And it hadn’t really been told much before.

You see, that’s the funny thing — really why it became remembered is because the government made it a national holiday so every Catholic in the land, and everyone thinking about treason, would remember the 5th of November and why they shouldn’t do what they’re thinking of doing. It was a piece of propaganda. Now it’s become this wonderful evening of toffee apples and fireworks and fun and mulled wine. It’s changed its meaning.

But really, as an American, you probably know about as much about it as the average Brit. You ask the average English person on the street, ‘What do you know about the Gunpowder Plot?,’ and they kind of know the name Guy Fawkes, that it’s sort of about people blowing up Parliament, but that’s about it.

The Guy Fawkes portrayed here might surprise people who basically know him from the mask, which has a certain debonair quality.

Guy Fawkes was a brutal mercenary Catholic. He was very religious and wanted to fight for the faith, and he was brought in as an explosives expert. He certainly wasn’t debonair — he was a violent man, one the other plotters seem to have been quite scared of in many ways. So we based it on history. V for Vendetta [the graphic novel and the 2006 film adaptation, tracking a revolutionary anarchist], which I love, brought round the Occupy Wall Street kind of nihilistic mask that we know about as Guy Fawkes. But the name has sort of been twisted away from who the person was.

is quite gory, with scenes of disembowelling and other torture. How do you balance being historically accurate with not revolting viewers?

It WAS revolting. You can’t tell a piece of history realistically if you’re avoiding