Arthur Hughes, who has radial dysplasia, plays the titular character of Matthew Shardlake, who has scoliosis.
New Tudor mystery series Shardlake stars Arthur Hughes as the titular Matthew Shardlake, a lawyer living in the 16th-century who has scoliosis, and is often discriminated against because of this.
In this first season, based on the novel Dissolution by CJ Sansom, he is tasked with investigating a murder at a monastery by Thomas Cromwell, who is played by Sean Bean.
Hughes spoke exclusively with RadioTimes.com about playing the character, and how he wanted to portray his disability “sensitively” and worked on getting his physicality and movement right.
He explained: “I was asked to read the scripts when I was in the middle of doing Richard III at the RSC, and in rehearsals for that. Obviously, playing a character who’s famously derided for his appearance and his hunched back at that time, I had some good conversations with the directors, writers, producers about, if I was to play Shardlake, how I’d want to do it.
“So that was my starting point for how we wanted to portray him – not in the usual, bent double, kind of hobbling around in a very caricature fashion. I wanted to root Shardlake’s disability in something that was truthful to my own experience, because disability is often aped in a way that isn’t as sensitively done as I would like.”
Hughes, who has radial dysplasia affecting his right arm, also explained how his own experiences impacted the decisions he made with regard to Shardlake’s physicality.
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He explained: “So with my experiences, I put my right arm in my pocket quite a lot, which kind of bent me over a bit and gave me some back issues when I was younger, when I was a bit more self-conscious. And I thought that was a good place to start, so it kind of became this scoliosis, that is this S curvature of the back, exaggerated.
“So that was this leaning over to one side, which, with my arm I am uneven, and so I think this unevenness, that then became the physicality that I think does justice to what Shardlake has. And then I kind of affected how he walked with a bit of a lower centre of gravity.
“When you are a bit wonky, you might get knocked over a bit more easily. So it was almost a bit of a John Wayne-style walk. But that was how I kind of put him, and then once I kind of figured that out, it was just in my body and I didn’t have to really think about it too much.
“But I didn’t want it to be anything too exaggerated or caricature, so I think it’s more subtle than people would expect, like a giant Quasimodo style hunchback character.”
In the series, Shardlake is referred to multiple times as a “crookback”, and Hughes was asked about the use of this derogatory language in the show at a recent Q&A.
Explaining this, Hughes said: “We made a good distinction of the language we use and the language the characters use. We couldn’t not use that language because that’s the reality of it. That is the reality of life for disabled people, even today. I think you probably get less people making the sign of the cross at you as you’re walking through Soho.
“But I guess, approaching playing him, I was aware that Shardlake has disability that is not my own, and I wanted to find a level of truth in what I was doing and not necessarily just affecting something that is not my own experience.”
Shardlake premieres on Disney Plus on Wednesday 1st May. You can sign up to Disney Plus for £7.99 a month or £79.90 a year now.
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