‘I know what it’s like to be stared at’: Shardlake star Arthur Hughes on playing CJ Sansom’s disabled Tudor sleuth
It was this desire that saw him first take to the stage in school plays, and then to eschew university in favour of drama school – although his parents persuaded him to apply to both, just in case. “There was nothing else I wanted to do,” he says. The gamble paid off as he has landed some huge roles – including beingthe first primetime drama about the disability rights movementShardlake
Early in his career, Hughes played parts that existed only as a “punchbag or sob story”, but now he has learned to use the subversion of audience assumptions to both dramatic and comedic effect. “People expect disabled characters, disabled people, to be one thing. So you do something else. That unexpected edge can be your power.” This is true, he adds, beyond the stage.
Shardlake, Hughes adds, lives “in a world where the devil is real, curses are real, and people make the sign of the cross when they notice his disability”. And he is keen to show how the prejudice Shardlake experiences has made him resilient and, at times, impenetrable. “I wanted to portray the armour of him – the strength and the resilience that make him quite a stocky, immovable character. He’s a kind of Lone Ranger, built to withstand people’s prejudices as well as the violence of that time.
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