François Arnaud (Cesare Borgia)

A smile breaks across his slim, serious face. “To be honest, I’m not sure I was ready for it,” he says. “But it felt great.”

The same could be said about the success of his breakout role in the hit Emmy- and Gemini Award-winning series. The Borgias depicts the ascent to power of the Borgia family in the 1400s and 1500s, led by patriarch Rodrigo, or Pope Alexander VI (Jeremy Irons). In the first season, Arnaud emerged as a star playing Cesare Borgia, the pope’s son.

This morning at Bell Media’s headquarters in Toronto, he looks like a college boy who has just wandered out of class. His brown mop is tousled. His navy and mustard tie is crooked and stops just above the waist of his light blue shirt. Digging his hands into his jean pockets, Arnaud poses for a photographer. He tucks his chin in and narrows his eyes. This is the face of trouble that viewers have come to recognize.

“My Borgia face,” he says.

In between studying at Montreal’s Conservatoire de musique et d’art dramatique du Québec and landing the role of Cesare, Arnaud appeared in several Canadian film and television projects including Xavier Dolan’s acclaimed J’ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother) and the Québécois soap opera Yamaska.

When he saw the pilot script for The Borgias, he thought, ‘Holy s–t, it’s Neil Jordan.’” He first flew to London to meet the Academy Award-winning filmmaker who writes and produces the show, and then returned to test with Irons.

“When I first met Jeremy, the first thing I thought was, ‘God, he looks so much like my actual dad.’ His face, his look, his stare. He was wearing his usual western look with the cowboy hat and the big boots,” he says.

“The scene we were working on was the scene where I tell him that I want to be head of the papal army and he wants to promote me as cardinal. In the scene, he’s supposed to have a biretta and forces it onto my head. For the audition, he spontaneously used his cowboy hat.”

He laughs. “It was like auditioning for three movies at once.”

The unexpected prop notwithstanding, the audition was a success. At the airport, the following day, Arnaud had a voice mail saying he had the part. The cast began filming the first season in Budapest in late 2010.

“My character Cesare, you see him transition from a boy to becoming a man. That’s also where I was in my life so I could relate in many ways to the character,” Arnaud says. “Some people might find the way the character is depicted as too nice in the first season. But I think it’s more interesting to see his journey.”

In Season 2, Rodrigo Borgia has claimed the papal throne and enlists his family to seek bloody revenge on those who opposed him. But his children are at war with each other; Cesare’s rivalry with his brother Juan (David Oakes) turns into hatred and Cesare is compelled to further embrace his dark side.

“When evolving in a culture of violence, it’s really hard to escape becoming apart of it,” Arnaud says, referencing Al Pacino’s character in The Godfather. “What was interesting to me was starting as a good-natured, intelligent boy and evolving into a ruthless warrior, a politician, a man of power. By the end of Season 2, he’s really become who he will be. He’s ready to take over.”

The Borgias airs on Bravo! Sundays at 10 p.m.