I Am Irons, Man

Photo by Victoria Mihich

Ron Bennington: The Borgias is entering it’s second season now, and it doesn’t get any easier for this guy. Every single year, Jeremy, he’s got more and more problems, no matter how much power he picks up for himself.

Jeremy Irons: Well, anybody that has a family knows about that. So this season it’s even more about that really, about how you deal with, how you deal with your kids, even if you’re the pope of Rome, it’s surprising even that he has kids, but he does and did have twelve.

Ron Bennington: By how many women did he have the twelve children?

Jeremy Irons: I’m not sure, I think four or five.

Ron Bennington: Yeah, so he added to this personal drama as well as the professional drama that he had cause those days if you wanted to run things, you also had to be in charge of military as well as the church.

Jeremy Irons: You did, he was a man, he was actually a Spaniard, Mediterranean, great appetite for everything – power, life, food, women, ah, so you know those people who are like that, you think of many, American politicians, I mean your Presidents have been like that.

Ron Bennington: Yes

Jeremy Irons: Everything, that’s how they get the job, that’s how they get there because they have this great appetite for life, and at that time, Italy was a melting pot, not that unlike Afghanistan now, except maybe doing a little bit more painting. So, to protect yourself you had to work with the military, you had to get your own army, you had to have friends with armies.

Ron Bennington: It’s kind of a corporate job, you need to be a great CEO and you need to be able to hand this off and to keep the product out there to keep the company alive.

Jeremy Irons: That’s right, and now with the Catholic Church, it seems to be that because the Catholic Church in Africa is so strong that many of the edicts coming out of the Vatican seem to refer to them and their way of life and their way of thinking rather than Europe and so we listen to some of these edicts and think “well does that make sense for our society as it is now?” but of course, society in Africa is very different.

Ron Bennington: Right, well the Catholic Church, they’ve lost a lot of power in Europe and they’ve lost a lot of power in South America.  When the Pope came here a few years ago and I went out, it was all Hispanic people lining the streets. When the last Pope had come in, back in like 1980, there was Irish people, Polish people, Italian people. So it does move around, the power moves.

Jeremy Irons: Mmm, it does, and I sort-of wonder, and maybe it’s terrible to say this, but I sort of wonder about the relevance of it now. I think it could have enormous relevance, I think we need spirituality today like almost no other time, there is such competition, with the consumer world which is thrown at us, and I think spirituality is a very, very important balance.  Our morality, just our way of life and the way we treat each other, and the way we are treated, and how we deal with the pressures of life. And it seems to me now that we all go to shrinks, we go to therapists and analysts and whatever whatever and I think it should be the church who is guiding us in these ways. And somehow when they stopped needing to be a power, which is when really republics happened and kingdoms happened which is sort of three, four hundred years ago.  That’s when they should have come down and in a way looked at the teaching of Jesus who was a man of the people and a man who wasn’t interested in politics, was just interested in human beings. It seems to be that over the last three, four hundred years, the Catholic Church has not adapted.

Ron Bennington: Yeah

Jeremy Irons: Or any church really. Well I can’t speak of all churches but they should be there supporting us in our feebleness, in our greed,  just keeping us on the straight and narrow and concentrating on that, so that we didn’t have to go to these other professions. I think that’s what a priest should do.

Ron Bennington: If you really look back in the Renaissance, the church was behind all the beauty, all the creativity, to bring it together, culture came through the church and it seems to, as we’ve developed our culture on the outside of the church, and we also start to find our spirituality in other places outside.

Jeremy Irons: Well, culture, I mean the church had the money the church was the wealthiest organization, so they surely were the ones who should pay for Michaelangelo for Leonardo DaVinci. Now we have governments who subsidize arts and we also have large corporations who, through charitable donations, pay for the arts. Which just shows how the power, real power, real wealth has shifted away from the church. I think the church should perhaps acknowledge that and say “well, what is our function?”

Ron Bennington: But again, it’s like they connect better with the uneducated, they connect better with the people that feel like they can’t get ahead in this world at all. You know, the people that feel like this world’s not gonna work out for me, maybe I can buy into a heaven type situation.

Jeremy Irons: I think that’s a way, certainly a way that Jesus spoke to some people who weren’t that educated. The problem is that more and more, we’re educated therefore, and we know about science, and we know about genetics.  I mean I look at the crucifixion and the resurrection and I think “this is poetry” of course we renew, all the time we renew, and we have to know there is a possibility that however much we mess up in life, we can actually repair ourselves and renew and resurrect. And so much, I think if you take the Bible literally, you just get yourself in knots. But if you look at the spirit of it, and the way of treating people I mean, what better thing to say than God is Love because love is the one big positive thing that we can give each other.  In the way we behave in life, with good manners, to taking care of people, caring about other people maybe a little bit more than we care about ourselves. And then it’s love others as you love yourself, so we have to keep ourselves in order so we respect ourselves, so we love ourselves, and that whole thing, that positive influence of love which we can give and take from other people – that is God. You know, the Bible says God is Love, but Love is God, also.

