‘Knightfall’: Julian Ovenden On Playing Guillaume De Nogaret In New History Series

Julian Ovenden plays the scheming Guillaume de Nogaret in the new History series “Knightfall.” And while De Nogaret — the right-hand man of the King of France (Ed Stoppard) — appears to be the main villain of the show, Ovenden revealed that he didn’t portray the character as a baddie.

“I didn’t try to play him as a bad guy, I tried to play him as a sort of anti-hero, the polar opposite to Tom Cullen’s character of Landry,” Ovenden said in a recent interview with Parade. “His main motivation is to France, to attain as much power and money as possible and to be as successful as possible, whereas Landry’s motive is to keep the Holy Grail, to keep the brotherhood intact. And De Nogaret goes to the nth degree to try and keep France in power and as strong as possible.”

Although Ovenden acknowledges the fact that De Nogaret “does some pretty terrible things” in the duration of the 10-episode Season 1 of the Don Handfield and Richard Rayner-created series, the actor said that he doesn’t want De Nogaret to appear as a stock villain. “I wanted to make him a believable character rather than a stock villain,” the 41-year-old actor. “I suppose, in a similar way to Francis Underwood in ‘House of Cards.’”

While the De Nogaret was behind the cruel eviction of the Jews out of Paris in the series premiere, Ovenden thinks that his character gets some sympathy from the audience. “There’s a certain delight in watching someone who is very politically astute and able to read people,” the “Downton Abbey” alum said. “There’s a delight in watching those people at work. But he does have a vulnerability, I think, and he’s a humanist. He stands apart from most of the other characters in the show who are driven by religious zeal.”

Playing a character in a period piece has its own challenges, but Ovenden said that the production budget for “Knightfall” has made his work on the series a little bit easier. “We have fantastic costumes. We have wonderful designs. And we shot in Prague, which was a wonderful place to shoot in six months,” Ovenden told OhSoGray.com at the Britannia Awards last October when asked what it’s like to work on the series. “There’s huge amount of money being spent on the details. And it was great fun. It’s like being in a big budget film. It’s wonderful. You have to do less work in a way because a lot it has been done for you.”

“Knightfall” airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. EST on History.