Interview with Merlin’s Colin Morgan and Bradley James: Butchering the Legend
January 9, 2011 by Mallory Elis
Filed under Feature, feature overlay, Television
Anglophiles and Merlin/Arthur shippers, rejoice. The Syfy channel has brought the third season of Merlin back this weekend for more sorcery, intrigue, and guest spots for former Harry Potter actors. A Q&A session with lead actors Colin Morgan and Bradley James in late December confirmed a few upcoming plot threads, especially the continuing development of Morgana’s character arc. As Bradley put it:
“We don’t know what she’s been up to or what she’s been harvesting. It becomes very evident very quickly in the first episode that despite appearances she hasn’t changed. She’s just as evil as she was before.”
Can you tell us what separates this version of the story from all the others that have come before?
“Well, I would say that we’ve completely butchered the legend and sort of reworked it for sort of Saturday night escapism because anyone who’s kind of quite strictly religious to the legend perhaps will take a bit of time to get used to what we’ve done to it. But we – I mean the producers like to sort of compare it with the sort of Smallville idea of having Superman before he was Superman. And I mean this is Merlin before he was Merlin and Arthur before he was King Arthur. So it’s kind of the prelude story to the familiar tale that everyone’s aware of.”
Colin had the chance to address audience expectations about certain inevitable plot developments:
“I think as an audience member, being aware of where these characters end up and knowing that they become the legends that they are, that Arthur and Gwen become king and queen, that Merlin becomes accepted as Arthur’s advisor and a wizard and that magic is out in the open…[there] can always be a sense of frustration when you want that to happen quickly.
In reality things don’t happen that quickly. It takes time for those to happen…But I do believe that things are happening at quite a pace already in terms of character relationships.”
Both leads promised plenty of excitement in the next season – “lethal, lethal, lethal situations they find themselves in,” teased Bradley. Merlin airs Fridays at 10/9c on Syfy.
For more on Merlin, click here.
Images courtesy of Syfy.
This started off as a cool show, but it has gone downhill. One of the reasons is the bad acting of Bradley James. Colin Morgan has potential down the road to do some interesting roles, but Bradley James just seems to take his shirt off every week instead of focusing on being a good actor.
Being a big fan of, “MERLIN”, I was so dissapointed in last friday’s episode on Jan,21st. Who wrote that episode?. It was a shame with Uther and Morgana’s flatulance scene. That show could have done better. The writer of that episode needs a long vacation. I would expect better of a show finally worth watching, a disapointed fan. Please get back to good writing, thank you.