Blake Ritson - Girolamo Riario

Having started at the National Theatre at the age of 13, Blake Ritson followed the well-trodden path to the theatres of Cambridge, where he read Medieval Italian. That might come in handy now as he stars in the hugely anticipated Da Vinci’s Demons, playing the ruthlessly scheming nephew of Pope Sixtus IV in the fifteenth century Florence. He talks about his time at Cambridge, his exciting new show and a renaissance in television.

Firstly, why Medieval Italian?

Good question. I actually went to Cambridge to study English but there were a lot of dull English professors so I specialised in Medieval Italian to escape them. The Medieval Italian supervisor was legendary for his supervisions consisting of drinking cognac and smoking cigars. An Oxbridge cliché confirmed, I know.

But weren’t you really interested in pursuing acting?

I think so, yes. I’d started acting when I was really young - I was doing plays at the National Theatre when I was about 13, which I got through pure luck. My brother was already at Cambridge, so I would go up as often as I could and saw what immense fun he was having. It has an amazing theatre scene: every college has their own theatre and they’re incredibly well funded so you have about twenty theatres doing a play every term and so twenty productions to choose from. I you’re really ingenious you can get your friend to write or direct as well.

And you’ve produced and directed with your brother [Dylan Ritson] as well, right? Does that make you something of a polymath?

I suppose so, although I do think they’re all intricately related. I would be amazed if any actor with a decent ear for dialogue couldn’t also write good dialogue. I think all of them are also incredibly helpful in providing a much more rounded understanding of the industry. I mean, I’ve got absolutely no question that I’ve learnt things as an actor by directing or being in an edit suite and understanding what’s useful and what’s counterproductive on screen.

Also, an awful lot of your time as an actor is spent sat in your Winnebago or on the set sidelines, waiting to be called, and you could sit there reading a newspaper or immersed in your own creative project. It feels like you’re not wasting the opportunity to get on with something else.

In terms of acting, though, what’s been your most enjoyable role to date?

I think my favourite character is always the last character I’ve played, just because you’re so involved with the character that you become almost infatuated with them. The last character I played is one called Count Riario in this new American series called Da Vinci’s Demons. He’s this remorseless, fearless soldier of God. He’s also unbelievably ruthless and cruel, but a great character to play. He’s also so different from me; it’s kind of wonderful exploring things I’d never do in real life.

Da Vinci’s Demons sounds exciting. What can you tell us about it?

I’m really excited about it. I was out in LA earlier this year to do interviews and I was able to watch the first two episodes. It’s pretty cool! It’s better than what I expected it to be. It was difficult when filming to get a handle on what it’d ultimately look like, though everyone knew that because of David Goyer [the director, who also co-wrote The Batman Trilogy with Christopher Nolan] that it was going to have this really deep, rich mythological element and the characters would have this iconic feel. Because it’s set in the Renaissance Florence, you assume it could become a far more conventional costume drama, but the way it’s ended up is far more historical fantasy. It’s Gotham City more than Renaissance Florence.

And your character is the Pope’s Nephew?

I’m literally the Pope’s bastard. The character is plotting all the time - it’s not that he’s a raving sadist, but cruelty is a part of his methodology. He believes himself to be driven by this pure belief in the divine, so he will do anything. He’s almost like a religiously motivated terrorist. There’s literally nothing he won’t do. And he is a master strategist - he plays this game called ‘Go’, which is purportedly the most complicated game ever created. A deterministic strategy game like chess played in this huge board. It’s a very good metaphor of how he’s ten moves ahead.

Do you get a sense that it’s going to be successful?

All you can go on at the moment is gut instinct, but there is a real buzz about it in LA at the moment. People have responded very strongly to it - there are an awful lot of costume dramas that end up in the same melting pot, but this one feels very auteurist. The American network has really let David Goyer see his vision through: cast it, crew it, edit it, shoot it, and he directs the first two episodes.

Before I decided to do it, I met David for lunch, and I just got such an extraordinary vibe from him. He let me into some of the twists that happens in this series - and later series if we’re lucky enough to get there - and I thought that I’d never met a director or writer with such an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the characters. He knows every character’s past, present and future and what they’ll be doing in series 4, 5, 6. But he keeps things from you, he won’t tell you everything.

But have you signed a contract for any future series?

Yes - six years. I’ts not confirmed it’ll go on that long but it’s likely. All I can say is that, from what I’ve seen of it, I’d be amazed if people didn’t like it. Scripts for a second series have already been commissioned so David keeps emailing me with exciting possible developments. He said that what might be really fun with my character and Leonardo is to, at some point, flip them so that he genuinely does become something of a good guy and Leonardo goes to the dark sides. There’s a real Star Wars mythology you could map over this.

It really seems like series television is in its prime at the moment.

Precisely, and the guys behind Da Vinci’s Demons are the same guys behind Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Sopranos - some of the biggest shows ever which have revolutionised modern TV. I think people will look back on this period as the renaissance of television. For example, the production values of something like Game of Thrones are so superior to what you get in a lot of films. There used to be kind of snobbery about films being superior art form but I certainly don’t think that’s true anymore.

Would you want to stay in television then? Do you have any career aspirations?

To be honest, it’s all about the parts, and the director and the writer. I don’t feel one is a superior art form in any way. In ten or fifteen years from now, I only really want to be respected enough to be getting offered parts I enjoy doing.

I don’t really have any particular aspirations to be ‘known’ - I think that’d actually be a real pain in the arse. At the moment, I get recognised occasionally and I don’t mind it, but I have friends who are very well known and now can’t take the tube because it becomes such a painful process. I think it’s a compromise: I’m aware that if you going in for films you have to be known to a certain level for people to come and see you in the cinema, but I think that celebrity per se is not something that I aspire to at all. I guess it’s all part of the package though.