The Last Kingdom star Alexander Dreymon has advice for The Winter King cast

Bernard Cornwell has been writing historical novels for decades, and a lot of them have shown up onscreen. Most notably, The Last Kingdom — an adaptation of his Saxon Stories books — just ended a five-season run on Netflix with a movie called Seven Kings Must Die. Other viewers may remember Sharpe, a TV show starring Sean Bean as a British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars; that one’s based on a Cornwell series, too.

Next up, ITVX is adapting Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles for the small screen. The show is named after the first book in the trilogy: The Winter King.

The Warlord Chronicles is a retelling of the legend of King Arthur. Cornwell brings his flair to historical fiction to it, resulting in a tale that’s both mythical and grounded in reality. I read these books when I was younger and loved them; I’ve been waiting for someone to turn them into a TV show for ages, so I’m psyched about this.

Alexander Dreymon advises The Winter King cast to get input from Bernard Cornwell

I suspect part of the reason ITVX is making The Winter King is because The Last Kingdom was a success. The star of that show, Alexander Dreymon, has some advice for Iain De Caestecker, who plays Arthur. “I would say, if there’s any chance for him to meet with and hang out with Bernard Cornwell, I would jump on that chance,” Dreymon told RadioTimes. “First of all, he’s such a wonderful man and great fun to hang out with, but he’s [also] such a wealth of resources. And to build your character, it is such a luxury to have him in your corner.”

Cornwell ended up really appreciating what Dreymon brought to the character of Uhtred of Bebbanburg; he even dedicated to the final book in his Saxon Stories series, Warlord, to Dreymon and the team behind The Last Kingdom. So the cast of The Winter King should take Dreymon’s advice seriously.

“I remember after shooting the first season, the only moment that I truly got nervous was when Bernard watched the first episode,” Dreymon said in another interview. “I was standing in the back of the room and I was literally shaking with anxiety. And then [he] came up to me and [he was] very complimentary and that meant the world.”

Incidentally, the main character of The Warlord Chronicles isn’t Arthur; it’s one of Arthur’s knights: a man named Derfel, played on the new show by Stuart Campbell. We see Arthur’s story through his eyes.

There’s no release date for The Winter King as of yet, but we’ll be looking out for it.

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