Ron Bennington: Right, so you’re saying if you find it in this moment, find it in this moment that Love is God all else will take care of itself.

Jeremy Irons: I think an awful lot will take care of itself, and you know, many other teachings deal with others as you would have them deal with you. I think it’s a huge shame that we no longer have a day when we stop. You know the Bible says work for six stop for the seventh and it seems really important that we just, especially in this world which is so ongoing – rush rush rush, buy buy buy, want want want, work work work – unless you get home after 9:00 at night there’s something unsuccessful about your business. I mean, that’s crazy, this is crazy. Life is about living and I, strange enough, I was in Abu Dhabi a while ago and they just built a new mosque, and they were showing me around it because they were so proud of it, I think it’s the biggest mosque in the world. And there was a call to prayer I think it must have been 6:00 or whenever, or maybe it was earlier and I said can I stay or do I have to get out because I’m not a Muslim and they said No, stay if you like. And so I took part in the call to prayer. And I found myself standing, kneeling, getting down, putting my forehead on the ground, kneeling up, standing and I thought this is fantastic exercise. If I did this four times a day, it’s just great stretching – and stopping. You know, just those, I don’t know how long it was – four minutes, five minutes – just there, quiet just unwinding. And I thought if I did that four or five times a day, both the muscular exercise, the stretching and the mind-clearing, what an improvement that would put into my life.

Ron Bennington: Just having ritual in your life which most of us don’t have time for

Jeremy Irons: I mean some people do yoga, we all have our own little tricks. Me, I go out and have a cigarette.

Ron Bennington: Right. They say that’s great for you. (laughs)

Jeremy Irons: Great. But there are so many things in religion which, which are really basic helpful rules.

Ron Bennington: So, when you’re playing the Pope here and he’s doing all these things that are basically gangster stuff, if not, at most, you can give him like a Shakespearean king feel to it. Is he a man of faith or is it these carnal things that he’s chasing? Or is it both?

Jeremy Irons: Is he a man of faith? Yes, I mean faith was then–  it just ‘was’.  Maybe many people would be questioning various facets – what exactly does that mean? You know, who’s more important, the Son or the Holy Ghost? Fiddling around like that, not really important things probably. But a total concept of life which includes God, and however you behave, and you confess on it, and I remember, I remember talking to one of our Vatican advisors, one of our guys who really helps me about attitude. And I said, “how would they have, because the Pope behaves–  as we judge him now — in a pretty strange way. How would, Bill Clinton, how would the Catholics have viewed Bill Clinton and the cigar and all of that?” And they said “They would have seen the public outcry and all that; it was completely hypocritical because here we have a man who was the President of the country and of course he failed, all men fail, all men fall, of course we do — Otherwise we’d be gods–  and hopefully confess and remind ourselves we’ve done wrong and try and do better.” But to say that this is a, you know, that the man is not therefore worthy to be President is crazy, because if we didn’t fail, we’d be gods. So, the Italians would have had a problem with the Pope because he made it all so public, his way of life. If he did it in private, they’d be fine because they think he’s a fallible man. Even though he’s Pope and they quite understand that. But like many people, they don’t like it thrown in their face.

Ron Bennington: Well, what kept him living so publicly. Was it his own ego?

Jeremy Irons: I think it was a desire to live, to be seen to live the sort of life that he approved of. And when he went to the Vatican he wanted women around. I mean, he just wanted life around. He was used to living in that way. I mean, a typical Spaniard, you know Mediterranean man. Great food, and mama, and let’s have – the Vatican was filled with all these priests and people looking miserable and dressed in black and he said “let’s give it a bit of ‘jhushz’ painting on the walls, come on, let’s live it up a little bit.” I mean Richard II did the same in England a little bit earlier when he became king he said “I can’t deal with all these warriors around all the time. Let’s have a bit of music, a bit of fun, let’s build some great buildings.” And I think that’s what Rodrigo did, and of course, a lot of people didn’t like that. You know?

Ron Bennington: It’s great to have you in here. The Borgias are on Sunday nights, 10:00 on Showtime. Now if you didn’t catch the first season, you can go back in and catch up on it all On Demand. It plays out like a movie. And Showtime keeps swinging these great shows at us these days. And we’ll see you next time through.

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