Making King & Conqueror

Broadcasters and platforms in 100-plus markets have snapped up King & Conqueror from Paramount Global Content Distribution. The epic international co-production, which launched on BBC One and iPlayer in the U.K. and Prime Video in the U.S. last month, chronicles the events leading up to the Norman invasion of England in 1066, with James Norton starring as Harold, Earl of Wessex, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as William, Duke of Normandy. Both also serve as executive producers on the eight-part production.

Several entities came together to execute on the series, with The Development Partnership, the production arm of The Partnership Group talent agency, aligning with Rabbit Track Pictures (Norton’s production company), Richard Halliwell’s Shepherd Content, Baltasar Kormákur’s RVK Studios in Iceland and CBS Studios.

“Many moons ago, Michael Robert Johnson, our writer and creator, sent me a two-page document for his particular take on how he wanted to tell this story,” Robert Taylor, who heads up The Development Partnership and is an executive producer on the show, tells TV Drama. “The first thing I did was Google, When was the last time there was a series about the Battle of Hastings? It felt exciting but familiar, particularly in the U.K. It’s kind of astonishing that it hasn’t been told in episodic form before.”

At the time, Taylor had been talking to Norton, a client of The Partnership Group, about adding a producer hat to his skill set. Once Norton teamed up with Kitty Kaletsky to launch Rabbit Track Pictures, development on the project kicked into high gear, with Kormákur soon on board as the director and Coster-Waldau attached as co-lead alongside Norton.

“Mike, our writer, figured out that the reason 1066 and the Battle of Hastings have never been adapted is because it’s not solely the Harold Godwinson story that’s interesting, nor solely the William the Conqueror narrative that would ignite a drama,” Kaletsky says. “It’s about the interconnection of their two tales. Once he unlocked that solution, it became about marriage as well. It becomes about not just one nation but two. It becomes about the formation of a new continent and arguably a new world. So, starting with a character but then blowing it out globally appealed to all of us from creative and commercial perspectives. That’s been the bedrock of the development process from the beginning. How do we tell two men’s stories, two couples’ stories and two nations’ stories and make it feel personal and yet also universal? Plus, it felt important because it hadn’t been done before.”

The series is deeply rooted in research, Kaletsky explains, with a wealth of nonfiction books used to understand the historical figures and realities of the time period. “There is also a lot that you can lean on in terms of primary sources,” she says. “But the brilliance of creating a drama that’s almost a thousand years old is that there are also huge gaps. That’s where artistic license comes in. We did a ton of research. We had a historical advisor throughout the development process, guiding us and highlighting the areas that we knew were filling in the gaps and were less likely to be accurate. Mike’s approach to language and storytelling leaned into the bits that we have to dramatize to appeal to and then retain an audience. It’s incredibly well-researched, but it’s also a drama, not a documentary. That was something that we wanted to revel in.”

Given the scale of the production, narratively and financially, the show needed multiple partners, Taylor notes. “It felt appropriate to have that international co-production structure to tell that story authentically. If you look at the list of credits, it feels like there must be 200 people involved in the show, but as ever with these things, there is a core team of multiple parties with a vested interest. On day one, we all wanted to make the same show, and ultimately, that’s the key. We’ve probably all been involved in multi-party processes before, where one broadcaster is making one show and another one is making another. That was not the case here. Everybody had an understanding of the vision.”

That sense of a shared creative vision was paramount, Kaletsky notes. “Financing a show of this nature is always difficult, but everybody was singing from the same hymn sheet. It felt a lot simpler than it looks.”

Kormákur’s RVK Studios played a crucial role in identifying suitable locations in Iceland. “Having a production services company producing alongside us in Iceland meant that they were heavily involved in the creative as well as in the practical,” Kaletsky says. “In terms of our exteriors, we had to find, on location in Iceland, Norway, the Wessex countryside, Northumbria—which looks very different from the south of England—a location for the Battle of Stamford Bridge and obviously the Battle for Hastings on a very particular incline that we needed to replicate. It wasn’t easy, but Iceland has a remarkably varied landscape, and because it’s such a small country, it’s also not difficult to find spectacular scenery not far outside of Reykjavík. And then obviously supported by visual effects to enhance that look.”

Asked what they hope viewers around the world take from the epic production, Kaletsky notes, “For time immemorial, mostly male ambition, ego and hubris have created countries and also collapsed them. What is particularly powerful about this story is it’s the tale of two men, neither of whom were destined for the throne and neither of whom, at least at the start of our narrative, wants the throne. One of them had to die, and England, as we know it, fell apart and was reborn. So, yes, there are many, many parallels. But it’s also a universal story because of the family dynamics that it looks at. It plays out on a global scale, examining hubris and ambition. It also plays out on a domestic scale, examining marriage, the relationship between fathers and sons, and betrayal. You can take away what you want from it, depending a lot on, as a viewer, what you project onto these series.”