1 of 5 | Sean Bean, seen at the New York premiere of “Game of Thrones” Season 8 in 2019, plays the Sheriff of Nottingham in “Robin Hood.” File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
Sean Bean and Connie Nielsen say their new series Robin Hood, premiering Sunday on MGM+, posed familiar wardrobe challenges.
Both actors have starred in several historical and fantasy epics, including Nielsen as Lucilla in the Gladiator films and Bean as Boromir in the Lord of the Rings and Ned Stark on Game of Thrones.
Bean and Nielsen now play the Sheriff of Nottingham and Eleanor of Aquitaine in Robin Hood.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Bean said he sometimes wished the production were a modern day drama that allowed him to wear “a pair of sweatpants and T-shirt.” Robin Hood instead filmed in the summer in Serbia, with the cast wearing elaborate and heavy costumes.
“It was about 100 degrees Fahrenheit some days,” Bean said. “It certainly helps to establish yourself as a man of the time or a woman of the time in that case.”
Though set some 1,000 years later than Gladiator, Robin Hood posed similar wardrobe restrictions for Nielsen. She plays Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England and France in the 12th century.
“I’m a woman so I’m counting that by the end of the day I will feel this sense of relief when I’m let out of the corset,” Nielsen said. “Literally, the amount of velvet is so heavy that at the end of the day, I feel like I can fly, just being released like a bird from a cage.”
Their Robin Hood co-stars also said the show’s wardrobe helped define their characters. Lydia Peckham plays the sheriff’s daughter, Priscilla.
“You just put on the costume, you tighten that corset and you walk,” Peckham said. “You’ve got Priscilla on.”
Robin Hood’s take on Robin and Maid Marian is different than previous adaptations of the English folktale. In the series, Marian is another commoner whose father does not approve of Robin.
Lauren McQueen, who plays Marian, said her costume adapts the more her character comes into her own.
“We see her in a light blue country bumpkin-style dress at the beginning,” McQueen said. “They went to a darker blue so I could place where she was in her journey.”
As Robin, Jack Patten said the daily dressing gave him time to get into character.
“The shoes were almost a meditation every morning,” he said. “It took maybe 10 minutes each foot because it had all these shoelaces that I need to wrap around. Once I put them on, by that time as well, I’d thought about the day. It was almost therapeutic actually to have that every morning.”
John Glenn and Jonathan English created this take on Robin Hood. As such, Bean avoided previous portrayals by the likes of Alan Rickman and Melville Cooper.
“I didn’t want to be too heavily influenced by past performances of the Sheriff of Nottingham in particular,” Bean said. “I wanted to start fresh and put my own mark on it from the beginning. There was enough there. There was enough depth in the script for me to start afresh.”
Nielsen said she drew on the real-life Eleanor and the history established by Glenn’s scripts for her role. She has scenes with the young cast, trying to encourage them to rebel against the sheriff.
“I’m fermenting them,” Nielsen said. “I’m using them so I’m kind of putting their grievances to my own agenda.”
The Sheriff is stymied not only by Robin Hood’s forest rebellion, but with Priscilla, who does not follow her father’s orders.
“I didn’t have any scenes with Robin Hood, with Jack, because he was always hiding from me,” Bean said. “So he was a nice guy when I met him.”
Priscilla is a new character in Glenn and English’s adaptation. Peckham said she enjoyed playing the manipulative schemer.
“Oh, dude, it’s so much fun,” Peckham said. “She just pops off the page. So much innuendo. She’s so naughty but she’s so intelligent and she knows exactly what she’s doing.”
Robin Hood may be the first time most audiences see Patten. He appeared in an episode of NCIS: Sydney which aired in March.
Robin Hood is the second of three jobs Patten has had since graduating from the National Academy of Dramatic Arts in 2023. He said he arrived in Serbia early to train in archery, and episode 2 features his real marksmanship.
“I would’ve been maybe 30-40 meters away from the target,” Patten said. “It took me two goes to hit bullseye. That was just standing there. There was no pressure. I wasn’t running away from the sheriff or any people. It was just standing.”
Robin Hood airs weekly Sundays on MGM+.
