Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis talk about PBS’ big ‘Wolf Hall’

LOS ANGELES – It’s dangerous business to overshadow England’s vengeful King Henry VIII, but Thomas Cromwell was never one to back away from a challenge.

The 16th-century political operative steals the spotlight in “Wolf Hall,” a six-part drama based on the bestselling historical novels by Hilary Mantel. It already has aired in Britain to 4.4 million viewers — a record-breaking number for BBC Two — and comes stateside starting Sunday.

All indications point toward another hit for PBS. Like “Downton Abbey,” it’s a period piece, but one that feels as contemporary as “The Good Wife,” with characters speaking relatable dialogue rather than iambic pentameter. There’s also plenty of humor as Cromwell connives his way into being Henry VIII’s right-hand man with card tricks, clever fibs and nerves of steel.

“I think why it feels so modern is that this was the beginning of modern life as we know it,” said director Peter Kosminsky. “The Tudors lived in houses that we would recognize with big windows, light coming in. They had bathrooms. And Cromwell, in many ways, was the beginning of modern government. He was really the first civil servant.

“This was a guy who didn’t rise to prominence through being some kind of aristocrat or rising through the ranks of the church. He was a blacksmith’s son who became the second most powerful man in the land, making use of Parliament in a way that it hadn’t really been used before.”

If it’s a heady time for this historical character — a two-part stage adaptation of Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” and its sequel, “Bring Up the Bodies,” by the Royal Shakespeare Company opens Thursday on Broadway — the same could be said for the actor portraying him.

Mark Rylance, well known to Guthrie Theater regulars for a 2008 staging of “Peer Gynt” and his own 2013 play “Nice Fish,” is having a moment with juicy roles in two upcoming Steven Spielberg movies.

“If the feet and shoes were an important thing for Alec Guinness, the voice is the important thing for me,” said Rylance, who couldn’t be verbally understood until he was 6 years old and learned how to communicate only after intensive sessions with a speech therapist.

“I remember for ‘Richard III’ sitting on Christine Baranski’s pier in Connecticut and taking out all the consonants and coming up with something quite primal for him.”

Not that he does a lot of talking in this series. His Cromwell chooses his words carefully, a wise choice because saying the wrong thing could get you beheaded. His role is similar to Robert Duvall’s consigliere in “The Godfather.”

Kosminsky said, “One of the many things I love about working with Mark is that he conveys an interior world in a more understated, but incredibly eloquent, way more than anyone I know. That sense of reserve, that sense of watching, observing and calculating, is one of those things that make the show so compelling.”

“Wolf Hall’s” Henry VIII is having a fairly impressive run of his own. Damian Lewis picked up an Emmy three years ago for his work in “Homeland” and was recently cast to star alongside Paul Giamatti in Showtime’s upcoming Wall Street series “Billions.”

“I think Henry is a capricious, mercurial man,” he said. “I hope, in the rendering of him, he doesn’t come across as simply the syphilitic, philandering Elvis that people have tended to think he is. He was a more complex man than that.”

In the end, executive producer Colin Callender hopes viewers will find this nearly 500-year-old tale just as accessible and compelling as “House of Cards” and “The Sopranos.”

“This is a story of power and politics and loyalty and betrayal,” he said. “I think contemporary audiences today sort of expect these sorts of moral complexities in their central characters, and I don’t think that we’ve seen that in our historical dramas before.”