James Norton, 41, who plays Lord Ormund Hightower in HBO's House of the Dragon, described the show as "the biggest, best, sexiest circus in the world". Speaking on The Arts Hour on the BBC World Service, he praised the scale of the production, which recently concluded its latest season.
"The set builds were extraordinary, the armour, the sword, everything is kind of like pitch perfect. These kind of shows, you're so supported. There's so many people, thousands and thousands of people," he said.
"So, in a way, I felt like I was joining this massive circus, but it was the sort of biggest, best, sexiest circus in the world. You have all the stunts and the machines and the toys and everything else. So it's fun. It's a big old playground. I’ve never been on a set like it."
Attention to detail on the Tumbleton set
Norton was particularly struck by the detail of the vast set, built at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in Hertfordshire. "My main set was this place called Tumbleton, which is like a three-quarters of an acre build. They basically built a town," he said. "You could walk around the town. It would take you a good 10 to 15 minutes, and you'd be going down different streets, and every so often I'd find like a door, and I'd open it, and inside would be this incredible carving."
"Someone has spent hours on this door. And I'm like, ‘that's never going to get in shot.’ But for me, as I'm standing waiting to enter the scene from this door, and I'm looking at it, that actually lifts your game." He added: "And then when it's released, that's when I was like, wow, this is global. This is nuts. I've never been meme'd so much in my life."
Norton acknowledged the pressure of joining a world with devoted fans. "One of the pressures is that you're aware you're never going to know as much about the world as the die-hard fans. You can research the character as much... there will always be a team of people who just know so much more. So, in a way, you relax. That's a pressure which I sort of tried to contend with and then gave up on."
Shooting the Beatles biopic in Barcelona
Norton is now playing Beatles manager Brian Epstein in Sam Mendes's upcoming film about the band. He spent five weeks shooting in Barcelona with Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison. "The boys are extraordinary. They're playing all the tunes themselves. They've spent this incredible amount of time learning their instruments. Paul Mescal's playing the bass with his left hand, he's flipped sides. They're really tight, and they're having an immense amount of fun," he said.
Much of the Barcelona shoot recreated the Beatles' 1965 concert at Shea Stadium in New York, staged at the Montjuic stadium in the city. "Talk about pressure," said Norton. "You think the pressure on them is extraordinary. And yet, credit to Sam Mendes and the boys that they've managed to maintain a playfulness, which is key to The Beatles, because whenever you saw The Beatles interviewed or playing, they just were messing around. They were having the time of their lives."
As a keen cold-water swimmer, Norton took advantage of the ice bath on set in Barcelona. "We had one in our unit base. It was so lovely," he said. "The boys are doing strenuous activity, they're on stage playing. I'm standing watching, being sort of adoring. But once you stand on set for a long time, there's nothing better than getting into some ice-cold water."
Career highlights and personal life
This is the first time the Beatles and their families have handed over their music and life stories to a movie. Director Sam Mendes is making four films, one through the eyes of each band member, for release in 2028, with Saoirse Ronan as Linda McCartney and Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono. The cast also includes David Morrissey as Paul's father Jim McCartney, Aimee Lou Wood as George's wife Pattie Boyd, Mia McKenna-Bruce as Ringo's first wife Maureen Starkey, and Harry Lloyd as producer George Martin.
Norton, who built his name as Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley, earning a Bafta nomination in 2015, said: "There's something incredibly empowering about that, playing the bad man. You feel kind of invincible, because he doesn't care what people think about him." He has also appeared in Grantchester, War and Peace, McMafia, Little Women, and the Bob Marley film One Love. He led the Netflix drama House of Guinness and takes the throne as Harold in the 1066 epic King and Conqueror, opposite Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as William the Conqueror.
Bookmakers have long made him a favourite to become the next James Bond, but he has ruled that out. "I've been asked a thousand times over the last 10 years. And I can honestly, hand on heart, say no. I think I may be a little bit long in the tooth now," he said. Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 22, Norton campaigns as an ambassador for the charity Breakthrough T1D, and has read a CBeebies bedtime story to help children understand the condition, which his mother and sister also have. He has never let diabetes hold him back, saying: "I never thought for a moment it would slow me down."
