Forest Grump
By E Jane Dickson, Radio Times
What’s made Sherwood Forest’s happy-go-lucky outlaw Robin Hood so down in the mouth? Jonas Armstrong explains why the greenwood just got darker . . .
Robin Hood is back. And this time it’s personal. “Robin’s out for revenge,” says Jonas Armstrong, who plays the grief-crazed outlaw. “When Marian, the love of his life, was murdered by Guy of Gisborne in the last series, it changed Robin forever. Before, he was your straight-up merry man, the kind of guy who doesn’t let trouble get him down. Now he’s lost all sense of the kind of person he was before. He’s out of control. And it’s just fantastic to play him like this.”
As if on cue, the series’ official armourer steps up to relieve Armstrong of his trusty bow. We’re on the sprawling film lot on the outskirts of Budapest in Hungary where Robin Hood is shot and there’s so much weaponry on set – from long bows and broadswords to the massive war engines set up outside the walls of “York” – that security procedures must be rigorously observed. Expert armourers must be present any time a weapon is handled. “I use a Saracen recurve bow, rather than the classic English longbow,” explains Armstrong. “The idea is that it’s something Robin has brought back from the Holy Land – and it’s really powerful. When this bow is properly pulled back, you could put an arrow through not just one man, but possibly three.”
The central square of “Nottingham” is dressed with stalls, pennants and livestock cages from market day. Next week, Armstrong explains, the walls of the castle will be painted a lighter shade of sandstone and the same space will become “York”. A gibbet swings from the battlements towering high above the square. (Cutting down condemned men with a well-aimed arrow is one of Robin’s specialities.) The “practical” battlement, a cutdown version just three metres off the ground where Robin and his men do much of their fighting, is round the corner. “Only the stuntmen are allowed on the high walls,” Armstrong reveals. “But if you shoot the battlement from a hole in the ground and add in a bit of CGI [computer generated imagery], it’s very convincing.” In fact, this is only half the set. The exterior of Locksley village is built a couple of miles away in a woodland setting, while the interior village shots utilise a multi-purpose stone-flagged space in Budapest.
So much of designer Stephen Campbell’s ingenious set is re-used (add a trickling fountain to a “York” courtyard, whack up the current on the lighting rig and, hey presto, you’re in the Holy Land!) that it comes as a surprise when Armstrong slips through a fibreglass postern gate in the “city walls” and points out a working, full-scale drawbridge and moat, with a giant trebuchet [siege engine] lined up to fire barrels of burning pitch over the parapet. “There’s a massive stunt in one episode that uses pyrotechnics and live explosives,” says Armstrong. “The pyrotechnician fired a smoke bomb from the trebuchet so you had this arc of smoke for the barrel flying through the air. Then, where the CGI version of the barrel would come in to land, an explosion was set up under the cobbles in the square. Special-effects guys pulled wires so the set furniture went everywhere and stunt guys were set to spring off trampolines, as though they’d been blown into the air.
When we watched the scene afterwards, it whited out the screen. We were supposed to have run into our positions under cover of the smoke, but when the air cleared, we were all still cowering behind a cart.” Three years of playing the folk hero have deepened the 28-year-old actor’s respect for his character. “Robin has no superpowers to rely on – he’s a superbly trained archer who uses his wits. And he’s just an amazing guy. The coolest there is.”
This series sees the arrival of new characters, including David Harewood’s Tuck, Joanne Froggatt as a comely Locksley girl and Toby Stephens as Prince John. But for the Dublin-born Armstrong this will be his final series (he’ll next be seen in Jimmy McGovern’s The Street. It will, he admits, be a wrench to hang up his bow at the end of the series. “I’m really proud of Robin Hood,”he says. “And this series, for me, is the best of the lot. But I signed for three years, and I need to move on.” Surely this doesn’t mean the end for Robin? Who will be left to right the wrongs of all true Englishmen? “I’m giving nothing away,” says Armstrong, with the smile that stares down evil and laughs in the face of torture. “You’ll just have to watch to find out.”
