Olivier-award winning actor Mark Rylance and Homeland star Damian Lewis are coming to west Wiltshire next month, for a TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s multiple award-winning novel Wolf Hall.
A BBC film crew will take over Great Chalfield Manor, near Holt, for most of April, as it doubles for the home Henry VIII’s chief advisor Thomas Cromwell.
The Booker Prize-winning novel is set in 1500, and charts Cromwell's rise through the Tudor court.
The six-part BBC adaptation of the novel and its sequel, Bring up the Bodies, will air in 2015, and will star Rylance as Thomas Cromwell.
The 53-year-old won plaudits in 2010 when he appeared as Johnny Byron in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, a character inspired by real-life Pewsey builder Micky Lay.
The Eton-educated Damian Lewis shot to global fame in US TV conspiracy thriller Homeland, and also appeared alongside Tom Hanks in Band of Brothers.
Great Chalfield Manor is owned by the National Trust, and was used as a location for Hollywood film The Other Boleyn Girl, as well as Channel 4’s New Worlds, which starts tomorrow night.
Its current tenants are Robert and Patsy Floyd, descendants of the house’s original owner.
Mrs Floyd said: “The manor will be Cromwell’s house, it’s quite a major location for Wolf Hall.
“They start filming on April 7, and are there for most of the month.
“We have got Damian Lewis, he is playing Henry VII, but he’s not coming down until later, and Mark Rylance, but they will both be here.
“We get a bit blasé about them coming down now as it’s hugely disruptive to us.
“We’re still open to visitors. They have to fit in with the filming but we do manage it.
“We try not to do too much filming here, The Other Boleyn Girl, with Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman was the last one they did here.
“That was much more of the garden, so people hardly recognise it, but this time it’s mostly inside the house they’re filming.”
The main Great Chalfield Road will be closed to traffic on April 9 and 10 to allow for overhead lighting to be installed.
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