Poldark brutally offed one of its best supporting characters in the latest series... So why did good-natured Captain Henshawe have to die?
Ross Poldark’s pal (played by John Hollingworth) was felled by bullets in episode five of the latest series – and writer Debbie Horsfield has told Digital Spy she was ‘devastated’ to write the character out.
‘John Hollingworth did such a beautiful job, so we were all devastated by that,’ she said. ‘Interestingly, in the books it isn’t Captain Henshawe that goes, it is somebody who we haven’t been able to include in the series.’
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‘We don’t have infinite amounts of finance to be able to cast everybody who’s in the novels, so in the book, [the person who dies is] somebody that we haven’t actually had in the series.’
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Henshawe was killed as part of a risky rescue mission that Ross (Aidan Turner) had staged to rescue Dwight (Luke Norris), with Horsfield explaining that the character who died ‘needed to be somebody that we, as the audience, really cared about’.
‘Though it was a difficult decision to make it Henshawe, I think in the end it was the right one, because you did really feel the impact of Ross’s decision, and the devastation that Ross feels at having endangered people’s lives,’ she said.
Fans were devastated to see Henshawe go, but Horsfield is taking it as a good sign that even the supporting characters on Poldark have plenty of fans. (We don’t all watch just for Aidan Turner, y’know…)
‘That’s always the hope – that these are not just incidental characters,’ she said. ‘As the series has gone on, they have become very much part of the landscape, and it’s always the hope that the audience will engage and take them to their hearts.’
(via Digital Spy)
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