When David Alpay auditioned for The Tudors, he knew he’d have a chance to share the screen with a who’s who of British acting talent, in a story as English as fried food and damp curtains.

With recurring roles in Canadian shows like Slings And Arrows and Billable Hours as well as Atom Egoyan’s Ararat behind him, he nonetheless decided to take a bit of a risk.

“I never told them that I didn't have an English accent. I kind of auditioned with an accent and just kinda got the part and bluffed my way through, I guess.”

Alpay ended up landing the role of Mark Smeaton, the court musician who became a favorite of King Henry VIII and then his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Smeaton was a rock star at the Tudor Court – the show even shows him having an affair with Anne’s brother George, a creative embroidery with no precedent in historical fact – but he met with an unfortunate end, implicated in an adulterous affair with Anne that conveniently suited both Henry’s burgeoning paranoia and his need to get rid of yet another wife who wasn’t producing an heir, though Smeaton was in all likelihood innocent.

“What's really cool is that the show refuses to provide answers like that on the surface,” Alpay says, “and it's not until the last two episodes of the season that we really find out what's happening, and it's heartbreaking, actually. Smeaton and Anne aren't out to get the king or screw around and cause trouble. They're just two people who, in a way, really love each other and care about each other, but the environment, the society that they live in, that has a really hard time with that. There's a social friction that's the kernel that grows into bigger problems later on. He's a very innocent character who isn't duplicitous, but seen through Henry's eyes he seems that way. The history books though have kind of favoured Henry's viewpoint.”