Actress 'hysterical' at death scene

LONDON - It's no fun having your head cut off. Natalie Dormer felt "hysterical" as she prepared to portray Anne Boleyn's final moments for Showtime's "The Tudors."

The scene was filmed at dawn in the courtyard of Dublin's famed Kilmainham Gaol, a stand-in location for the Tower of London, where the Tudor queen was beheaded on May 19, 1536.

Dormer was overwhelmed by thoughts of the queen's fate and by the notorious prison, once the site of many executions. She described her "demented" weeping and wailing at the thought of "Anne going to die, and this horrible place, and everything that is dark about the human spirit and what man can do to one another."

But when the camera rolled, the 26-year-old actress pulled herself together, delivering the scene with the composure Anne had displayed as she waited for the executioner's sword to swing. Unlike the real queen, Dormer said, she earned a standing ovation from the crew of onlookers when it was over.

It's no plot secret that Anne lost her head at the command of her ruthless husband, King Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), but this denouement won't occur until the last of the 10 episodes of the medieval drama series' second season, which premieres at 9 p.m. March 30.

"The second series is darker. It's more serious. . . . There are big issues, and, of course, the big issue is the Reformation," said show creator, writer and executive producer Michael Hirst.

The new episodes reveal Henry taking charge of both church and state and beginning to display many of the tyrannical tendencies that ultimately dominated his personality. *