My new favorite actor is James Frain who plays Capt. Renard’s half brother, Eric, on NBC’s Grimm. Frain is one of those actors that the term “charismatic” was coined to describe. He looks like just a regular Joe Actor until the cameras roll and then he tranforms into someone you can’t take your eyes off of. Kind of a British Bette Davis if Bette was English. And a guy. As a Brit, Frain gets cast in the bad guy roles on American TV. He played the psychotic vampire, Franklin Mott, in True Blood and currently has a recurring role on Grimm as Renard’s ambitious brother who is consolidating his power as he attempts to put the Renard family back on top of the heap.
In the scene above, Eric has just finished uttering the classic bad guy line “where are your friends in the Resistance now?” as his henchman conducts an “enhanced interrogation” in the sub-dungeon of the Renard Chateau against a member of the Wesen Resistance movement. Or in Royal Family terms, “insurgents who hate our freedom.” His cell phone rings–an urgent phone call from one of his operatives–and he snaps at the henchman to keep the crack of the whip/whimpering of the prisoner to a minimum while he’s trying to talk. “Chateau”, incidentally, is French for “big stinking castle”.
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as King Henry the Eighth and James Frain as Chancellor Thomas Cromwell in Showtime’s “The Tudors.”
Because Frain is in it, I broke down and finally watched Showtime’s The Tudors. Frain plays Thomas Cromwell, a Protesant Reformer, who rises from secretary to chancellor in King Henry’s court. After watching two seasons, I’ve concluded that historically princes and kings have always engaged in rampart womanizing, obnoxious power plays, a certain amount of imprisonment, torture, and beheadings, seizing all the money and valuables they could possibly lay their hands on, rewarding their flunkies, punishing their flunkies, taking bribes, giving bribes, spying, assassination, propaganda, real politick, and assorted political corruption. So, really, the Renard brothers aren’t being bad guys as much as they are upholding the fine, centuries-old traditions of princely conduct.
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